DOING WHAT WE CAN.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE

On her latest album, I'll Meet You Here, folk singer Dar Williams has a song about climate change. It's addressed in part to a polar bear standing on melting ice, but its main point is to encourage commitment and generate hope. The song is called "Today and Every Day." Here's a taste, from the final chorus:

Well, I know we're gonna find a way I know we're gonna light the way And I know we're gonna make it, but we gotta say We can save the world today and every day

A terrible truth of our present predicament is that saving the world as we know it is no sure thing. The time for comprehensive action to combat global warming was, well, a long time ago. Yet the need to respond remains urgent, as catastrophic impacts are already being felt, with the worst yet to come.

The stories in this issue about the things people are doing to respond to climate change are not feel-good stories. Some describe acts of desperation. As Alexandra Tempus, my former colleague at The Progressive, writes in "Finding Higher Ground," some communities are packing up and moving because the places where they live are becoming uninhabitable. We're going to see a lot more of this. An estimated 143 million people will be uprooted due to climate impacts over the next thirty years.

In "Can the Ocean Save the Planet?" David Helvarg notes that nations seeking to use the ocean to gobble up carbon dioxide are "admitting failure"--because it means the climate goals set by international agreements are "unattainable unless carbon dioxide is also taken out of the atmosphere."

The great writer Elizabeth Kolbert's 2021 book, Under a White Sky, focuses on the various ways people are trying to use science to fix the messes that science created. These include engineering species to adapt to environmental impacts and spewing gunk into the air to block the sun's deadly rays, a process that would turn the color of the sky--all over the world--from blue to white, hence the book's title.

What could be more horrifying? We might yet find out.

We stand at the frayed edge of history, with disaster knocking at the door and a sizable share of the populace clapping their hands over their ears. We no longer agree on things that are demonstrably true. Like that vaccinations are safe and effective, that Donald Trump lost the last election, or that climate change is real and already upon us.

So millions of people rage at vaccine...