Progress for the Planet

Read this and take heart: Even though the fight to slow climate changeand to preserve our own health is facing major political obstacles, there are real reasons to be positive about the future.

- MERYL DAVIDS LANDAU

If you nearly keeled over from extreme heat last summer or watched in shock as the California wildfires destroyed more than 16,000 structures in January, you know that climate change is already wreaking havoc. The United Nations calls the crisis "the single biggest health threat facing humanity." Weather disasters, the spread of temperature-sensitive diseases like malaria, and carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels already sicken and kill many Americans each year. Meeting the climate goals set out in the 2016 multinational Paris Agreement would save about a million lives per year across the world by 2050, according to the U.N.--but Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement the day he took office. With a new administration that has vowed to roll back even more climate-protection measures, many of us are anxious and scared. Will progress toward solving the climate crisis stall or even reverse, with devastating implications for our health?

While there's certainly reason to worry, there's also reason to remain cautiously hopeful. Yes, movement toward solutions will inevitably slow without continued federal support, but the momentum from smart moves we're already making, along with future technological advances, makes progress inevitable if not sufficient. The big reason: money. "There are these unstoppable market forces whereby clean technology will only get better and cheaper over time," says Gernot Wagner, Ph.D., a climate economist at Columbia Business School, who notes that returning to a fully coal- and fuelbased world not only is morally wrong but also no longer makes economic sense.

How money talks