We're Doomed. Now What?

An optimist’s guide to the climate crisis.

- Chris Turner

Fatih Birol’s diagnosis was grim. On April 9, the executive director of the International Energy Agency took the stage at a packed conference hall in Berlin. The occasion for the speech was the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BEtD), an annual event hosted by the German government to assess the ongoing transformation of the global energy sector. Birol conceded that renewable energy was getting cheaper by the day, and his research showed that its use was expanding as never before. But, he warned, renewables weren’t being built fast enough to keep pace with CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, which had reached a historic high in 2018. “There is a growing disconnect,” Birol said, “between political statements, targets, and what is happening in real life.”