Constant Anxiety Won't Save the World
When New York Magazine published a story about the apocalyptic dangers of climate change last month, it was shared widely, and with alarm. People tweeted things like “Read this and get very, very scared,” or otherwise prescribed fear and worry as the appropriate reaction to the piece. They were mimicking the tone of the story itself, which starts by saying “It is, I promise, worse than you think,” and goes on to avow that “no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.”
This weirdly suggests that there is a level of alarmed that would be “enough.” Enough for what? Even if the goal is to alarm people into action, there’s a disconnect here: Anxiety is not a necessary prerequisite for action.
My colleague Robinson Meyer the extremely bleak outlook of the article is—but I’m concerned not with its specific take on the climate science, but with its explicit call for anxiety, and the calls for anxiety it inspired among people who shared it. While the intentions might be good, moralizing worry distracts from
