Pessimism Is Sometimes an Enlightened Outlook

But climate change poses a larger problem. Prof Pinker is eager to disparage the “tragic” view of modernity — that a carbon-powered industrial society could destroy itself. He concedes we cannot be complacent about global warming and agrees “humanity has never faced a problem like it”. The answer, he says, is to ditch “eco-pessimism” and embrace a more enlightened “ecomodernism”, because environmental problems are ultimately “solvable, given the right knowledge”.