Most of the carbon humans have put into the atmosphere has been emitted in the last three decades. It’s not just that we know what’s happening, it’s that we’ve known for years and done nothing. It is an account of what went wrong — of how it was that a moment of growing awareness of climate change, and an apparent willingness to act on the knowledge, was allowed to dissipate into stasis and inaction. In the ’80s, Congress had several hearings into climate change, which was accepted as an urgent priority even by a figure as conservative and anti-intellectual as Dan Quayle: “The greenhouse effect is an important environmental issue. It’s just a change.” The effect of all this was that the fight against climate change lost momentum at a critical point.

Source: New York Times April 12, 2019 09:00 UTC