After a 2023 filled with climate disasters, 2024 seems in a hurry to top it, with atmospheric rivers in California, wildfires in Chile, drought in Spain and more in just the first weeks.
If you were forced to guess the one political issue that will decide the 2024 U.S. election based on sheer volume of news coverage, you might pick inflation or immigration. Maybe plagiarism. Or Taylor Swift's Kansas City Chiefs fandom — almost anything, in fact, besides climate change.
It's nearly impossible to get every country in the world to agree on anything. But at the latest United Nations climate talks, leaders representing all the people of Earth held hands and sang in perfect harmony of their shared belief that coal is the absolute worst.
Humans are very likely the only species that can imagine very distant futures. Unfortunately, our brains aren't wired to behave in a way that optimizes those futures. After all, most of us don't even save enough for retirement.
The decision sounds monumental: A Montana court has ruled that climate change is real and caused by humans and that governments owe their constituents' children a clean environment.
Modern humans generally think of panic as unhelpful, triggering stampedes at concerts, collapses at cookouts and endless hours of therapy. But our species evolved panic as a kind of superpower to avoid being eaten. In certain circumstances, and in measured doses, a little existential dread can still be helpful.
