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2024/04/13 I appreciate this column from Stuart Mackintosh on the substantial probability, without vigorous action on the climate crisis, of rapid transition to the Hothouse Earth state, a possibility I've been focused on since 2019 and working to avert since 2020. The piece mentions ancient stories of floods, but I think the author overlooks a central point of these stories: Floods caused by rain are apt illustrations of the principle that too much of a good thing is bad. People can't survive without rain, but too much rain produces devastating floods. Likewise, civilization can't survive without economic activity, but economic growth that never plateaus instead crashes. Our economic activity is not only filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases but also sending two million species toward extinction, draining groundwater, sapping soil vitality, pushing people into close contact with reservoirs of novel disease, driving many to deaths of despair, and sparking warfare. The good news is that we can hold back the rain, by changing our own tastes so as to want sustainable lifestyles and by stripping the wealthy of their power to destroy Nature unilaterally.