To make progress on climate change, we must move past doomsday scenarios
Climate change is only one of myriad problems mine and my children&#x27;s generation need to address. Cleaning up microplastics could make decarbonization look like child&#x27;s play. Phosphate and nitrate cycles also need to be addressed if we are to stabilize this planet. We are essentially awash in our own waste and global population is only beginning to flatten off. Not to mention a shrinking or flattening population brings along its own issues to solve. Probably some of the problems we will be working on in 30 years will be directly caused by near sighted solutions to climate change my generation is implementing today.<p>Growing up, I was fed lies about a future of a unified world, universally prosperous under American hegemony. It was a dogmatic fiction, and I am still bitter about it. It&#x27;s better to be real with our kids. That does not mean telling them they will die but they need to be aware of the risks and the scale of the work ahead.<p>Infinite growth on a finite Earth is not possible. We can basically either change patterns&#x2F;behavior drastically or settle other planets fast. Either option entails hardship that the postwar generation simply never had to face.<p>So the future will be quite different than what my generation experienced thus far. In some ways it will be worse and in some better. Being honest about that is crucial.