Why does it feel like the world has made so much progress in addressing global warming, but also not at all?
In H is for hope: climate change from A to Z, Elizabeth Kolbert, a longtime environmental journalist, considers tough questions like these. Using simple language, she explains that governments are passing climate-friendly laws, clean energy is expanding, companies are creating green technologies, and yet, after all these years, fossil fuel emissions are still rising.
Kolbert’s latest book, a primer brightened by Wesley Allsbrook’s colorful illustrations, is a quick, entertaining read. A is for Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist who wanted to find out what caused ice ages, landed on the idea of carbon dioxide and built the world’s first climate model in 1894. Arrhenius imagined that a warmer world would be a happier one for mankind. B is for “blah, blah, blah,” the climate activist Greta Thunberg’s mocking summary of what three decades of global climate conferences have achieved. C is for capitalism, one compelling explanation for why those conferences did not achieve much.
A staff writer at The New Yorker, Kolbert has written several books, esp The Sixth Extinction, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Homo sapiens’ asteroid-level power to wipe out other species. In H Is for Hope, she grounds the abstract problem of climate change in concrete experiences. Kolbert ends up riding an exercise bike in a humid, 106-degree-Fahrenheit vault, monitored for an experiment. (“What is the future we’re creating actually going to feel like?”) She stares up at the blades of a 600-foot wind turbine off the coast of Rhode Island, and after visiting a “green concrete” company in Montreal, takes ‘ a zinc block of the fabric to take home as a souvenir.
In an interview with Grist, Kolbert explained why she thinks climate change defies traditional narratives around hope and progress and how she tried to tell a more complex, down-to-earth story in her new book. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q. I want to start by talking about hope, which is usually how people end interviews. I’ve heard climate scientists and activists say they’re tired of being asked what gives them hope, I think because it can feel naive. How can we talk about hope in a way that is more realistic and useful?
A. Well, a lot of people, as you say, have pointed out that it’s not really the opposition that we should focus on, hope versus not hope. I think we need to focus on action versus non-action. How we feel about it – it really doesn’t make much difference to the climate. What we do is what makes a difference. Now, that said, after this book was written called H Is for HopeI am very interested in how we think about hope, and this is one of the motivating ideas behind the book.
Q. How did you end up choosing that title? I think there’s something nice about a title that emphasizes optimism but is also set in Sue Grafton detective novels – you know, her book was H is for murder.
A. Right. There is also a great book by Helen Macdonald called H is for Hawk. So I knew I wanted to name the book after one of the letters; that’s the whole point, it is an abecedaris. And that one just came out as the obvious candidate.
Q. I thought that approach was interesting. What inspired you to write an alphabetical introduction to climate change?
A. I tried to reanimate this story, which can be very overwhelming and has so many different aspects. It’s really everything, everywhere, all at once, and on one level I tried to break it down for people so that it was understandable and comprehensible in all its complexity. On the other hand, I also tried to suggest that any simple narrative was probably not complete.
Q. You started the book by saying that climate change resists narratives. What did you mean by that?
A. It is not personalized. It does not have a destiny. You know, we all participate in causing it. We all share in suffering from it. It is clear that some participate in it much more than others, and some suffer from it much more than others. It is this creeping, perpetual problem that will now be with us forever. And when it’s acute, when there’s a crisis, a wildfire or a hurricane exacerbated by climate change, it still wasn’t exactly cause through climate change. You have that agency problem, and stories demand agency.
Q. One of the themes in the book is the difficulty of coming to terms with climate change on a deeper level, the feeling that we’re watching things fall apart but we’re not really internalizing it, or that we’re waiting for someone or one or other miracle technology to save us. Why do you think people have that reaction?
A. On the one hand, it is a global problem. It has been described as the ultimate “tragedy of the commons” problem. It needs to be addressed on a global scale. So it is very easy to feel overwhelmed. “What does it matter what I do?” On the other hand, I do think that what we’re seeing, especially in the U.S.—you know, I include myself in this—is that we’re very locked in our ways, and they’re very carbon-intensive ways. So I think we’d like every solution that continues to be proposed to be something that allows us to continue doing exactly what we’re doing, just different. And that’s what we want to hear.
Q. That is true. It’s really hard to imagine how we would lead different lives, or what exactly those lives would look like. And I feel that is part of the problem.
A. Yes, and our whole economy is based on doing things a certain way. You know, there’s a big argument in climate circles, which is one of the points in the book: Can you have what’s called “green growth?” Can you just keep growing, but do it in a, quote-unquote, “green” way, or can’t you? This is an unanswered question.
Q. How do you think we should change the narratives being told about climate change?
A. Well, this book is my attempt to do that. I can’t give you the poster child for climate change that will change everyone’s perceptions of it, or the story that will finally cut through all the BS. Many approaches have been taken, some more successful than others, but we still seem stuck. And I really tried in this book to get around that problem, or to fool around with that problem, that the traditional narratives don’t seem to work.
Q. Was there anything else you wanted to say about the book?
A. I think what’s important about climate change coverage is that it has an element of fun, which seems strange to say for such a grim subject. But I think that what we – and I include the artist Wesley Allsbrook, whose wonderful illustrations make up a large part of the book – tried to make it an enjoyable reading experience and a super visual experience. I do think the unrelenting grimness gets to people, and this book, while it certainly has a very serious message, tries to present something in a way that’s kind of fun, I hope.
