The Last Dinosaur

Trump and the fossil fuel lobby can stall for time. But change is coming faster than you think.

- Alex Steffen

Here’s the most important thing to know about climate politics in this critical election year: How fast we act decides the future we get.

Of course, climate politics seems to be about many things, things that this administration has been hell-bent on sabotaging: strong emissions rules, carbon pricing, fuel economy standards, international treaties, cuts to fossil fuel subsidies, and respect for science and scientists in federal decision making. Yet at its heart, climate politics is simple. It’s all about speed.

I don’t mean that the climate fight is urgent, though of course it is. I mean that the climate fight is itself a fight about tempo, about how fast high-carbon industries will fall apart. The question is not whether we’ll see bold climate action but when, and how much more it will cost us in blood and treasure if we wait.

That suggestion seems absurd to many Americans. Fossil fuels are everywhere in this country, and what is ubiquitous always feels permanent.

It’s not. Powerful forces strain against this status quo, and torque is building for a snap forward in climate action. November’s election, it turns out, could be the breaking point. To understand why, we must consider the shifting global politics of the climate crisis, the unprecedented acceleration of the clean economy, and the carbon bubble we live in.

Most Americans care about climate change. Many Americans know the climate crisis will only grow more urgent the longer we fail to act boldly to cut emissions. Many of us even recognize that as our scientific understanding of our planet’s climate and biosphere has sharpened, the anticipated consequences of failure have grown grim.