"Why Bother?" by Michael Pollan

There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.

Every day, my fear of what we’re leaving our children grows exponentially. Pollan is right in that we can’t be dissuaded by the seemingly small part we feel we may be playing. As trite (and difficult) as it sounds, we need to try to inform more decisions by the imminent situation that our kids are going to have to deal with.