Old thinking will break your brain

Alex Steffen is one of my favourite writers for making sense of the climate crisis. In this powerful essay, he addresses a fundamental issue we humans face with the climate crisis: «We’re trying to understand an unprecedented future with the worldviews of an older age, formed on a different planet.» It reminded me of one of my favourite quotes, by Paul Graham: «When experts are wrong, it’s often because they’re experts on an earlier version of the world.» With the climate crisis, it’s not just about the experts, but all of us. One particularly trenchant phase that will stick with me: «persistent nostalgia for the future we thought we had». The climate crisis, among many other things, is a narrative challenge.