I have often talked about a ‘tyranny of positivity’ within contemporary environmentalism, whereby we are told that optimism is a moral and practical imperative. That typically comes with the ‘fake green fairytale’ of planetary salvation through electrification. That has been attractive to many environmental professionals (my past self included) as it offers possibility of feeling earnest and earning an income, despite it being a biophysical nonsense. When senior environmental leaders demonise more realistic assessments and associated despair, their ‘moodsplaining’ is promoting deference to power. Instead, for many people, feelings of despair have aided our radicalisation. That’s why an acceptance that modern societies are breaking down due to ecological degradation, amongst other factors, has been transforming people’s lives so we become more socially engaged, not less: becoming ‘doomsters’, as I term us in Breaking Together. More recently, I have wondered if there is a second tyranny in contemporary environmentalism, at least in the Western countries I have most experience of. It is a tyranny of piety.
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