What If We Stopped Pretending?

The immigration pressure in the future will make the recent refugee crisis in Europe look like a Sunday picnic. I fear the outcome will be very ugly.

A lot of people are dismayed by the erosion of civil discourse, are impatient with the obsolete promises of politicians and activists, are eager to make sense of our desperate situation, and are looking for ways to sustain some kind of hope.

to even have a chance of hitting that figure, every country in the world would have to entirely remake its infrastructure and economy in the next ten years. Maybe Sweden can become a net carbon non-emitter by 2030. But people in France are rioting over a minor gasoline tax, people in Trump America are in love with their pickup trucks, and let’s not

Isn’t it politically counterproductive to deprive people of hope?

the Green New Dealers, the Fridays for Future people. I hold them to a higher standard of honesty, and I want them to expand their definition of being green to include what we’re doing to the other species on the planet; to talk a little less about climate and a little more about solvable problems. So far, only Extinction Rebellion has been willing

The Green New Deal, the blueprint for some of the most substantial proposals put forth on the issue, is still framed as our last chance to avert catastrophe and save the planet, by way of gargantuan renewable-energy projects. Many of the groups that support those proposals deploy the language of “stopping” climate change, or imply that there’s stil

It seemed to me that, given the bleakness of our predicament, the problem of hope was crucial—a world-sized version of the problem of maintaining hope in the face of individual mortality—and that genuine hope insists on honesty and love. On honesty because hope is an investment like any other, best made with a clear eye. And on love because, withou

I can respect the planet, and care about the people with whom I share it, without believing that it will save me.

The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it.