Getting real on climate means facing necessity
Bill McKibben writes: “Realism” is the high ground in politics—a high ground from which to rain down artillery fire on new ideas. To wit, this week the New York Times profiled Canadian energy analyst Vaclav Smil, who—alongside others like Daniel Yergin—has long insisted that the transformation from fossil fuels to hydrocarbons must take a long time. Smil is a good writer and a smart historian; he’s documented the many-decades-long transitions from, say, wood to coal, and coal to oil as…