During a record-breaking May heatwave, the acclaimed author announced that the true crisis facing humanity is the public's failure to maintain a positive outlook while the biosphere collapses. Climate scientists have yet to model the cooling effects of mandatory optimism.
Speaking at the Hay festival on Monday as the United Kingdom shattered its historical May heat records, novelist Ian McEwan formally designated a bad attitude as a more severe threat to the biosphere than anthropogenic climate change. The author confirmed to sweating attendees that widespread pessimism regarding the future of the planet is currently outstripping the oil and gas sector in overall damage to human civilization.
McEwan, who noted he frequently encounters readers who do not expect their children to inherit a habitable world, outlined a framework in which "optimism" must be immediately mandated as a "moral duty." While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its AR6 synthesis report focused heavily on the rapid phase-out of unabated fossil fuels, McEwan suggested that mitigating the public's sour mood offers a far more immediate pathway to global stability.
We have spent decades tracking methane plumes and begging for grid upgrades, completely missing the fact that the real existential threat was people bumming successful novelists out at literary festivals.
Representatives for ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco were reportedly quick to embrace McEwan’s findings. Industry lobbyists noted that shifting the burden of ecological salvation from corporate emissions reductions to the internal emotional states of the working class aligns perfectly with their revised 2050 net-zero targets. Several major ESG funds have already begun exploring methodologies with the Gold Standard registry to issue carbon credits based on verified instances of positive thinking.
The World Meteorological Organization has not yet updated its global temperature datasets to reflect the radiative forcing potential of widespread despair. However, as the summer fire season accelerates across the northern hemisphere, international negotiators are broadly expected to add mandatory cheerfulness to the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) required at the upcoming COP29 summit in Baku.