Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress

Summary

A Next Big Idea Club "Must Read" for August 2025!

Extreme heat, fires, floods, and storms are transforming our planet. Yet we get increasing emissions, divisive politics, and ersatz solutions that offer more of the same: more capitalism, more complexity, more "progress."

The impasse we face is not only political and institutional, but cognitive, existential, and narrative. We're incapable of grasping the scale, speed, and impact of global warming. And we optimistically cling to a narrative that promises a better tomorrow if we just keep doing what we're doing.

It's past time to free ourselves from our dangerous and dogmatic faith. Such unwarranted optimism will accelerate our disintegration. If we want to have hope for the future, it must be grounded in a recognition of human limits—a view Scranton calls ethical pessimism.

Scranton describes the challenges we face in making sense of our predicament, from problems in communication to questions of justice, from the inherent biases in human perception to the difficulties of empirical knowledge. What emerges is a challenging but hopeful proposition: if we have the courage to accept our limits, we may find a way to embrace our future.