This year, much like 2021 before it, has been a record-shattering year of compounding climate disasters: an unprecedented heat wave in South Asia; the second-most-damaging hurricane in the history of the United States; flooding in Pakistan that has displaced 33 million people, damaged the country’s wheat crop, and will likely trigger a famine; and historic droughts in China, the western U.S., and Europe that have reduced power generation and river commerce, rocked insurance markets, and spiked food prices. Scarier still, it’s nearly certain that 2023 will set new climate records, as will 2024, 2025, and on and on for the foreseeable future.
Humanity is staring down the barrel of a crisis-laden future; what’s already happened is a relatively benign preview of what’s to come. Yet growing recognition of climate change has not translated into meaningful progress, at least from the perspective of the atmosphere. Climate change is driven by the total stock of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the atmosphere, meaning society needs to zero out emissions—not merely reduce the emissions rate—to stop climate change from getting worse. Yet GHG emissions are accelerating:
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