Thursday, Oct 2

Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better.

Dear Reader,

There’s a lot of confusion around what we can expect as our planet continues to warm. While scientists are almost unanimous in their assessment that warming will continue to bring more droughts, more severe storms, sea level rise, and species loss, there isn’t consensus around what, exactly, is going to play out. How likely is the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), responsible for keeping much of Europe and the Scandinavian countries temperate? Climate scientists are currently revising their assessments. 

But lots of us non-science-y folks exist somewhere between an I’m-sure-everything-will-be-fine confidence in humans’ ability to manage this crisis and a fear that the day will come when we just fall off the proverbial cliff. And because a lot of us are confused and, frankly, a teensy bit terrified, we tend to avoid talking about it. But what if the end of our world isn’t the end of our world, as Anya Kamenetz puts it, reviewing Lizzie Wade’s new book Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures (available on Amazon). 

Lizzie Wade is an archaeologist who studies civilizations that have collapsed. According to Kamenetz, Wade determined that “what the historical record reveals over and over again is that people respond in diverse, resilient, and creative ways to the ending of their normal modes of life. And they do so communally, never alone.” Which is not to say that there won’t be suffering and loss. We’re experiencing that already. But it is to say that, when hierarchies crumble, they often take some awful things — like inequality and oppression — with them. Or as Wade puts it, we get to choose the path that comes next. 

Dot hopes this perspective helps you combat despair and get to work with others. After all, every tenth of a degree of warming we can prevent matters. A lot. 

Determinedly,

Dot

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Once a week, shop your fridge and make a meal from leftovers.

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