Elizabeth Kolbert and Ezra Klein discuss what options remain if our political system can’t handle the climate crisis. That’s the central theme of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.” The awful knowledge that humanity’s interventions have gone awry again and again must be paired with the awful reality that people have no choice save to try to manage the mess they have made. In the podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show,” the focus is on solar geoengineering. To even contemplate it feels like the height of hubris. Are we really going to dim the sun? And yet, any reasonable analysis of the mismatch between our glacial politics and our rapidly warming planet demands that we deny ourselves the luxury of only contemplating the solutions we would prefer. With every subsequent day that our politics fails, the choices that we will need to make in the future become worse.
By Ezra Klein. New York times. “The Ezra Klein Show” February 9, 2021.
