In 2008, I wrote a book called Climate Wars, about the science and the geopolitics of climate change, and for a couple of years afterward, I had a sort of intermittent double vision. In my mind’s eye, I would suddenly see the three-degree-hotter world overlaid on the world that existed at that time. Such afflictions, however, can usually be cured by a judicious combination of outdoor exercise and good wine. But when I immersed myself in that world again more than a decade later, I did notice that some of the scientists I’d met the first time around now seemed a bit more—what’s the word?—distracted. Not actual waking visions, you understand. Just moments lost in thought.
As the climate crisis deepens and the negative impacts multiply, public opinion and politics are finally responding, but there is no guarantee that our actions will be big and fast enough to avoid an outcome that is catastrophic for human beings and quite disruptive, at least, for the entire biosphere. We are not even sure yet how big and how fast those actions need to be, because the discipline of climate science is only about forty years old. But the answer is almost certainly: very big and very fast.
