“The early euphoria came to an end pretty quickly. By the end of the 2020s, it became clear we would have to pay the price of delaying action for decades. For one thing, the cuts in emissions that scientists prescribed were almost impossibly deep. ‘If you’d started in 1990 when we first warned you, the job was manageable: you could have cut carbon a percent or two a year,’ one eminent physicist explained. ‘But waiting 30 years turned a bunny slope into a black diamond.'” A Time feature looks “back” at climate change three decades from now, including this piece from a future version of Bill Mckibben: Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different.

+ Meanwhile, back in 2019 … the Trump administration prepared to finalize its rollback of clean water protections. (Now who’s laughing at me for stockpiling White Claw?)