The Way the World Ends (Warmer, #1)

by Jess Walter

In fact, sometimes the smug self-satisfaction of Portland (as if a new Tesla will save the planet) is the worst thing she can imagine.

She tells them about a Swedish study that found that each American child brought into the world means another fifty-eight metric tons of carbon dioxide. To offset the carbon footprint of one more American baby, 684 teenagers would have to become impeccable recyclers who gave up air travel for the rest of their lives.

—There is no historical precedent, and therefore no response to such a disaster (this turns out to be the theme of a short story that Dr. Anders is writing) because literature, even dystopian literature, is by nature humanist, the markers of human civilization (love, kindness, intelligence) serving as baselines for basic good, for equilibrium, when in fact, human civilization may be “nothing more than a clever infection.”