I'm in the UK and it's been horribly hot this week. It's really made me think about how well adapted our homes and infrastructure are for climate change. It's unbelievably frustrating that climate policy has stalled.
I work in the wildlife conservation sector and the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and a reduction in people's connection with nature is accelerating. At the same time, the nature conservation sector is shrinking due to a funding shortfall; redundancies are regularly being announced.
Your point about the dial swinging the other way is very reassuring, as is the reality that so many people want to see action, and are doing what they can to effect it.
Bill, the line that stays with me is "physics is running this show, and it won't be long denied."
Harry — the wilderness man in my novel Empty Earth — said something close to that his whole life. Not as a warning. As a fact he had already made his peace with. The politics would catch up eventually. The physics wouldn't wait.
What you're describing — the cycle firing again, this time with the economics finally aligned — is what Harry spent his life arguing was possible. He didn't live to see it. We might.
The indigenous peoples of the planet have always known the truth, the important and intimate relationship between the Mother Earth and human beings, which was eloquently captured in this quote:
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come
and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.”
― Excerpt from Chief Seattle speech in 1854
The earth will survive regardless of what we do. At this point we are collectively, as a species, parasitic. So, yes, whatever we do to this beautiful planet - to that which literally SUSTAINS us - we ultimately do to ourselves.
May years ago, a wise mentor of mine once described this phenomenon as the “exhalation of the vital force of nature.”
Mother Nature is "tapping humanity on the shoulder" ... hard enough, I pray, for our leaders to notice. The problem I see is that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, et al do NOT care if the rest of humanity survives. They have adopted a "We are the only people who matter" (kind of eugenics-based) mindset... a truly horrifying development.
How to counter this? MOBILIZE. As the saying goes, "There are more of us than there are of them". I think a PERMANENT protest movement ... modeled after the Occupy Wall Street movement ... is desperately needed here in America if not around the world.
Otherwise, I send you best regards. Fond memories of seeing you at the Tallberg Foundation's conference in (I think) 2008.
Steve, your second sentence is key. I myself didn't really understand the until a year ago. But I suggest everyone refer to the line in Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". My son, now 44, got his Bolt in 2015 and has not paid for gas since. We put solar on our roof in 2016 and got a storage battery last year. My husband (who had leased an Equinox for the last two years) died last month, so our energy expenses have gone down even more. If we, living in Berkeley, on $50K a year, could afford solar, I suggest everyone could, or at least could have in 2016, when all kinds of government subsidies and tax breaks were available. But I have no hope for humanity. I'm pretty sure we're all toast, which is why I told my son I didn't want grandchildren in 2017. Dylan is correct.
You're telling it like it is Ellen.........and I said similar above. IMPLEMENT, IMPLE MENT IMPLEMENT...........get those panels, that heat pump those EVs'.....and get them now.
There is no better way to thumb your nose at the Fossil Fools.......and somewhere we should talk about all the money we've saved by solarizing and going EV.
TURNS OUT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY ISN'T ALWAYS IN THE GARAGE OR UNDER REPAIR. Our first solar panels went up in 2009.....they are still producing, haven't cost us a dime in maintenance. Our Kona, bought in 2019 has needed nothing but the small battery replaced..........and when our large battery experienced a problem in one of the cells.........Kona replaced the entire battery free of charge.
Turns out.........Kona warranties its batteries for 10 years.........at no extra charge....something we didn't even know when we bought the car. So a 2020 Kona has a new 2023 battery.......which will likely outlive both of us.
GO SOLAR, GO ELECTRIC, NOW. It's a money saver in the medium to long term.
Action at a variety of levels is needed. Everyone who has the money needs to solarize, put in a heat pump, buy an EV...NOW. Everywhere seniors with good pensions should consider starting a trust that helps low income young people to put panels on the roof, or on their balcony..........implementation is a strong message to politicians and neighbours.
Whenever our progressive left party asks for money I tell them the truth. Until you're out there advocating for rebates and tax incentive help for people to implement, my money goes where our tax dollars has yet to venture.
The next solar array will go on our grandson's home......when he buys one in the next year or two. Our next heat pump to our daughter....etc. etc.
I refuse to support virtue signalling or big promises. Hope is an illusion; Action the solution.
It is interesting how people focus on the heat and overlook that the national electricity grid is often incapable of even supporting the few air conditioners there are in France and the UK. If everybody installed AC in their homes and apartments, the national power grid would just go offline - as it often does in Texas, and sometimes in my home state of Florida. I was in Lyon until last Sunday - 104f is friggin hot even by US standards. Safely home for the Summer in Bulgaria, we only run the AC for about 5 hours during the day, then it drops down into the 60s sometimes.
I must say that Central Europe had better overcome its climate change smugness and start getting as serious about building electricity and HVAC as they are about achieving independence from Trump's NATO. Oh yeah, getting EV'd too will also overwhelm the EU grid.
Implementation of clean energy wherever and however we can has to be a priority for the average citizen. Since 2009 we've solarized our own home twice, put up panels for our son and daughter, bought an EV for ourselves and our son, and last summer, thankfully, put in a heat pump.
I often imagine that if everyone of us in the privileged west who have good incomes/pensions, would forego foreign travel, and put that vacate on money on their roofs and in their driveways.........we'd be a long way toward a sustainable future.
We need progressive governments. But they won't exist everywhere, or last long, if in the final analysis, most of us middle class folks put escapism above citizenship. When every suitable roof in our city has solar panels, I'll know we're moving off fossil fuels/fools. Until then???
Climate despair is with me more often than I like.
It is the sad fate of intelligent observers to watch politicians and the public slowly grope their way toward conclusions which were obvious long ago. If there is any consolation, it is that they usually get there eventually. Here too, despite unnecessary delay and its tragic consequences, the truth will find a way.
Thanks for the optimism Bill. We share it, but alas, also with a certain grim exhaustion. Where we live, in oil soaked Alberta, a Maple Maga fringe has the Federal government imagining we need another bitumen pipeline to tidewater.........and we just know Danielle Smith and her 'Friends of Science" denialists will be eying our Great Bear Rain Forest and Fertile North Pacific coastline.
A tanker ban put in place by Justin Trudeau, just has to go to let tankers haul our unrefined tar to American refineries........if for no other reason than that Big Oil is never wrong, and never accepts a loss, even if that loss means the land and ocean is the winner.
It's good to be reminded that its the Great Mother who is in charge.......and that as long as we crater to Big Fossil fuels and fools, our situation is going to get worse. It's also necessary to be reminded that its the green alternatives that have the momentum now, that are fast becoming cheaper, more resilient and the real source of good jobs going forward.
Unfortunately, you wonderful news letter is far too long to be read by any of the "I HEART ALBERTA OIL", politics by bumper sticker crowd. Nevertheless, keep sending us news of hope and opportunity....a better future is possible.
As a UK resident, I found it very pertinent as I sit here on the hottest day yet, not able to do much else due to the sticky heat.
Something else which happened in the UK Parliament this week was the Seventh Carbon Budget was set covering UK territorial emissions from 2038-2042. It was debated and voted on one of our climate heat record breaking days, Wednesday. Whilst our Climate Change Act, enacted under Ed Miliband is 2008, is world leading, it also has many limitations - including only accounting territorial emissions, and externalising ex-UK emissions from UK activity and consumption The budgets, set 12 years ahead, are constrained by the political and economic status quo compared to what the science now demands too.
So Brian Hopkins is right “net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, rather it is dictated by the laws of physics”.
However, are the carbon budgets under the UK net zero climate (ie the Climate Change Act) actually aligned with the physics?
I am part of a new legal project Carbon Reckoning which believes the answer to that to be "No". We aim to challenge the carbon budget set - as not being aligned with the science or the UK's international obligations. Read more here:
At its core, our work tackles a power imbalance: how concentrated corporate and political interests shape climate policy in ways that harm the communities, and their future, here and worldwide - with the climate change that has "returned" again as you say.
Having signed the Paris Agreement, rich countries including the UK fail to walk the talk. Our carbon budget process actually systematically flatters the UK's position — relying on scientific benchmarks already overtaken by real-world emissions, excluding the most demanding equity-based ("fair share") measures under the Paris Agreement, and treating large volumes of UK-caused emissions as externalities.
Read more in our two letters to Ed Miliband, before he took the Carbon Budget to Parliament in this hottest of all weeks, which explains these issues.
We are now proceeding to a potential landmark judicial review based on the International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion (ICJ AO) on climate change. Our case will be among the first to apply this landmark opinion to national climate policy. As an advisory opinion, not a judgment, it must be argued in each jurisdiction. We intend to argue it in the UK courts, and if we win here, we hope we help open that door everywhere - for a true alignment with science and international obligations.
Anyone who supports challenging the UK "world leading" climate targets with that aim to for true alignment of climate targets and policy - everywhere - can help support our legal fund raising here 👉https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/carbon-reckoning/.
Bill, I hope you might consider covering this project in a future post.
The Right in the UK are tying themselves in knots over this. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition in parliament, is simultaneously promising to abandon Net Zero commitments and move towards mandating air conditioning in all new-builds. Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is an absolute hero. It’s a great pity that climate policy here in the UK has become politicised over the last few years. It wasn’t always so; we had fairly good bipartisan buy-in to implement the groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act for many years.
Thanks, Bill, for giving us all these stats and examples from so many places, so that each of us can turn them into pithy sound-bites that can really influence people. I'm not being cynical here, just realizing most people's attention spans, including mine sometimes. Let's hammer on affordability: "wind, solar, and battery are way cheaper than gas, and getting cheaper all the time." "If your government is still into gas, they're just getting grift from the oil companies. Demand energy people can afford!" "You don't think you can afford solar? Try Terra!" Lots of possibilities. Thanks as always.
Climate scientists seem most alarmed about reaching tipping points such as the tipping point for the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the demise of warm-water coral reefs, the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier (aka, Doomsday Glacier) and West Antarctica ice sheet behind it. But it is hard to get the public to care about tipping points. It would be welcome to find a way to close his gap being the public and climate scientists.
The line about physics running this show and not being long denied is the one I keep returning to. Every political cycle that buries climate does so on borrowed time. The heat doesn't wait for the news cycle to catch up. That's not pessimism — that's actually the most clarifying thing anyone has written about this moment.
May I also suggest that readers find the documentary, "Groundswell." In the US, it's on Netflix. It describes another way to help fight climate change, "regenerative gardening," which is currently making great gains. We not only have to curtail emissions, but we have to improve the soil to trap rain. This film is a wonderful explanation.
Fossil fuels is actually a renewable source of energy. Oil is naturally produced by Mother Nature some few miles down at a global rate of 10,000 bls per day. World consumption is 100 million bls per day. Do the arithmetic, the scale of the problem to go to Net Zero. When I see more money spent on preventing wasting, burning this resource, than is being spent world wide on military budgets, it may then be sign of possible success, slight chance, given the tipping points and rate of change getting worse not better, after al these decades that the science has been clear, that it is indeed physics that governs, not hope and vague promises.
Good that Bill keeps listing signs of hope, but progress seems too little and too late at this time. During WW2 watching movies at theatres was popular , as it was a form of distraction of the realities of war, as it seems even these record heat events, where TV shows sport events as very popular, and millions travelling to the EU countries during these life threatening events, just because they can, and cheap to do so, via air travel and cruises.
Will Super El Nino this year and next be a tipping point for most to fear what the future holds? I wouldn't bet on it. The capital of Iran is near bone dry as to water shortage, yet selling oil seem their priority as is all oil rich nations, none worse that USA at present.
2026 the 250th birthday of the USA , the year of Super El Nino . Stay tuned for update by Hanson and too, by Bill. So few following this. Did we blow past the 350 ppm long . long ago?
I'm in the UK and it's been horribly hot this week. It's really made me think about how well adapted our homes and infrastructure are for climate change. It's unbelievably frustrating that climate policy has stalled.
I work in the wildlife conservation sector and the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and a reduction in people's connection with nature is accelerating. At the same time, the nature conservation sector is shrinking due to a funding shortfall; redundancies are regularly being announced.
Your point about the dial swinging the other way is very reassuring, as is the reality that so many people want to see action, and are doing what they can to effect it.
Bill, the line that stays with me is "physics is running this show, and it won't be long denied."
Harry — the wilderness man in my novel Empty Earth — said something close to that his whole life. Not as a warning. As a fact he had already made his peace with. The politics would catch up eventually. The physics wouldn't wait.
What you're describing — the cycle firing again, this time with the economics finally aligned — is what Harry spent his life arguing was possible. He didn't live to see it. We might.
The indigenous peoples of the planet have always known the truth, the important and intimate relationship between the Mother Earth and human beings, which was eloquently captured in this quote:
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come
and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.”
― Excerpt from Chief Seattle speech in 1854
The earth will survive regardless of what we do. At this point we are collectively, as a species, parasitic. So, yes, whatever we do to this beautiful planet - to that which literally SUSTAINS us - we ultimately do to ourselves.
May years ago, a wise mentor of mine once described this phenomenon as the “exhalation of the vital force of nature.”
May we wise up and heed the call, at long last.
https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/seattle.htm
Mother Nature is "tapping humanity on the shoulder" ... hard enough, I pray, for our leaders to notice. The problem I see is that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, et al do NOT care if the rest of humanity survives. They have adopted a "We are the only people who matter" (kind of eugenics-based) mindset... a truly horrifying development.
How to counter this? MOBILIZE. As the saying goes, "There are more of us than there are of them". I think a PERMANENT protest movement ... modeled after the Occupy Wall Street movement ... is desperately needed here in America if not around the world.
Otherwise, I send you best regards. Fond memories of seeing you at the Tallberg Foundation's conference in (I think) 2008.
Steve, your second sentence is key. I myself didn't really understand the until a year ago. But I suggest everyone refer to the line in Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". My son, now 44, got his Bolt in 2015 and has not paid for gas since. We put solar on our roof in 2016 and got a storage battery last year. My husband (who had leased an Equinox for the last two years) died last month, so our energy expenses have gone down even more. If we, living in Berkeley, on $50K a year, could afford solar, I suggest everyone could, or at least could have in 2016, when all kinds of government subsidies and tax breaks were available. But I have no hope for humanity. I'm pretty sure we're all toast, which is why I told my son I didn't want grandchildren in 2017. Dylan is correct.
You're telling it like it is Ellen.........and I said similar above. IMPLEMENT, IMPLE MENT IMPLEMENT...........get those panels, that heat pump those EVs'.....and get them now.
There is no better way to thumb your nose at the Fossil Fools.......and somewhere we should talk about all the money we've saved by solarizing and going EV.
TURNS OUT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY ISN'T ALWAYS IN THE GARAGE OR UNDER REPAIR. Our first solar panels went up in 2009.....they are still producing, haven't cost us a dime in maintenance. Our Kona, bought in 2019 has needed nothing but the small battery replaced..........and when our large battery experienced a problem in one of the cells.........Kona replaced the entire battery free of charge.
Turns out.........Kona warranties its batteries for 10 years.........at no extra charge....something we didn't even know when we bought the car. So a 2020 Kona has a new 2023 battery.......which will likely outlive both of us.
GO SOLAR, GO ELECTRIC, NOW. It's a money saver in the medium to long term.
Action at a variety of levels is needed. Everyone who has the money needs to solarize, put in a heat pump, buy an EV...NOW. Everywhere seniors with good pensions should consider starting a trust that helps low income young people to put panels on the roof, or on their balcony..........implementation is a strong message to politicians and neighbours.
Whenever our progressive left party asks for money I tell them the truth. Until you're out there advocating for rebates and tax incentive help for people to implement, my money goes where our tax dollars has yet to venture.
The next solar array will go on our grandson's home......when he buys one in the next year or two. Our next heat pump to our daughter....etc. etc.
I refuse to support virtue signalling or big promises. Hope is an illusion; Action the solution.
It is interesting how people focus on the heat and overlook that the national electricity grid is often incapable of even supporting the few air conditioners there are in France and the UK. If everybody installed AC in their homes and apartments, the national power grid would just go offline - as it often does in Texas, and sometimes in my home state of Florida. I was in Lyon until last Sunday - 104f is friggin hot even by US standards. Safely home for the Summer in Bulgaria, we only run the AC for about 5 hours during the day, then it drops down into the 60s sometimes.
I must say that Central Europe had better overcome its climate change smugness and start getting as serious about building electricity and HVAC as they are about achieving independence from Trump's NATO. Oh yeah, getting EV'd too will also overwhelm the EU grid.
Implementation of clean energy wherever and however we can has to be a priority for the average citizen. Since 2009 we've solarized our own home twice, put up panels for our son and daughter, bought an EV for ourselves and our son, and last summer, thankfully, put in a heat pump.
I often imagine that if everyone of us in the privileged west who have good incomes/pensions, would forego foreign travel, and put that vacate on money on their roofs and in their driveways.........we'd be a long way toward a sustainable future.
We need progressive governments. But they won't exist everywhere, or last long, if in the final analysis, most of us middle class folks put escapism above citizenship. When every suitable roof in our city has solar panels, I'll know we're moving off fossil fuels/fools. Until then???
Climate despair is with me more often than I like.
It is the sad fate of intelligent observers to watch politicians and the public slowly grope their way toward conclusions which were obvious long ago. If there is any consolation, it is that they usually get there eventually. Here too, despite unnecessary delay and its tragic consequences, the truth will find a way.
Thanks for the optimism Bill. We share it, but alas, also with a certain grim exhaustion. Where we live, in oil soaked Alberta, a Maple Maga fringe has the Federal government imagining we need another bitumen pipeline to tidewater.........and we just know Danielle Smith and her 'Friends of Science" denialists will be eying our Great Bear Rain Forest and Fertile North Pacific coastline.
A tanker ban put in place by Justin Trudeau, just has to go to let tankers haul our unrefined tar to American refineries........if for no other reason than that Big Oil is never wrong, and never accepts a loss, even if that loss means the land and ocean is the winner.
It's good to be reminded that its the Great Mother who is in charge.......and that as long as we crater to Big Fossil fuels and fools, our situation is going to get worse. It's also necessary to be reminded that its the green alternatives that have the momentum now, that are fast becoming cheaper, more resilient and the real source of good jobs going forward.
Unfortunately, you wonderful news letter is far too long to be read by any of the "I HEART ALBERTA OIL", politics by bumper sticker crowd. Nevertheless, keep sending us news of hope and opportunity....a better future is possible.
50 + years of thanking you Sir.
Thank you, Bill, as ever for these regular posts.
As a UK resident, I found it very pertinent as I sit here on the hottest day yet, not able to do much else due to the sticky heat.
Something else which happened in the UK Parliament this week was the Seventh Carbon Budget was set covering UK territorial emissions from 2038-2042. It was debated and voted on one of our climate heat record breaking days, Wednesday. Whilst our Climate Change Act, enacted under Ed Miliband is 2008, is world leading, it also has many limitations - including only accounting territorial emissions, and externalising ex-UK emissions from UK activity and consumption The budgets, set 12 years ahead, are constrained by the political and economic status quo compared to what the science now demands too.
So Brian Hopkins is right “net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, rather it is dictated by the laws of physics”.
However, are the carbon budgets under the UK net zero climate (ie the Climate Change Act) actually aligned with the physics?
I am part of a new legal project Carbon Reckoning which believes the answer to that to be "No". We aim to challenge the carbon budget set - as not being aligned with the science or the UK's international obligations. Read more here:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-boswell-5b241320_carbonreckoning-share-7474760500795355136-cDTI/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&rcm=ACoAAARVGJYB3MKPv9ctffXnO-edcmeGqWji6sM
At its core, our work tackles a power imbalance: how concentrated corporate and political interests shape climate policy in ways that harm the communities, and their future, here and worldwide - with the climate change that has "returned" again as you say.
Having signed the Paris Agreement, rich countries including the UK fail to walk the talk. Our carbon budget process actually systematically flatters the UK's position — relying on scientific benchmarks already overtaken by real-world emissions, excluding the most demanding equity-based ("fair share") measures under the Paris Agreement, and treating large volumes of UK-caused emissions as externalities.
Read more in our two letters to Ed Miliband, before he took the Carbon Budget to Parliament in this hottest of all weeks, which explains these issues.
Carbon Reckoning letter to Ed Miliband (1), May 2026 https://tinyurl.com/CR-2-DESNZ
Carbon Reckoning letter to Ed Miliband (2), June 2026 https://tinyurl.com/CR-2-DESNZ-2
We are now proceeding to a potential landmark judicial review based on the International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion (ICJ AO) on climate change. Our case will be among the first to apply this landmark opinion to national climate policy. As an advisory opinion, not a judgment, it must be argued in each jurisdiction. We intend to argue it in the UK courts, and if we win here, we hope we help open that door everywhere - for a true alignment with science and international obligations.
Anyone who supports challenging the UK "world leading" climate targets with that aim to for true alignment of climate targets and policy - everywhere - can help support our legal fund raising here 👉https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/carbon-reckoning/.
Bill, I hope you might consider covering this project in a future post.
With deep respect of your work,
The Right in the UK are tying themselves in knots over this. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition in parliament, is simultaneously promising to abandon Net Zero commitments and move towards mandating air conditioning in all new-builds. Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is an absolute hero. It’s a great pity that climate policy here in the UK has become politicised over the last few years. It wasn’t always so; we had fairly good bipartisan buy-in to implement the groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act for many years.
Thanks, Bill, for giving us all these stats and examples from so many places, so that each of us can turn them into pithy sound-bites that can really influence people. I'm not being cynical here, just realizing most people's attention spans, including mine sometimes. Let's hammer on affordability: "wind, solar, and battery are way cheaper than gas, and getting cheaper all the time." "If your government is still into gas, they're just getting grift from the oil companies. Demand energy people can afford!" "You don't think you can afford solar? Try Terra!" Lots of possibilities. Thanks as always.
Climate scientists seem most alarmed about reaching tipping points such as the tipping point for the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the demise of warm-water coral reefs, the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier (aka, Doomsday Glacier) and West Antarctica ice sheet behind it. But it is hard to get the public to care about tipping points. It would be welcome to find a way to close his gap being the public and climate scientists.
AMOC , what the F**K, what percentage of USA or any countries population know what AMOC is?
Very likely a tiny tiny percentage has ever even heard of it! One more tipping point.
The line about physics running this show and not being long denied is the one I keep returning to. Every political cycle that buries climate does so on borrowed time. The heat doesn't wait for the news cycle to catch up. That's not pessimism — that's actually the most clarifying thing anyone has written about this moment.
May I also suggest that readers find the documentary, "Groundswell." In the US, it's on Netflix. It describes another way to help fight climate change, "regenerative gardening," which is currently making great gains. We not only have to curtail emissions, but we have to improve the soil to trap rain. This film is a wonderful explanation.
The correct spelling for the first decade of a century is aught or aughts.
Fossil fuels is actually a renewable source of energy. Oil is naturally produced by Mother Nature some few miles down at a global rate of 10,000 bls per day. World consumption is 100 million bls per day. Do the arithmetic, the scale of the problem to go to Net Zero. When I see more money spent on preventing wasting, burning this resource, than is being spent world wide on military budgets, it may then be sign of possible success, slight chance, given the tipping points and rate of change getting worse not better, after al these decades that the science has been clear, that it is indeed physics that governs, not hope and vague promises.
Good that Bill keeps listing signs of hope, but progress seems too little and too late at this time. During WW2 watching movies at theatres was popular , as it was a form of distraction of the realities of war, as it seems even these record heat events, where TV shows sport events as very popular, and millions travelling to the EU countries during these life threatening events, just because they can, and cheap to do so, via air travel and cruises.
Will Super El Nino this year and next be a tipping point for most to fear what the future holds? I wouldn't bet on it. The capital of Iran is near bone dry as to water shortage, yet selling oil seem their priority as is all oil rich nations, none worse that USA at present.
2026 the 250th birthday of the USA , the year of Super El Nino . Stay tuned for update by Hanson and too, by Bill. So few following this. Did we blow past the 350 ppm long . long ago?