50. FAILURE
Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.
- Coco Chanel
We used to talk a lot in the Army about no-fail missions, as if there was somehow a separate category of missions that were okay to mess up. Unfortunately, what this sentiment often really communicated was that it was better to avoid risk, because risk meant the possibility of failure.
In a similar way, there’s a tendency when it comes to climate change to feel hopeless and helpless in the face of what at times can seem unstoppable and irrevocable impacts1.
“Why should we care about green energy when China builds a new coal plant every day?” people will ask, and while China did approve the construction of 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2022 - or about the equivalent of 100 coal plants - they’re also the world leader in production of renewable energy2. Regardless, for some, that hopelessness can progress to resignation and even inaction, often by those who understand the risks perhaps all too well. Because really, why bother trying if we’ve already failed?
In the end, the easiest way to avoid failing is to not try in the first place.
But what kind of a life is that?
Susan Clayton, Christie Manning, and Caroline Hodge, Beyond storms & droughts: The psychological impacts of climate change. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica: June 2014, https://ecoamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/eA_Beyond_Storms_and_Droughts_Psych_Impacts_of_Climate_Change.pdf, accessed 5 Jun 2023.
David Stanway and Muyu Xu, “Analysis: China's new coal plants set to become a costly second fiddle to renewables,” Reuters.com, March 22, 2023, accessed May 20, 2023.
“The obstacle is the way”,.......