The four mistakes we make when thinking about climate change

By Kent R. Kroeger (August 13, 2018)

Nathanial Rich’s epic New York Times Magazine essay on the world’s missed opportunity to adequately address climate change in the 1980s is a masterwork of advocacy journalism. Rich’s readable storytelling through a labyrinthine of mathematical models, greenhouse gases, satellites, ice cores, congressional hearings, oil company executives and powerful K-Street lobbyists is a must-read for every politician, environmental lawyer, climate scientist, political scientist, and concerned citizen.

Rich believes humankind could have avoided the global warming mess it is in now if it had seized the opportunity in the 1980s, when conditions were at their apex for the large industrial countries to sign a binding agreement that would put them on the path to zero greenhouse gas emissions.

“Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?” he writes in the article’s prologue. “Because in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions.”

For Rich, human nature is to blame for our failure to address global warming in the 1980s. Our tendency to…