She itched and felt afraid, but it didn’t matter. What difference did the existence of one frightened heart make on the scale of calamity? The optimistic forecasts gave us fifty years until the seas rose, then drought, mass displacement, resource wars. It was perverse: You wanted scientific consensus to be wrong about the ice core data, the carbon bomb in the permafrost, the declining albedo. You prayed that the delusional idiots were right. But the only comfort was that they’d suffer too.
