Hello, and welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. We've got a new recurring series for you. It's called Drilling Deep, in which we interview different book authors about their books, the research behind those books, and what they mean for dealing with the climate crisis today. In today's episode, Adam Lowenstein interviews Hannah E. Morris from the University of Toronto about her new book, Apocalyptic Authoritarianism, Climate Crisis, Media, and Power.
In it, Morris looks at the intersecting forces of nostalgia for a supposed golden age of the past, fear of sharing power with women and people of color, a parent contempt for ordinary people, and the determination to resurrect the myth of American exceptionalism, all alongside an apocalyptic conviction giddiness even that civilization and the planet are inevitably doomed. These bleak convictions unite many far politicians and their technolibertarian backers.
But has this powerful coalition found an unexpected ally in the mainstream media. Morris argues that, whether they realize it or not, some climate journalists, obsessed with preserving a self determined moderate center, are deploying some of the same tropes and reinforcing some of the same narratives as the extreme right. Hello Abundance Bros. Earlier this month, Morris spoke with Adam about who gets to choose which climate solutions are right
and which ones are wrong. What the media's divergent treatment of the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act reveals about its entrenched biases, and why a sense of fatalism and inevitability seems to pervade so much mainstream climate coverage. That conversation is coming up after this quick.
Break apocalyptic authoritarianism, and I will say upfront that I think it's because of the number of vowels in both of those words, but I have a hard time saying them, so I might be correcting myself many times.
But sorry for the mouthful of a phrase.
No, it's a great title and it works on so many levels. But I think a good place to start the conversation would be two terms that you mentioned throughout the book. One is obviously the title apocalyptic authoritarianism, and the other is apocalyptic environmentalism. And I'm wondering if you can give a definition or a description of those two terms and how they differ as a starting point here.
Yeah, yeah, it's a great place to start. And yeah, again, apocalyptic authoritarianism. I think on paper, its like this looks like a really great phrase, but when yeah, when I speak it too, I feel like I always and that kind of loses the impact it But.
And you probably had to type it so many times, and it's those are both words that I find really hard to type, especially authoritarianism.
I always check. I'm just like, did I spell authoritarianism? Right? Is there like another rm? There? Am I missing?
So yeah, it's the number one problem with the rise of authoritarianism around the world right now is how hard it is to smell.
There you go. So, despite the spelling and the difficulties with that, apocalyptic environmentalism is referring to largely environmental thinking that I merged out of the Cold War era, and so this was an arrow when there are a lot of existential anxieties. There were real fears of nuclear warfare, and also there was for the first time that Apollo seventeen photos of Earth, which were often referred to as a blue Marble photos which really showed the whole Earth
and kind of floating this vast expanse of darkness. So coupled with this fear of total annihilation with nuclear warfare, and then seeing this really vulnerable, almost looking tiny planet floating in this vast expanse of darkness. It really ignited a global environmental movement that imagined an apocalyptic scenario of a total total destruction of Earth by humans. And so apocalyptic environmentalism really plays on this or ignites these real
feelings of fear around total destruction. But key to that, though, is that there when apocalyptic environmentalism emerges since the Cold War, especially for example, in the peak oil movement. I don't know if you've heard of that before, by the peak oil movements really pops up when there's a lot of feelings of national anxiety, so a feeling of sort of
instability on a national level. For example, there was a really big spike in the peak oil movement in around the Iraq war Riors, and basically this predicts the total destruction of industrial civilization because of the predicted peak in terms of the amount of oil that is possible to extract, and then the quick destruction of industrial civilization because of reaching this peak oil moment. And a part of this is,
of course, it's apocalyptic fear of total destruction. But key to this, and what you can see from apocalyptic environmentalism as it comes and goes, is that there's this assumption that there is a saved group, and that's a part of a lot of apocalyptic narratives from religious discourse and just biblical stories of there is, you know, this big apocalypse that happens, but then there's a group that is
ultimately saved. And so for the peak oil movement, it was those who knew about peak oil and who started preparing. You know, these are the origins of preppers and proper societies and building post apocalyptic bunkers and learning how it's to survive in harsh conditions. And so those who are part of the peak oil movement imagine themselves as surviving
this total collapse of industrial civilization. And what I saw and why I introduced this term of apocalyptic authoritarianism is around twenty sixteen, so of course that's the first election of Trump in the US. There became a lot of very rightly so, lots of feelings of national anxieties at the same time as there was a lot of feelings of not feeling any stability in terms of the direction of the nation, not really knowing what's going to unfold,
not knowing how to respond. There became really notable impacts of climate change, and so there was sort of this pairing, this combination of national anxieties with climate anxieties that reached a crescendo around twenty nineteen where there was a real spike in climate coverage for the first time. This is the year that a lot of scholars and folks refer to your climate change trended, and for example, in twenty nineteen, media coverage, news media coverage was up seventy eight percent
as compared to twenty eighteen. So there was this, there was a lot of anxiety and fear and kind of
recognition of the risks of climate change. Why introduce a possibly authoritarianism is that with this feeling of just total instability, total anxiety, there became this, like I mentioned before, with a posabic environmentalism, it's imagining of a certain group as being saved and that those who are more traditional figures of power, those who claim to be able to right the ship again and return on the stable path of manifest destiny, you know, bring the nation out of this.
And this led to a lot of reactionary posturing that united the traditional figures of power on the rights and in the center, who were united around this common enemy of the so called new New Left that was blamed as further suspending the nation and the world into total crisis and position these sort of traditional figures of power that I call visionary stage figures really positioned them as
the ultimate authorities that must be followed. And so that's not a very democratic way of responding to or reckoning with the very real political and climate threats that were occurring are still incurring right now, and.
We'll definitely get to the visionary stage figure and their aversion to democracy and the political process in a bit. You put words around something that I had not really thought about in a concrete way, which is sort of this sort of smug sense of I think you describe it as enlightenment of people who have essentially accepted as inevitable the collapse of society and civilization. It's almost people, I guess people describe it as somewhat liberating of like
accepting that this is inevitable. Could you just talk about that a little bit, because I feel like that kind of worldview pervades a lot of these communities, demographics, the elites of various kinds who are often asserting themselves as the ones solving these problems.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's what is very illuminating about these movements that draw upon apocalyptic scenarios. Where, yeah, the peak oil movement, those who consider themselves peaksts, So those are
the members of the peak oil movement. They There's some studies that showed through interviews and surveys of those who identify as part of the peak oil movements who are peakists, that they before learning of this imminent supposed imminent collapse of industrial civilization, these folks felt a sense of disempowerment, They felt, you know, a lack of sense of direction, They felt very disillusion But then upon this enlightenment that
they reported, you know, they became enlightened and they learned of this what's going to happen in the future, and they learned about this peak oil and this collapse of civilization, and this provide them a sense of control, a sense of power because of feeling like they are among a minority, a small minority of people who knew what the future holds, and that they can then navigate through that through their sort of rugged individualism, this frontiersman kind of identity, and
so tapping into really longstanding American masculine identities of feeling as though there's a special trait among American men who can really grapple with harsh conditions and build a new society, build a new civilization. And it's interesting to see that there was this sense of control and empowerment that came over the members of the peak Oil movement, which are
eighty nine percent white, middle class men. So it's a certain, very particular demographic that are clearly trying to find a sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of control in their lives among periods of social change. And yeah, I feel the sort of empowerment this reported enlightenment when they think of surprisingly the collapse of civilization.
There was a period I think for me it started during the early lockdowns in twenty twenty and continuing for a couple of years after that, where I read a lot of end of the world novels, a lot of pandemic stuff, like a lot of people did during that time. And from there I got into climate fiction or cli fi pretty intensely, and I think as i've kind of kind of maxed out on that after a couple of years of reading a lot of that stuff, and it's not all really bleak like. Some of it is actually
ultimately very hopeful. But I was a little bit surprised, even though I knew these were all fictional stories, I was a little surprised how much it impacted my worldview of what I thought would play out, what was inevitable. And I'm wondering if you have dabbled in or gotten into these genres of you know, whether it's TV or movies or novels, and what you make of it.
Yeah, a little bit. Like you said, it's hard staying in that space for long, I think because I feel, like you know, it's kind of bleak to for me, I don't feel a sensit of empowerment when I think of the destruction of the world.
You're not a peakist.
I'm not a peakist, so it doesn't really reason. But I think what's interesting to see about some cli fi and just sort of the genre of post apocalyptic societies too. For example, I don't know if you've seen the series Fallout that came out recently.
No, but up until recently, I would have said I need to put that on my list sounds like like my kind of thing. But now I'm like maybe not no, but.
This one's really good. I have to say this one, OK good, I didn't say it up well. But it's you know, based on the game Fallout, which draws upon the nineteen fifties esthetic. So this was again the a lot of sort of nuclear anxieties and apocalypse areas emerge
from this Cold War era Fallout. The new TV series that came out pokes fun at some of this, and it's really smart where it's it's poking fun at this this key genre, this key element of post apocalyptic books and films, and again it imagines a kind of saved group of people that come out of the apocalypse, and a lot of it is imagining harkening back to this nineteen fifties or you know, even further back with the frontiersman idea of sort of reclaiming some control and traditional
traditional figures, traditional male figures leading the way, saving those who survived, leading to this new civilization or it's usually you know, kind of a male figure frontiersman or cowboy figure. And so follow Out does a really interesting job of not only poking fun at that in a really smart way, but also by tapping into this nineteen fifties aesthetic and
it's kind of Americana aesthetic. It also you know, pokespon kind of nostalgia that you see that it's kind of ironic where there's this this romanticizing of the end of everything, but it's really just the end of you know, there being contemporary society where women people of color are part of politics. You know, there's different people who are part of politics or bustly democratic societies. You know, there's like that's what's making some traditional figures uncomfortable and feeling like
a loss of a place in society. And so you know, this's hearkening back to nineteen fifties and this traditional you know, nuclear family, and that's a lot of elements of that that pop up in some of these dist being genres. And so I recommend Fallout because it is one of those. It shows that there's a lot of space for genre bending, and you know, there's not like every apocalyptic or cli fi film is bad necessarily, there's some really interesting, really interesting work coming out of that space.
On that nostalgia point, one of the arguments you make in the book, is that a lot of the mainstream media, including a lot of climate journalists, are quite obsessed with, or at least nostalgic for the past, the sort of golden age, as you describe it, where journalists were revered and powerful and the arbiters of what is true and what is not. Can you talk about a little bit how you would describe the state of climate journalism today.
At one point you talk about it as being defined in some ways by like a collective sense of doom, and how that contrasts with this supposedly golden age in the past that men, many of them, seem to yearn for.
Yeah. Yeah, I have to say that it's not a good time to be a journalist, as you probably didn't know.
It herself, I can confirm.
Yeah. And so it's been longstanding pressures put on journalism, economic pressures, with movements away from social media and I'm moving towards social media rather and towards digital media, and sort of a struggle to adapt to these new business models, and also to just a drop in public trust because of Trump, for example, calling the US press the enemy of the people, and there's been a lot of direct attacks on journalists and so it's completely understandable for trying
to find a way out of this, and among more traditional journalists, so journalists writing for really big publications, legacy presses like The New York Times, whose publisher A. G. Slzberger, for example, cansistently has been writing public facing pieces really buckling down on needing to protect these sort of traditional
modes of doing reporting. So instead of thinking about how to move away from hypercapitalists like business models, for example, and figuring out how to have collective, collectively owned newspapers, more support for independent newspapers, local journalism, there's among these really big, important national presses that's sort of buckling down on now we need to continue with how we've been
doing this. And same goes for reporting practices, and aj Stolzberger for example, consistently says, you know, the nation needs us, they need journalists, and this romanticization then of journalists being a sort of stabilizing force that can bring back stipidity.
And yeah, democracy dies in darkness, Washington.
Post exactly exactly so, and again journalism is extremely important and is under attack, and so but there could be and I argue in the book, this moment of really trying to grapple with how to do journalism differently and
you know, include more people come out of communities. Really, you know, instead of having this this mission or this identity of civilizing you know others and others need to listen to journalists really, you know, changing that, making it a bit more equitable in terms of the power dynamics.
And what I found really surprising and a bit unexpected when I was looking at climate reporting and I looked at journalism between Trump's first election twenty sixteen up until now his unfortunately second election in twenty twenty four, and again this was when journalism climate journalism in the US really took off for the first time. And I saw these in these news stories and also in editors and writers and publishers commenting and talking about their perception of
journalism today. There was, you know, this romanticization, this nostalgia for a post World War two period, a period when the US often in stories that we tell ourselves, the Americans that we tell ourselves, this is when the US was considered to be a global a global stabilizer, and
a global leader. And a part of that was journalists also seeing themselves as not just a national stabilizer in a way of bringing people together in the national level, but also a global level too, And so US journalists reporting, you know, back to the US and also around the world about what was happening politically and providing this force
of reason, democratizing force across the world. And you know, journalists were really US journalists were really respected during this period in a larger way, in a more fundamental way than maybe they are now. And so it kind of makes sense why there's this nostalgia for this period. But what's what I argue is concerning about this is that this was a period though, when there was not a lot of diversity in news rooms. There's not a lot
of robustly democratic processes for decision making. You know, women, people of color were not included. This was before really big civil rights movements and radical politics pro I mean pro democracy, revolutionary politics of the late nineteen sixties nineteen seventies. So this romanticization of this period in time is quite
striking and quite illuminating to me. I argue that it really closes off imagining more robustly democratic ways of responding to both struggles with journalism, national stability struggles, or trying to figure out what to do in this Trump era and how to respond and also climate change, you know, how to respond to climate change in a really robustly democratic way.
One of the themes of the book is very much who gets to decide what are the quote unquote right solutions to climate change? What are the wrong ones? What solutions should be considered, what should be dismissed out of hand? And one of the places that plays out from a media and journalistic perspective that you talk about in the book is the how the media covered the Green New Deal, or compared to how it covered the Inflation Reduction Act.
Can you talk about that a little bit as as I guess, a bit of a case study that illuminates some of these arguments of and in particular this idea of who gets to decide not just what solutions we try to implement, but which ones we even consider at all, in which you're dismissed out of hand?
Definitely. Yeah, this was a really illuminating case for me. And when I am really revealing, I think of these
wider patterns. And so the Green New Deal was proposed and developed by the really important progressive contingent during Trump's first presidency, and so the Sunrise Movement, it was a really important climate justice, youth led climate justice movement that was founded in twenty seventeen in the world of an alarming Trump election, but really built upon decades of community organizing around climate justice and visions for how to have a national level response to climate change in a way
that centered justice and democratic decision making and bottom up decision making is supposed top down decision making, so including a lot of different people in the policy making process, and this shaped a lot of how the Green New Deal was imagined. And Alexandria Kasia Cortez Progressive congresswoman of color, and this is important too because the climate justice movement is really led by young women of color in the
Sunrise Movement as well. So Alexandria Kazi Cortez was elected in twenty eighteen in the midterm elections running on the Green New Deal as a core policy commitment, and her election was quite an upset, actually, it was quite unprecedented. She ousted a longstanding Democratic Party figure, and she really showed how there was desire for a different way of imagining American politics. And in twenty eighteen, before or the Green New Deal, was really picked up by the national press.
There were national surveys and the key tenants of the Green New Deal so again including lots of people in deciding how to respond to climate change and what an energy transition would look like, including oil and gas laborers, working class oil and gas laborers who would be directly included and centered and not left out, but working class folks included in imagining how to respond, how to transition to renewable energy, and also centering historically marginalized groups a
young women, indigenous people, black and brown people. So this was actually eighty one percent of Americans reported that they supported this, They supported these key tenants of the Green
New Deal. That's a striking statistic. And then when alexandri A Kazak Cortez was elected, there became this fear mongering that occurred of this of feeling uncomfortable almost of a new direct for the US that destabilized traditional figures of power in the parpet Democratic Party too, and so a lot of news reports started positioning Alexandria Kazar Cortez as directly antagonistic, for example, to Nancy Pelosi and you know, threatening to again suspend the nation to further chaos, comparing
Alexander Kazakotez to Trump by saying, these are both extremist figures. You know, we need to get back to a moderate center. We need a restabilize the nation. We need to look at these traditional figures of power like Nancy Pelosi, and you know, we can't let these insurgents. They are called a lot a lot of reporting from you know, the New York Times, through the Wall Street Journal, these you know,
these insurgents need to be stopped. And the Green New Deal was really picked up and lumped into this, this fear mongering about a so called far left takeover of a Democratic Party led by a young women of color, and the spear mongering around that, and national polls showed how in just a few short months of this this fear mongering in a lot a lot of national news coverage and also political discourse coming from Democratic Party members, there was an extreme drop in support for the Green
New Deal. So this eighty one percent dropped substantially, and so that just shows a lot of the unfortunate success of this kind of delegitimizing of really important, robusted democratic ways of responding. And then on the flip side the Inflation Reduction Act, which was introduced by Biden when he was elected a couple of years later, and this was positioned as being this is what we need to do.
This is in contrast to the Green New Deal. The Inflation Reduction Act is developed by these older, more moderate, more reasonable men like Biden. You know, the Inflation Reduction Act is how to respond to the present moment and the chaos and crisis in a reasonable way. And this is the correct way of responding to climate change. The
Green New Deal is not. And so these different, really striking ways of position to policy positions was very revealing and again showed that there was this real uniting around a othering or fear mongering about progressive activists and progressive politicians.
One of the things I found most striking in the book was the ways that you show how those these legacy media institutions, institutions who are obsessed with the as you put at the moderate center, are or have used so many of the same tactics and the same messages and narratives as the far right. Ultimately, there's an unwillingness to challenge established power structures. They use racialized other tactics, They project and seem to hold some of the same
fears of disorder. I think you describe it at one point as elite panic disorder being kind of a long time scare tactic to preserve power structures in the way things are. Can you talk about those parallels a little bit, because I think a lot of people I don't think, I'm quite certain, given how they've covered Trump for the last decade that a lot of these legacy media institutions are think of themselves as antagonistic to Trump and MAGA in the far right, and they think of themselves in
a very superior way because they are not that. But what you show is that they're actually using a lot of the same tactics and relying on a lot of the same narratives.
Yeah, and this is what I think is really important, and especially with trying to navigate how to get out of this new Trump two dot oh as it's being referred to. Yeah, you know, again with this striking statistic of how the Green New Deal is supported by eighty one percent of people at the time, and you know, there's this desire for radical change, there's this desire for comprehensive change among most Americans, It's not actually dangerous or
un popular to be imagining politics differently. This is what people want, and by not addressing this, it fuels really authoritarian inspiring figures like Trump. And you know, if there was a leaning into instead of fear mongering about these really progressive new visions for change, then perhaps there could have been a stronger coalition to oppose Trump ahead of twenty twenty four instead of breaking these coalitions and pushing
people away. But yeah, a lot of what I you know, I'm surprised, was surprised about and found concerning was in national news coverage and commentaries as well that were, you know, trying to provide interpretation for unfolding events that are happening. Between your Trump's first election up until the second election.
There was this real fear of mass politics across the board, and there was a lack of distinguishing between different political positions, and so the moderate center, you know, those who can serve themselves be moderate and are the center, you know, really making these false equivalencies, like I mentioned before, positioning Alexander A. Kazakretes is the same as Trump, for example.
What is dangerous about this is that there was this othering that happened that isolated primarily young women of color, as the dangerous other that needed to be removed from the nation, needed to remove from politics that was happening
from the moderate center and the right. And so this led to a really dangerous, dangerous echoing on the right and the center of positioning the so called new New Left, which the New York Times referred to, you know, the young woman of color led progressive politics that Alexander kozakrets represented and you know, contingents for climate justice and Green
New Deal represented. There was this positioning of the new New Left as really anti American socialists happening in redcar Red scare, fear mongering again from the moderate center to
the far rights. But together what has led to is ultimately the calls for removal from politics of a historically marginalized and formally disenfranchised group of young women, and the further positioning and centering, you know, centering of traditionally figure traditionally privileged figures of power, you know, these white, older
men and women. And so this is something that, yeah, it's pretty dangerous that there was this this isolation, this this this this call for eliminating a whole group of people, and these progressive people really could have provided important coalition building and pathways for responding to Trump's politics, pathways for responding and including more people in decision making, and it
would have been popular. And it's just really alarming to see that there was this this coalition almost that form between the moderate center and the far right to really try to get the new new left out of.
Politics power structures successfully preserved.
Yep.
There's an interesting echo that you point out in the book between the more recent or false equivalencies between someone like AOC and someone like Trump and the decades of both sides, the fossil fuel propaganda essentially, and the way that mainstream media outlets said, on one hand, scientists say climate change is real, on the other hand, the fossil fuel industry says that climate change is natural, it's a hoax, whatever.
There is still that same false equivalency happening, and that same kind of false objectivity, which, like you said, really limits the scope of the debate and the scope of what solutions might even be considered and what's popular and what's not.
Yeah, yeah, that's I think was it really interesting to see when it was general fear of mass politics, and yeah, this these fossil equivalencies that were formed between those who were perceived as, like you said, rupturing traditional structures of power and with the both sizes and the sense of balance that happened before and not as much now, but where yeah, there was this including of a fossil fuel funded climate skeptic featured in news stories along with climate
scientists provided sense of balance through you know, professional standards of journalism. But you know, now we realize that in a lot of journalists and a lot of editors like ag Solzberger, which all go back to again, you know, and a lot because he's writing a lot about how how to think about what's happening now and how journalists and publications can respond in the Trump era, and you know, he admitted he was like this, that was a problem.
The sense of balance in that case was pushing away from the kind of reporting that need to happen and this was not a way of reporting. But then there's still this almost call towards being balanced or trying to find a moderate center as a balance as opposed to really actually covering and including different perspectives. And that's interesting, I think a bit different too than the sort of balance that was trying to be to be met with
including the fossil fuel folks with the climate scientists. But now it's sort of this journalist trying to feel like they're providing this moderate the center, this middle ground. And if there's the inclusion of too many progressives in a story, too many voices from the progressive left, then that scene
as being you know, maybe too biased. Or but if there's shifting political conditions, and if more people are supporting the progressive left or supporting something like the Green New Deal, and that something is really popular, then you need to include more voices of eighty one percent of people's it. Then it wouldn't be biased to include that eighty one percent in coverage. And by actually not including it it
led to really inaccurate reporting. It made it seem like it wasn't popular, It made it seem like people didn't want real change. And so that is something that I think really needs to be reckoned with and letting go of this imagined you know, maybe again this Cold War period figure of you know, this one this moderate kind of stable US where there's just no socialism at all, there's no mention of progressive politics. You know, that's anti American.
There needs to be letting go of that, and it's just striking that it sticks around so much.
Yeah, there's a theme I guess throughout the book of elites again, from the quote unquote moderate center, all the way to the far right to the Silicon Valley techno libertarian types. I guess a commonality among these different groups of really having contempt for ordinary people. You know that eighty one percent of people who backed a lot of the tenets of the Green New Deal. I would add in a lot of cases democratic you know, capital d democratic elites to that who do not, I would argue,
think very highly of the average ordinary person. Can you talk about that idea that I think, as you put at one point in the book, you know, the people are the problem, this worldview that so many of these elite decision makers seem to hold again from the center all the way to the right.
Yeah, there's definitely this real sense of unease at the prospect of their being again mass politics, so essentially democracy. You know, there's this real unease, and you know it's tapping into longstanding myths like you know, Hobbsy in law of the jungle chaos. If people are left for their own devices, it would lead to utter chaos. So tapping back into these acalyptic visions of there'd be this utter chaos,
this collapse. There needs to be these elite figures, these visionary stages to guide the chaotic, brutal masses out of the barbaric present into a bright future. You know, this myth just circulates across really different groups of folks who are in positions of power and material power and have a lot of wealth and you know, also symbolic power and are in these newsrooms reporting or you know, elected officials who have the platform and have this really material
and symbolic power. Yeah, there's this consistent tapping into this, this real disdain and this real feeling of needing to control people. And also it's taken to an extreme when it's people are sort of positioning you know, the masses the people or position and as also unnecessary and this is what you see or you know, unnecessary, in need
and almost welcomed. This chaos that is predicted with climate apocalypse for example, and the mass death that's imagined, it is almost welcomed by some figures, as you can see, for example, with figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, the technol libertarian extreme, where they almost morbidly celebrate the prospect of their being this apocalypse, this mass death and destruction of the masses, because then it affords them the
opportunity to have total control power. There's they have no need for there's no accountability, there's no need for that pesky thing called democracy because everyone's gone. It's just them, and they're able to now build their fifetoms, their colonies on Mars there, you know, they can do what they want.
And so it moves to a real dangerous extreme when it's taken up in that sense where you know, if there's a constant distain or assumption that the masses are just mindless, dumb, dangerous people, then it can lead to imagining and romanticizing about mass death, and that is something that is really scary. You know, it's a really terrifying way of thinking about people.
Yeah, you point out in the book how that mentality, while not maybe taken to the same Peter teel Elon Musk extreme in some of the media coverage, does show up in this sense of the as you put it, the doomed others and the saved selves, this idea that an epic climate migration, to quote one New York Times headline, is inevitable, and essentially the battle is lost, and who will be saved, who will be lost? Who are the
doomed others? Who are the saved selves? And it seems like a lot of the discussion is not how do we prevent this from happening, because that's inevitable, but instead, how do we assuage our own guilt for having let
it happen? Can you talk about that fatalism that pervades so much coverage of the climate crisis in the lines again in a way that I think a lot of the people behind it would think of it as very different from the Peter Thiel's and Elon Musk's of the world, But in fact it actually shares some of the same world views and advances some of those same ideologies.
Yeah, there is I noticed this what I call them a book, a sort of doctor Frankenstein dynamic, where in news coverage it is acknowledged that the US, for example, has contributed substantially to climate change, has caused you know, some serious problems in world affairs. You know, there's news reports in terms of quotes that are featured framings, and also opinion commentaries too that do admit this, you know, the US kind of create a monster. They created a monster,
like doctor Frankenstein created a monster. But then though jumping off of that and saying, but now the US is the only one that can solve it. So doctor Frankenstein's is the only one that can capture and contain the monster.
And this then further asserts the need for these elite visionary stage figures to be the ones and also claims that they're the only ones capable of solving quote unquote solving climate change, like as an equation one plus one equals two, you know, solving climate change we just solved by an enlightened few, again and also positioning the US as the main player that is needed to design a
way out that needs to be followed by everyone. And so again this assumes, like you mentioned, that there's the save the inevitable saved, and the US largely imagines itself and within the US, figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and really elite figures within the US imagine themselves as of course inevitably the ones that are going to be saved, not to mention plan to escape to Mars or apocalypse bunkers, you know, so really imagining themselves as
being the ones who, of course will be saved, and then positioning them as the ones that then are in control and in power of who to bring up into the so called life world with them, who to save, because they imagine sort of everyone else as being at risk of dying or inevitably will be doomed and damned, and they're in the positions to choose who to bring
up and who to save. And a lot of times in the reporting that I saw, there was this assumption that those who will inevitably be doomed and dead are poor people, poor people of color, primarily poor people of
color living in the Global South. And so there were a lot of images, for example, that we're showing just this again, mass destruction death after climate induce storms in the global South, creating this really apocalyptic death world image, entrenching this idea that the global South is already lost, They're gone, and so it's the US and the global North are the ones empowered to be able to choose who to bring up and save or who not to that's not a way of representing reality that's going to
lead to bringing lots of people together from a lot of different places to figure out how to respond to climate change in a really democratic way. I mean, if it's already assumed that a whole groups of people are going to be dead and gone, then that's not leading to their inclusion in international negotiations in a really meaningful way. For example, it's not leading to thinking about how to
integrate and include lots of people into different societies. And you know, it's making it seem like it's just those who need saving, and it's sort of they are being given a favor by being brought up into you know, global North country. And yeah, it leads to a lot
of anti immigrant sentiments. The New York Times, like you mentioned this sort of fear mongering about mass migrations or you know, bringing folks from these chaotic, apostoble scenarios up into the presumed saved, stable, global North life world, and it leads to a lot of really scary anti immigrant sentiments when thinking about climate change, can.
You talk about I guess what some of the consequences are for more hopeful and democratic and participatory movements like the climate justice movement, when these are the only stories that are allowed to be told.
Yeah, I think what is really important about crimate justice narratives and movements are that they disrupt this idea that there are just a small number of elite figures that know all and can save all. You know, the clmmate justice movement really disrupts that and says, hey, no, lived experiences, lots of different knowledges are important to figure out what's happening with actually, what are actually the impacts of climate change, and also what can be done about it, And so
it disrupts these elite narrative. It also shows that people can come together, and so it disrupts this narrative of the masses being chaotic and dangerous and dumb. You know. It shows that mass movements actually can provide really important ways of responding. You know, people want to work together,
they want community. These climate justice spaces and movements are really countering and poking holes in these myths that apocalyptic authoritarians are trying to tell in order to claim their authority and their power.
Yeh, As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you about some of the antidotes that you outline in the end of the book, antidotes to apocalyptic authoritarianism and this sense of fatalism in the elite panic about the inevitable collapse of the civilized world. You talk about radical hope and robustly democratic decision making processes. Can you explain what those are and why they are such powerful antidotes.
Yeah. I think radical hope is again countering the assumption that there is going to inevitably be an apocalypse. And that's important because as we've been talking about, these apocalypse narratives can be can be taken up to claim that there's again can be inevitable those who are saved and those who are not, and those who are saved can choose who to bring with them, and so it closes off these more democratic imaginings for how to respond to
present day issues. And so radical hope then is just disrupting that really bleak future, that quite morbid future, and also that future that is fundamentally really anti democratic and fundamentally quite authoritarian, and so robustly democratic decision making processes again would not be these top down, elite driven claims of absolute authority, and that they are the ones who can choose who to save and instead it really disrupts that.
And you know, robustly democratic ways of imagining how to respond would include the being comfortable with the fact that there isn't just one silver bullet solution to climate change,
isn't just one plus one equals too. There's many different ways of responding the US, you know, in this doctor Frankenstein myth or this you know positioning of a global savior and superpower, and you know, it really disrupts that as well, and it shows that, you know, there shouldn't just be one superpower that decides how to respond and how every other country should respond. There really should be a lot of different ways, a lot of different ways
of imagining what can be done. And this centering of radical hope and robustly democratic decision making points towards these alternate pathways and being comfortable with not knowing, to being comfortable with not having control, and being open to different ways of living, different ways of building societies.
How would you see that manifesting in a reimagined climate journalism.
Yes, so, first of all, there needs to be a rupturing of the spear of the masses that I think is really a part of a lot of the sort of fundamental groundwork of reporting and journalists also, you know, a lot of ways, your traditional journalists in a lot of ways again imagining themselves as sort of civilizing or providing stability, providing this information that needs to be read and consumed by the masses in order to have a
stable civilized society. I think that needs to be the identity needs to be changed and instead thinking about members of different groups, you know, readers as more than just readers,
but as participants as part of the newsmaking process. You know, that is a first step I think for thinking about reimagining journalism differently, this movement away from imagining people as just masses or faceless or consumers or readers, but multi dimensional, dynamic subjects who are different and smart and capable and want change and are willing to put the work in
to do that. And I think too a part of that then is disrupting these binaries too, the simplification, these simple narratives that position anyone who is advocating for change
as extremists. So there's the extremists versus the moderates that I think needs to be let go of and being comfortable again with not having control, not knowing necessarily the direction that the future holds, and being okay with the possibility for their being actually robust democracy, And that is a really kind of the only way to respond to climate change too, in a really fundamental way, is having a robustly democratic political economic system and not having these
glets of power that have led to climate change to begin with.
One of the things I was thinking about while I was reading the book was if the old way of doing climate journalism worked, then it would have been working by now. It's clearly not, so we might as well try something else.
Yeah, you know, we wouldn't hurt to try something else, all right?
What are you reading or watching or listening to to to find this more more radically hopeful vision of the future, or alternatively, just to perhaps escape the kind of bleak reality from time to time?
Yeah? I know, I mentioned the series Fallout, but also just in general. You know, I find it really amazing that, you know, I am a big fan of media like I am. Really That's why I felt really motivated to write this book, because media and journalism is just so important and so and can bring people together and can show different possibilities for different futures. It can really bring, you know, perspectives on people's lives that wouldn't have been
maybe easily seen otherwise. And I find hope from you know, the journalism you're doing, the journalem Amy Westerville, you know, is doing and drilled media, and I find inspiration from that, and that there are these different models that already are being done for journalism and different types of media production that are already happening and already doing the really complicated work of not assuming, not assuming how the world works, and being open to social change and seeing and reporting
on and seeing what that looks like. So I think that, you know, looking at the independent journalism that is happening gives me a lot of hope. And my book really focused a lot on these sort of traditional journalism, these big publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and my frustration with the fact that these are extremely powerful institutions that can change and that should change, and
they just aren't. And so you know, maybe there's space then for just moving away from reading those publications as often, you know, opening up and democratizing different different media, and maybe that's not such a scary thing.
Handah, thanks so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed it, and I think the book is so important and I hope people will We'll check it out.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and yeah, I really enjoy the conversation too. This time of year, everyone talks about going dry, but at Athletic Brewing Company, we're skipping that because we prefer going athletic, which isn't dry at all. From crisp goldens to hoppy IPAs and limited releases in between, you'll find something that fits your style. Every single non alcoholic brew is packed with flavor and
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