Fear is a powerful motivating force. The fear of Covid-19 made us change our entire society very rapidly from one that seemed perfectly designed to spread the virus to one that is perfectly designed to contain it. 

It makes sense that fear would be a strong enough motivator to do the kind of society wide changes that are necessary to stop a climate disaster. The data tells a simple story: that if we don’t change our behaviour soon there will be huge impacts and massive suffering caused by climate change. Amping up the fear of this makes sense as a strategy to encourage the changes that are needed to prevent a climate catastrophe.

This seems self-evident, but decades of raising awareness in the hope that fear of a climate disaster would lead to a more environmentally friendly society have not worked. The story being told by the environmental movement has been consistent, but temperatures and CO2 levels keep rising.

Avoiding an oncoming train

A report from Futerra entitled Sell the Sizzle outlines the problems with a story that uses fear as a motivator for environmental action. The fear of danger is only a good motivator if the way to avoid danger is clear. The fear of an oncoming train works well as a motivator to avoid being hit by a train as the solution is simple: get off the train track.

A more recent example is Covid-19. Fear of coronavirus (and what it can do to society if it spreads unchecked) created social change because it's clear what you need to do to stop the spread of the virus: stay home. It’s that simple.

Sell the Sizzle says that when the solution to the frightening thing is not clear, the fear response produces a sense of resignation rather than action. Narratives about how we’re all doomed unless we change our lifestyles don’t work if it's not clear what we need to do.

Climate stories and white nationalism

The narrative of doom and gloom used by the environmental movement is creating more problems than just failing to motivate the change to society we need. It’s also feeding into the rise of far-right politics and white nationalism.

In an article for Gizmodo, Brian Kahn outlines the ways in which white nationalists have been using climate rhetoric. He describes Patrick Crusius, a white nationalist who killed 23 people in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and a manifesto he posted on 8chan that contains “ideas central to the mainstream environmental movement.”

Crusius wrote: “[O]ur lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources.”

The rise of ecofascism

Kahn explains how rhetoric like that used by Crusius is part of a new trend in far-right politics towards “ecofascism,” a right wing ideology that links white nationalism with a twisted form of environmentalism. What ecofascism and the mainstream environmental movement have in common is they both tell a story of a society that is sick, dying and ultimately doomed. Both say: through our decadence we are destroying the world and we need to turn the clock back to a simpler, better time to avert a disaster.

The idea that stories about a looming environmental disaster should fuel the far-right makes sense when you think about how people react when they’re afraid. Fear of something bad happening can be a good motivator, to make someone stop smoking or go to the gym more, but fear also brings out the worst in us. It makes us act suddenly, or do things that if we were calmer we wouldn’t do.

Fear leads to other negative emotions such as anger and hatred. Anger at whoever caused us to be afraid. Hatred of the people who have awakened these fears. This is especially true when our fear relates to things like our homes, our children or our futures. Things we feel strongly about. Things that stories about environmental doom and gloom play off.

If everyone is afraid of environmental devastation in our future then they’re likely to want someone to blame, someone to be angry at or someone to hate. For a lot of people that is the corporations who have poisoned the planet or the politicians who have failed to constrain them. However, for some people their fear about the future is causing them to hate the people they already fear and hate: immigrants, poor people and people of colour. This is the fuel that sustains ecofascism.

“Overindulging in apocalyptic thinking”

In the Gizmodo article above, Kahn interviews Betsy Hartmann, a professor emeritus at Hampshire College, who studies the connections between white nationalism and environmentalism. Hartmann said: “There is a deeply problematic, apocalyptic discourse about climate and conflict refugees that is quite common in liberal policy circles and even documentaries.”

She also said: “The environmental movement in the U.S. has, I would say, overindulged in apocalyptic thinking for a long time. There’s that kind of apocalyptic bridge and then the nature-race-purity bridge. What’s so horrifying and shocking to me is that these [far-right] manifestos are openly Malthusian environmentalist arguments. I don’t think we saw that quite as much before in the armed white nationalist movement.”

18th century economists and 21st century problems

Mentioning Thomas Robert Malthus is interesting. Malthus was a cleric and economist who had “ideas” about the problems of a growing population. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus set out his thesis that people, mainly poor people, would breed and breed and there would not be enough food. 

Malthus predicted mass starvation in the near future and said that charity, or state aid, to help the poor would only make things worse as any attempt to alleviate the suffering of the poor would lead to more poor people and thus not enough food. The solution, according to Malthus, was to stop people breeding so much.

A lot of problematic environmental stories that are fueling ecofascism are descended from Malthus’s ideas. When we tell stories about how there aren’t enough resources on planet Earth to sustain the human race at the rate at which we consume, we risk drifting into telling Malthusian stories about how the problem is that there are too many people. This leads people to suggest 18th century economic solutions to 21st century problems, i.e. there should be less people. It’s easy to see how this fuels ecofascism.

A question of distribution

The problem with Malthus’s work is that it’s too mathematical. He only considered that there were too many people and not enough food. He didn’t look at the social or political reasons why there wasn’t enough food. He didn’t consider distribution or power structures that keep people hungry. 

Eleanor Penny said it best in a recent essay on Malthus when she said: “His problem is more fundamental: he framed human suffering as purely a scientific and mathematical question - recasting the effects of a brutal economic system as the dispassionate mechanics of nature. He rewrote a political problem of production and distribution as a biological problem of reproduction and consumption - distracting from its causes, exculpating its architects from any responsibility, and blinding us to possible solutions.”

Modern Malthusian environmental stories

The environmental stories we tell risk drifting into these overly simplistic Malthusian narratives that can fuel ecofascism. Stories that paint a picture of a world where poor people of colour have been driven from their homes by a climate disaster and have to move to richer, whiter nations are Malthusian.

These stories make us - those of us in wealthy countries - worry about how our nation will accommodate climate refugees. They make us worry that there won’t be enough to go around in the climate-addled future. They make us frightened of poor people, people of colour and migrants. They fuel ecofascism.

We tell these stories with good intentions, to motivate people to change the world for the better, but stories about climate refugees are only fueling the fear of migrants that spread white nationalism and fascism. If the story is that the problem with the environment is that there are too many people, then we all know what a fascist solution for the problem of too many people is.

Hartmann said when interviewed by Kahn: “Using this highly militarized and stereotyped Malthusian discourse about poor people of color is dangerous and counterproductive.” She added that: “I would say the internet and right-wing media certainly plays a role in spreading them. But we can’t ignore how Malthusian ideas about overpopulation and the environment are taught in high schools all over the United States.”

From Malthus to Michael Moor

The lesson to learn is that we need to tell stories about the environment that are more complicated. Stories that take into account social and political issues and not just the fact that we are consuming too much or that there are too many people.

There is a serious risk of the stories we tell about the environment - with the best of intentions of improving the world for everyone - spread a message that white nationalists and ecofascists can use to spread their ideas. Penny said: “Everywhere we read lazy affirmations that we are the problem; humanity and its fatal tendency to multiply is plundering the earth of its natural wealth.” Even Michael Moore is at it in his new documentary Planet of the Humans, which lays the blame for the worsening environment on there being too many people.

Somewhere to jump to

As the Sell the Sizzle report found, promoting fear without a plan a clear plan for what we’re changing into to avoid disaster doesn’t work. We can’t jump out of the way of the train without somewhere to jump to. If we are going to use fear of an environmental disaster in the stories we tell to motivate change then we need to identify where we’re jumping to. If it’s not clear, people will blame the wrong people or people in general for the looming environmental disaster, or reach for the usual scapegoats.

We need somewhere to jump to. We need to talk up the positive aspects of the new society that we are going to build that will be fairer, greener, healthier and happier.

Jumping towards a solarpunk future

Recent examples of stories about positive vision of a future can be found in solarpunk: an art, literary and design movement that is centered showing what a greener, fair future might be like. Its rebellion against the dystopian futures of cyberpunk, a genre very much concerned with frightening narratives about environmental devastation. Solarpunk gives us something to aspire to whilst showing us what a better future would be like.

There are many problems with fearful environmental narratives. They don’t motivate us to change society for the better, they promote at best nihilism about the future and at worst ecofascism. We need better environmental stories.

The solution to too much pessimism is some optimism. We don’t need stories with a naive optimism that things will just get better. We need stories that say that if we all pull together, a better world for everyone can be achieved.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0