We’re All Climate Catastrophe Preppers Now

Preppers like to buy property in remote places like New Zealand or stockpile canned food in their basements in case civilization collapses. They are weirdos, or so I thought until I had a kid.

A girl born in Germany today can expect to live long enough to draw a pension in the year 2100. But unless our emissions are drastically reduced, the world she will inhabit is on track to be more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times — a level not seen on this planet for some 3 million years. The northern hemisphere’s past summer — which followed just one degree of warming — gave a foretaste of what that means: more droughts, powerful hurricanes, flooding and deadly wildfires.