Bill McKibben: Is it hot enough yet for politicians to take real action?
Once again the latest record temperatures are driving a cascading series of disasters around the world, precisely as scientists have predicted. Bill McKibben's commentary in The New Yorker.
In a nutshell:
We're crushing it, Bill McKibben says. He's talking about temperature records and he wonders from where the political will to meet the moment will come. The political strength to get behind and incentivize meaningful action on climate and energy, he says, must come from us.
Key quote:
"But this moment feels as if it calls for something larger—comparable to the Earth Day demonstrations of a half century ago, which brought ten per cent of the American population into the streets. It’s eruptions on that scale that change the political reality."
Big picture:
Political weakness may well be our undoing, McKibben says. Although the Biden administration's efforts to enact effective energy and climate reforms easily surpasses previous measures by prior administrations, we've been staring into the headlights of a slow-motion train wreck for far too long and time is not on our side. Without massive public action to counter the political and financial might of industry sectors bent on business as usual, we risk a bleak future for life on Earth, he warns.
