Dear Doomer: Hope is a Discipline
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Lately…
It feels like every time I check the news, there’s another hindrance to the fight for climate justice. Policy rollbacks, hard won protections quietly being dismantled, fossil fuel executives sliding into key government positions, clean energy projects stalled—sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if we’re moving backward when we so desperately need to move forward.
And it’s easy to believe these problems are too big to fix—which is exactly how doomerism takes hold. Doomerism, or the belief that we’re past the point of no return, has gained traction in recent years as people grapple with the scale of the climate crisis. But as environmental researcher and data scientist Dr. Hannah Ritchie reminds us, it’s not the full picture.
In her Big Think video, Ritchie reflects on how she, too, once felt a sense of hopelessness. But after stepping back and examining the data, she realized something powerful: humanity has tackled and solved massive environmental challenges.
Take the ozone layer, for instance—once on the brink of collapse due to harmful CFCs, it was saved through global cooperation under the Montreal Protocol. Acid rain in the 1970s and 80s? Tackled by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions through policies like the Clean Air Act, which allowed ecosystems to recover. Even leaded gasoline, once a major pollutant, got phased out—globally—improving air quality and reduced health risks, especially for children. The throughline to these stories is clear: when people refuse to look away from a crisis—and instead organize, cooperate, and demand action—real change becomes possible.
These achievements are part of a long history of humanity adapting to and solving existential environmental challenge. One of the most profound examples lies in our energy transitions. Across centuries, humanity has responded to environmental, economic, and societal pressures by reimagining how we power ourselves. These transitions weren’t smooth, fast, or universally embraced—but they happened. And they hold lessons for us today.
For much of human history, wood was our primary energy source. It was accessible, familiar, and deeply tied to daily life. But as populations grew and forests became depleted, societies were forced to innovate. By the 18th century, coal emerged, not because it was preferred, but because it became necessary.
Coal’s rise wasn’t instant. The transition began in the early 1700s, but coal didn’t surpass wood as the dominant fuel until around 1900. Over those two centuries it reshaped economies and infrastructure, powering the Industrial Revolution amid fierce debates about labor, pollution, and the proper role of government in managing public resources.
Those debates weren’t abstract. In 1902, over 140,000 coal miners walked off the job, demanding safer conditions and fair pay, bringing the nation’s energy supply to the brink during winter. The strike became a turning point—forcing the federal government to intervene not to break the workers, but to broker a resolution, signaling a shift in how power, labor, and public need would be negotiated in the energy system.
Then, in the 20th century, oil and natural gas began to overtake coal. This shift unfolded against a backdrop of global political change: wars, globalization, the rise of consumerism, and Cold War energy politics. Though oil was commercially produced in the 1800s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that it officially surpassed coal as the world’s primary energy source, a transition that took nearly a century.
None of these shifts were purely technical. Over time, they became shaped by waves of public pressure, like miners demanding safer conditions, communities pushing back against pollution, and reformers calling for government oversight of powerful industries. Energy systems didn’t change simply because new fuels appeared. They change because people kept demanding something better than what existed.
Today, we stand in the midst of another energy revolution: the global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy. And this time, the stakes are even higher.
Because unlike past transitions, this one isn’t just about resource depletion, human health impacts, and economic advantage: it’s about survival. The science is unequivocal: burning fossil fuels is destabilizing our climate, intensifying wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and floods. Communities on the frontlines–especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities—are bearing the brunt of these impacts, from respiratory illness to displacement to energy insecurity.
We need this transition not only because renewable energy options like wind and solar are affordable and abundant, but because the continued use of fossil fuels is incompatible with a livable future. And we’re already seeing momentum. In many ways, we’re only a few decades into this transition—but already, wind and solar have become some of the cheapest sources of electricity in the world. Electric vehicles are gaining market share rapidly across many countries. Investment is shifting and momentum is building.
Like the transitions before it, this one is messy. It’s marked by inequity in who continues to bear the burdens of older energy systems, corporate pushback, policy rollbacks, and deep uncertainty. Change always brings anxiety—that’s human. But what we often forget is how that anxiety can be shaped, amplified, even manipulated by those with a stake in keeping things the same. The question isn’t whether change feels unsettling. It’s who gets to define what that change means—and who it’s for.
In moments like this, despair can feel like a natural response. But it’s also a useful one for those invested in maintaining the status quo. When people believe change is impossible, they’re less likely to demand it.
Because this transition, like those before it, is being driven by necessity and by communities refusing to be left behind.
Energy revolutions don’t happen in a moment, they are rarely linear, never perfect, and always political. But they are possible. And they stretch across generations. And if history tells us anything, it’s that change happens not just through innovation, but through insistence—through people fighting for systems that better reflects the values and needs.
The shifts weren’t clean arcs; they were uneven, messy, full of protest and debate and, ultimately, progress. This one will be no different. But it can be faster, fairer, and more just—if we demand it.
Again and again, it wasn’t just new technologies that led the way—it was people demanding something better.
Take the fight against acid rain. In the 1970s and ’80s, forests, lakes, and wildlife were being decimated by sulfur dioxide emissions. Grassroots groups—especially in the Northeast—raised the alarm, documented the damage, and pressured lawmakers to act. Their advocacy transformed a scientific concern into a national priority. The result? The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which created the first-ever cap-and-trade system to cut emissions. Thanks to those efforts, ecosystems that once seemed lost have rebounded.
Or consider Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. When officials tried to dump toxic PCB-contaminated soil in a predominantly Black, rural community, residents said no. They laid in the streets, staged nonviolent protests, and sparked a national reckoning. While the landfill went through, their resistance ignited the modern environmental justice movement and revealed—through research and lived experience—how environmental harm is too often racially and economically targeted.
That fight echoed forward. In the 1990s, farmworkers and advocates successfully pushed to ban pesticides poisoning agricultural workers. In Flint, Michigan, residents forced a national spotlight on a water crisis that exposed deep governmental negligence and systemic racism.
Each of these moments reinforces a deeper truth: meaningful change is rarely top-down. It starts with people—especially those most impacted—organizing, resisting, and refusing to settle for systems that harm them.
Today’s energy transition is no different.
Each of these victories wasn’t just about government action—it was about people demanding better. These changes didn’t happen because industries or policymakers suddenly saw the light. They happened because communities organized, fought back, and refused to accept toxic air, poisoned water, or a deteriorating planet as inevitable.
In my work at the Union of Concerned Scientists, through partnerships with community-based groups like Souldarity in Michigan and GreenRoots in Massachusetts, we’ve worked alongside communities actively shaping the transition in real-time—pushing for policies that don’t just shift where energy comes from but also who benefits, who holds power, and who gets to decide what a sustainable future looks like. In our Let Communities Choose project, for example, we worked together to analyze what a just transition means in real economic terms—navigating tough questions around affordability, ownership, and long-term stability.
Together, these elements can help us envision not just surviving climate change, but actively building a future that works for all of us.
Progress doesn’t trickle down. It grows from the grassroots up.
What if in this moment—fueled by crisis, but also by care—is our chance to build something better? A future where clean energy is not only abundant, but accessible, but within reach. Where climate policy doesn’t just lower emissions, but redistributes power. Where frontline communities–often Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income—are not afterthoughts, but architects.
As Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist, policy expert, and writer, highlights in her work What If We Get It Right?, the transition to a sustainable world needs to be rooted in justice, equity, and collective progress. It asks more of us than reducing emissions—it asks us to reimagine how society functions, and who it works for.
Wherever you are reading this, there is an opportunity to help shape that future—one grounded not just in cleaner energy, but in fairer systems. A future where communities long burdened by pollution and disinvestment are not just included, but leading—bringing the vision, experience, and knowledge needed to build energy systems that are resilient, accountable, and rooted in care.
However, achieving this vision requires addressing not only environmental injustices but also the economic realities of a just transition for workers in fossil fuel industries. History shows that when transitions leave workers behind, they create long-lasting social and economic scars.
And we’re seeing this tension play out in real time. While political narratives promise a revival of industries like coal, the same communities are often facing cuts to health protections and losing critical investments meant to support their transition. What’s being offered is not a pathway forward, but the illusion of one—while the hard, necessary work of building new economic opportunities is abandoned.
Any economic transition is difficult. It takes real investment, long-term commitment, and trust. That’s why investing in retraining, creating good jobs, and protecting workers’ rights must be central—not optional—to these transitions. By doing so, we can ensure this transition uplifts all communities. Lessons from past energy transitions remind us that while change brings opportunity, it demands careful planning and inclusive leadership to ensure no one is left behind.
Progress doesn’t happen in silos: it’s a collective effort, supported by data, guided by community voices, and focused on equity.
The fires are growing. But so is the movement. That’s the paradox—we are living through destruction, yes, but also through determination. But this is not a story where hardship was necessary for growth. It didn’t have to be this way. The scale of loss we’re witnessing is the result of choices—made, delayed, avoided.
The solutions aren’t future tense. They’re already being built, block by block, policy by policy, neighborhood by neighborhood. You just have to look closely. It’s your community that still shows up. That gives you reason to continue showing up, and that will show up when you’re tired.
Which is why now, more than ever, we need storytellers and systems thinkers, data scientists and dancers, builders and believers—people who refuse to accept that change is impossible.
And that’s what doomerism misses. It flattens the fight into a foregone conclusion when, in reality, the future is still being shaped by those refusing to accept the status quo. History is being made, every single day. The communities most impacted by environmental harm aren’t waiting for permission to act; they are leading, as they always have, whether or not the world is watching.
Doomerism tells us the arc of history is fixed. But history tells us otherwise. Every community-led solar project, every climate justice bill, every story shared, and every system challenged says otherwise.
Change doesn’t always announce itself with grand speeches or breaking news alerts. It happens in the quiet power of a courtroom victory against polluters. In neighborhoods where solar panels rise on rooftops. In workers fighting for—and winning—better wages and a just transition. Policymakers are forced to listen because the voices demanding justice are too loud to ignore.
This revolution is rarely televised. But it’s happening. And has been occurring behind the scenes, moving us all forward.
Doomerism tells us there’s nothing left to fight for. But that kind of resignation has never been neutral. It creates the conditions for inaction—for systems to continue unchanged, unchallenged, and unaccountable.
The solutions to climate change are within our reach. The question is, will we allow the illusion of inevitable doom to prevail—or will we seize those solutions and build something better, together?