let us be optimists and suppose our luck holds out for another generation. 
suppose we are spared destruction by fire. 
climate change remains and its effects will be devastating, even though those effects are regularly dealt with as if they belonged to separate categories: immigration, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. 
there will be wars as a result of climate change; there will be mass migrations; there will be environmental destruction almost beyond imagining; and there will be increased inequality from all of those causes. 
meeting the disruption that is already upon us will require kinds of planning and international arrangements that are foreign to our habits as the last superpower. individuals, however powerful, however capricious, however destructive, in this context are never more than paltry symptoms. 
paltry -- that is to say, meager, sorry, anything but great.


david bromwich