The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024

by Bill McKibben

Leaning against the tree, I could feel its thick bark. I knew it had seen many more years than I had, that its roots had reached deep into the earth, emerging here and there in the grass like strong, gnarled fingers spanning the width of its canopy. It had a strength I longed for, a sense of certainty—something most people with severe OCD almost never experience. It was solid. And forgiving. Both at once. It was what I was striving to be.

And let’s be clear: moral clarity is not the same thing as naïveté. It is naïve to expect that governments and corporations will do the right thing, or that someone else will handle it. It is naïve to think we can “solve” or “stop” climate change. It is also naïve to give up, when every tenth of a degree of warming we prevent, every centimeter of sea level rise we avoid, every species we save, and every increasingly unnatural disaster we avert all matter so very much.