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I decided to measure my carbon footprint again, partially to chastise myself about being cynical, but also to reflect on not going to an out-of-state event this week with people I genuinely like. I likely didn’t want to reveal how paranoid I am getting, even as it was about trying to reconcile my anxieties about whether I do the right things / make good choices. I did save about 30 gallons of gasoline by not going, so that’s something. As a related note, I do interact with more vegans, and while I have minimized my bad carbon food choices, I confess to occasionally surrendering to the carbonara.
Yale Climate Connections: Why did you feel the need to start an organization for adults over 60 that focuses on climate?
Bill McKibben: People over the age of 60 may have a deeper sense almost of anyone of how much change has come. We remember the first pictures that came back from the Apollo Mission of the Earth viewed from outer space. And it’s a shock to us to realize that the world doesn’t look like that anymore; the top isn’t white like that still. And I think over that long baseline, we have an almost intuitive sense, a visceral sense, of how much change there’s been. And so, we know better than most what’s happening, and we have a sense of obligation. If you’re 70 now, you’ve been on this Earth for about 80% of all the carbon that humans have ever emitted. So we know that we’re implicated in this and that we are capable of doing much about it, and that combination really gets people out to work.
- “I’m from Virginia Beach, so if you don’t know, if somebody spits outside, it floods outside to the point that you all live here now, so get to know your neighbors right now. These are now your roommates. Climate change is crazy. … They got me scared about property at this point. I don’t want to pay for flood insurance. I don’t even have car insurance, okay?” — Kristen Sivills, "Ain’t Your Mama’s Heat Wave" (2021)
Unlike other clips featured in this article that aired on Netflix, Kristen Sivills wrote and performed this bit as part of an independently produced comedy special titled “Ain’t Your Mama’s Heat Wave” by the nonprofit Hip Hop Caucus. It was recorded in St. Paul’s district in Norfolk, a Black public housing community undergoing redevelopment because of “climate flooding, sea level rise, and a legacy of racist urban policies,” according to the project’s website. In recent years, many projects and nonprofit groups have partnered with comedians to find new ways to communicate the climate change threats and solutions.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
The reality is that we are baked into certain consequences on Earth, but we can still prevent further warming and adapt.
"When we're being cynical, we're always looking for evidence that something is fishy with a situation,"
Pop culture portrayals of cynics imply their dim worldview is just part of their constitution—think of Dr. Seuss's Grinch. Indeed, psychologists agree that cynicism is at least partly in the genes. People who have an inborn tendency toward depressive disorders are at increased risk of developing a cynical outlook, and Yale University cognitive psychologist Frank Keil found that children as young as 7 begin responding cynically to suspect statements as part of normal development. But University of California-Irvine personality researcher Salvatore Maddi contends that many cynics are more like Bayan: They aren't so much born as made.
According to Maddi, the first seeds of cynicism are often planted when people put in effort to achieve a goal like snagging a promotion at work or raising a self-sufficient child—and then see their high hopes dashed.
This disconnect between expectation and reality gives budding cynics a feeling of helplessness, prompting the emergence of a hallmark of the cynical personality: the sense that nothing anyone does in life really matters.
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