Andreas Weith via Wikimedia Commons
A polar bear jumps from one ice floe to another.
On her latest album, I’ll Meet You Here, folk singer Dar Williams has a song about climate change. It’s addressed in part to a polar bear standing on melting ice, but its main point is to encourage commitment and generate hope. The song is called “Today and Every Day.” Here’s a taste, from the final chorus:
Well, I know we’re gonna find a way
I know we’re gonna light the way
And I know we’re gonna make it, but we gotta say
We can save the world today and every day
A terrible truth of our present predicament is that saving the world as we know it is no sure thing. The time for comprehensive action to combat global warming was, well, a long time ago. Yet the need to respond remains urgent, as catastrophic impacts are already being felt, with the worst yet to come.
The stories in this issue about the things people are doing to respond to climate change are not feel-good stories. Some describe acts of desperation. As Alexandra Tempus, my former colleague at The Progressive, writes in “Finding Higher Ground,” some communities are packing up and moving because the places where they live are becoming uninhabitable. We’re going to see a lot more of this. An estimated 143 million people will be uprooted due to climate impacts over the next thirty years.
In “Can the Ocean Save the Planet?” David Helvarg notes that nations seeking to use the ocean to gobble up carbon dioxide are “admitting failure”—because it means the climate goals set by international agreements are “unattainable unless carbon dioxide is also taken out of the atmosphere.”
The great writer Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2021 book, Under a White Sky, focuses on the various ways people are trying to use science to fix the messes that science created. These include engineering species to adapt to environmental impacts and spewing gunk into the air to block the sun’s deadly rays, a process that would turn the color of the sky—all over the world—from blue to white, hence the book’s title.
What could be more horrifying? We might yet find out.
We stand at the frayed edge of history, with disaster knocking at the door and a sizable share of the populace clapping their hands over their ears. We no longer agree on things that are demonstrably true. Like that vaccinations are safe and effective, that Donald Trump lost the last election, or that climate change is real and already upon us.
So millions of people rage at vaccine mandates, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to kill. Republican politicians and conservative media outlets concoct lies about election fraud, undermining confidence in elections to make them easier to steal. (Yes, it’s ironic.) Meanwhile, the Earth’s climate crisis continues to grow more dire by the day.
As we were editing the stories in this issue, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report confirming that “unavoidable” severe weather impacts will claim the lives of growing numbers of people each year. Any further delay in achieving drastic cuts in carbon emissions, it warned, means losing “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
United Nations Secretary- General António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”
The situation is critical. But is it hopeless?
Of course not.
There is, Erik Ness reminds us, broad public support for conserving our resources, which cuts across political lines. Farmers, reports Marc Eisen, have found ways to curb carbon emissions. Anthony Karefa Rogers- Wright in his “Comment” and Sharon Johnson in her article explore how the states are passing laws to reduce carbon emissions and promote environmental justice. Ilana Cohen and Jasmine Banks look at successful strategies of divestment from the fossil fuel industry, Vic Barrett gives a youth perspective, Tom B.K. Goldtooth charts Indigenous climate leadership, Stephanie Flores tells a personal tale of environmental catastrophe, and Bill McKibben talks about bringing the full force of “Boomer” power to the table.
None of this will prevent the pain our inaction has made inevitable. And, to be honest, it is not enough. But it is something, which is better than nothing. Can we save the world? Maybe not. But we must try. Today and every day.
Bill Lueders
Editor