![]() Through decades of only minimal action, we have squandered that opportunity. Second, and just as important, the likeliest futures still lie beyond thresholds long thought disastrous, marking a failure of global efforts to limit warming to “safe” levels. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.” Personally, I find myself returning to three sets of guideposts, which help map the landscape of possibility.įirst, worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so, which is inarguably good news and, in a time of climate panic and despair, a truly underappreciated sign of genuine and world-shaping progress. Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations - with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers - about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse. Neither of those futures looks all that likely now, with the most terrifying predictions made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. ![]() Here, a scientist transports genetically modified mosquitoes to release them. ![]() The company led its first pilot project in 2021, releasing approximately four million mosquitoes into the Florida Keys. These mosquitoes are intended to mate with wild populations and lead, ultimately, to the collapse of those populations. To stop the spread, the biotechnology company Oxitec has engineered a breed of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that produce only viable male offspring, which are nonbiting. Genetically Modified Mosquitoes As rising temperatures force animals to migrate, vector-borne diseases like those caused by the yellow fever, dengue and Zika viruses will proliferate via mosquitoes. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.) ![]() Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming - a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.
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