Sometimes, if a problem feels too complex or insurmountable, it’s easy to just give up. Dagomar Degroot, an associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University, warns against falling victim to this “doomism” when it comes to climate change. In this essay, Degroot contends that the news media often presents a false binary in how it covers the climate crisis: either we are powerless to stop the collapse of ecosystems, or the crisis is overblown. Degroot argues there’s a third way beyond doomism or dismissal: decisive, deliberate action to reduce carbon emissions, a key factor driving the warming of the planet.
