Why keep trying?

An attempt at gathering hope after reading the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report on Climate Change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its AR6 Synthesis Report a couple of days back. I spent a few hours doing three things—poring over its contents, making copious notes, and trying to hold on to a shrinking sense of hope.

I tried writing a haiku on 'Hope' back in 2021 when India was dealing with the peak of a wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there weren't enough oxygen cylinders or hospital beds, and people were losing loved ones everywhere you look.

This is what I could come up with.

Wish I could say more

but I live in India

Hope’s in short supply

I felt a similar feeling as I read the report. But one thing helped. I'm only reading this report, I can only imagine how the people who wrote it feel. What do they feel when they watch the news? How do they muster the hope to continue what they're doing? Which is basically trying to slam the brakes as we rush towards our own demise.

"Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming..."

"Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe."

"Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected."

"... likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century..."

" There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all."

And finally, this.

"The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years."

I'd think that by now, scientists shouldn't still have to assert these. How have we not all listened to these voices already?

There is some hope.

"Feasible, effective, and low-cost options for mitigation and adaptation are already available..."

"Mitigation and adaptation actions have more synergies than trade-offs with Sustainable Development Goals."

"Many options are available for reducing emission-intensive consumption, including through behavioural and lifestyle changes, with co-benefits for societal well-being."

"There is sufficient global capital to close the global investment gaps..."

But how do they manage their frustration, knowing they're right, and still manage to remain measured in their vehemence? How do they resist that universal urge to use exclamation marks and expletives?

Many of these sentences are accompanied by one small parenthetical.

"(High confidence)".

I remember watching a video of one of President Obama's speeches at a White House Correspondent's Dinner, where he brings on an anger translator. Basically, the translator proceeds to say the things the President wished he could say in a tone that he can never afford to take.

I couldn't help feeling the scientists writing the report could have used one too.

Whenever I saw the polite and measured "(high confidence)" written next to something, I imagined them actually shouting at an imaginary audience, "This means we know this pretty much for sure dumbasses, let's get our acts together!!?!!"

Even the places where they say "(medium confidence)", I could imagine them yelling, "Don't hold on to this and say we also have our doubts, we're pretty damn sure! Just do something about these things instead of just trying to find loopholes to continue doing what you're doing!"

Scientists have been saying the same things for decades. In the face of misinformation, lobbying, political pressure, and even lawsuits and threats.

How do they do this? How do they keep trying?

And how can we keep trying?

The report says one thing clearly — we have the information we need, we have viable solutions, and we have the money. What we lack is the collective will.

Hopefully we can find ways to reach some level of alignment and compromise and hopefully agreement that can make sure we're at least not taking any steps backward, and hopefully even the tiniest bit forward.

That takes persuasion.

And persuasion takes repetition.

I came across the work of a communicator called Jeremy Porter a few years ago. It's a comprehensive guide to understanding communications and persuasion.

One of the pieces is about Key Messages.

I found an important quote in it, that I've somewhat fittingly gone back to time and again.

"There’s a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time."

— Frank Luntz

"Messages must be repeated if they are to sink in."

I'm guessing it's what keeps the scientists going. And this is what keeps me going as well.

The fact that even though everything that needs to be said, has probably already been said by someone or the other, it is still worth repeating. And it is worth finding new and different and hopefully better ways to say the same thing. And get a lot of people repeating it. That's what builds up to a critical mass.

You never know who will be listening to the message this time for the first time, and what they could do with this message.

I recently started reading a book called 'The Persuaders'.

The book by Anand Giridhardas is an insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy in an increasingly polarised and fractured America. I think that's what we must have more of in the world.

Hopefully we can come together to grow what Amitav Ghosh calls a 'a vitalist politics' in his book 'The Nutmeg's Curse'.

"The intensifying global connectivity of the last decades has had many damaging and disruptive effects, but it has also created new opportunities for addressing the planetary crisis through broad and inclusive transcontinental alliances."

"A necessary first step toward finding solutions is to find a common idiom and a shared story—a narrative of humility in which humans acknowledge their mutual dependence not just on each other, but on "all our relatives"."

"If these admittedly disparate groups can find common ground in an Earth-centered mass movement, then it is not impossible, as Taylor suggests, that they could start a "social epidemic" that would bring about "wide-scale political, economic, and ecological changes, even in the face of ambivalence and hostility"."

"...a vitalist mass movement, because it depends not on billionaires or technology, but on the proven resources of the human spirit, may actually be magical enough to change hearts and minds across the world."

Change hearts and minds across the world.

That's what we need.

And so I come back to where I started this piece.

Here's how I keep trying.

I hope.

“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”

― Noam Chomsky

P.S. I leave you with this meme. It may be a cliche, but it does simply show how you really never know how close you possibly are to a tipping point, to the possibility of massive change.