National Geographic

Visible beyond a vineyard in Napa County is oneof at least a dozen fires that ravaged NorthernCalifornia in October 2017. The area had beenplagued by years of extreme heat and drought.WHAT EXPLAINS the lack of decisive progress onhuman-driven climate change? Having investedhalf of my 62 years in reporting and writing climate-related stories, blog posts, and books, I’ve latelyfound it useful—if sometimes uncomfortable—tolook back for misperceptions or missed opportunitiesthat let the problem worsen.Can we name the main culprits? There are almostas many theories and targets as there are advocatesof one stripe or another. Among them: lack of basicresearch funding (I was often in that camp), indus-try influence on politics, poor media coverage, anddoubt-sowing by those invested in fossil fuels oropposed to government intervention. There’s alsoour “inconvenient mind”—my description for a hostof human behavioral traits and social norms that cutagainst getting climate change right.For years I thought the answer was like theconclusion in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Ori-ent Express: that all suspects were guilty. But there’sanother possibility. Maybe climate change is lessan environmental wrong to be set right and morean emerging source of risk—a case of humanity’splanet-scale power outrunning, at least for now, ourcapacity for containing our momentous impacts. In a2009 piece called “Puberty on the Scale of a Planet,”I toyed with this notion, suggesting that our specieswas in a turbulent transition from adolescence toadulthood, resisting admonitions to grow up—withfossil fuels standing in for testosterone.But the situation is even more tangled. The more``````JULY 2018 19