In Valor Is Hope

As the United States enters 2021 gripped by a worsening pandemic, wobbling economy, and widening tribalism, it is easy to forget about other pressing problems. Among these is climate change, which President Joe Biden has called the “number one issue facing humanity.” In a departure from the prior administration’s assault on the natural world, Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement and assembled a talented team to enact an ambitious clean energy plan with the aim of environmental justice. These moves are welcome yet they elicit an uncomfortable question: while we have the wherewithal to mitigate a climate catastrophe, is there the will, here and in other countries, to do what is actually required?

Not long before Biden was inaugurated both NOAA and NASA announced that the last seven years have been the world’s warmest on record, and with data from sophisticated climate models, scientists confidently predict global temperatures will continue to rise. For the grim implications of that increase, I recommend The Uninhabitable Earth. Published in 2019, this acclaimed book asserts a changing climate will bring brutal impacts across multiple spheres; these “elements of chaos” include scorching heat, widespread hunger, raging floods, rising sea levels, epic wildfires, freshwater shortages, dying oceans, unbreathable air, natural disasters, devastating plagues, perpetual war, and socio-economic collapse. In sum, an apocalypse.

The speed and severity of what happens will depend in part on our behaviors and decisions now. Having this ability to shape the future might be a cause for optimism, but writing in The New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen argues the “constraints of human psychology and political reality” make it unlikely that individuals or nations will meet the moment. Franzen is probably right, and we would thus do well to remember the words of Tacitus, “in valor there is hope," because it will take great courage to live in dystopian times.