Hothouse Earth: Don't Despair, Do Something!

The latest New York Times Magazine cover story about climate change is equally brilliant and devastating.

And then, there's this from the Grist article below:

A team of international researchers released what looks like a blueprint for catastrophe this week. On our current path, they warned, humanity might push the planet into an entirely new, hellish equilibrium, unseen since before the emergence of our species millions of years ago.

This doomsday scenario, which they dubbed “hothouse Earth”, could render large swaths of our planet uninhabitable. Their conclusion: “Humanity is now facing the need for critical decisions and actions that could influence our future for centuries, if not millennia.”

It's terrifying, right? And it should be. But what's been missing in the coverage is how much it lies in our hands to alter the course.

Here's what I love most about solutions journalism: The doomsday messages just leave me hopeless, and I barely want to read on. But there ARE solutions, plenty of them. So I'm grateful to the author of this Grist article for pointing them out.

Because the link to a solutions piece in the article itself appears to be broken, here's a scientist's guide.

In addition to the article below, I also want to share another Grist piece about what we can actually do about climate change on an individual basis.

It's up to us, you and me. As the headline says, don't despair, do something!