When I read things like this, I can understand why people want to ignore the issue of climate change. If things are as bad as writers like McKibben say, and if the measures they describe are what’s called for, then I just can’t see how we’re going to pull off anything that radical in time to avert disaster. I felt this way after finishing George Monbiot’s Heat, too: Monbiot’s aim is to make the case that it is possible to reduce emissions the required amount and still have a modern industrial economy. But, to put it mildly, it’s extremely difficult to see how the political will can be summoned to do the things he says are necessary. It would require, for starters, a wholesale shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Monbiot says that long-distance flight would have to be cut by upwards of 90%. And so on and so forth. To do all this would require treating climate change as a social emergency on a par with World War II, with all the attendant social and political mobilization. Virtually no politician in America, including most of the Democratic presidential candidate, is treating climate change as this kind of overriding emergency.

Now, maybe McKibben and Monbiot aren’t right and things aren’t as bad as all that. But there’s something troubling about the incentives we have to hope and believe that it’s not as bad as it might be…