What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Stop Climate Change?
The real obstacles to addressing greenhouse gas emissions are not the politicians, the billionaires or even the oil companies. The real obstacles are the voters themselves.
They’re not the ones making it harder to act on climate change.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images EuropeOurs is a populist age, dominated not only by the anti-elitist posturing of Donald Trump and the Republican Party but also by a resurgent left that views “billionaire” as a dirty word. Many of our most profound problems, however, originate not in the pathologies of a narrow ruling class but among the broad mass of humanity.
A powerful reminder came in the form of last week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The study contains the now-customary warnings of grievous future harms from climate change, plus a new section detailing the stark reality that it is now too late to avert significant warming.