What If We Stopped Pretending?

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

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

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

Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar lifestyles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it. They can’t dismiss news they dislike as fake. The

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

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

In a sense, I’d asked for it, by implying that the establishment is committed, in its own way, to denial of climate reality.

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.

This emphasis had made sense in the 1990s, when there seemed to be a good chance that the world would take collective action to curtail carbon emissions. By 2015, however, it was clear to me that collective action had failed and would continue to fail. Meanwhile, what remained of the natural world was in worse trouble than ever, as every nation pur