It is too late, the most recent science tells us, to achieve the best-case scenarios for the future that were still possible a decade ago. That future is dead to us. No matter how much we may want them, we will not get future seasons that closely resemble the seasons of our childhood. The summer of 2050, when my children will be thirty-four, won’t feel like the summer of 1990, when my mom was thirty-four, or even the summer of 2017, when I was thirty-four. No amount of hoping, praying, or scientific intervention will bring those summers back—at least not during our lifetimes. This is a
...more
