Scientists blast Jonathan Franzen's 'climate doomist' opinion column as 'the worst piece on climate change'

• Scientists and climate experts are furious after a New Yorker opinion column declared the fight against climate change useless.
• In an essay titled "What If We Stopped Pretending" published Sunday, the journalist and author Jonathan Franzen wrote that the destruction of the planet by human-induced climate change is inevitable and that environmentalists and climate change activists are delusional for trying to stop it.
• Alex Steffen, an author focused on climate issues, tweeted that he "would vote for this as the worst piece on climate change yet published this decade—flawed in both concept and execution, morally cowardly, and lavishly self-indulgent."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Scientists and climate experts are furious after a New Yorker opinion column declared the fight against climate change useless.

In an essay titled "What If We Stopped Pretending" published Sunday, the journalist and author Jonathan Franzen wrote that the destruction of the planet by human-induced climate change is inevitable and that environmentalists and climate change activists are delusional for trying to stop it.

"It's hard to imagine major outlets publishing essays declaring efforts to reduce poverty hopeless. Or telling cancer patients to just give up," John Upton, an editor at Climate Central, wrote on Twitter. "Yet this Climate Doomist trope flourishes — penned, best I can tell, exclusively by older, comfy white men."

The scientific consensus is that reducing emissions can still slow climate change. An October report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial average temperatures could reduce the frequency of the most dangerous climate events, such as severe drought and extreme heat.

Franzen disagreed with the notion.

"If you're younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought," Franzen wrote in The New Yorker. "If you're under thirty, you're all but guaranteed to witness it."

Among those who criticized Franzen were Leah Stokes, an assistant professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara; Gernot Wagner, a New York University professor and climate economist; Jonathan Foley, a Project Drawdown director and environmental scientist; and the author Alex Steffen.

Both Franzen and The New Yorker did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: We’re altering the climate so severely that we’ll soon face apocalyptic consequences. Here are 11 last-ditch ways we could hack the planet to reverse that trend.

DON'T MISS: We asked insurance workers where they'd live in the US to avoid future natural disasters — here's what they said

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 3 athletic trainers debunk 17 exercise myths that do more harm than good