
Wonk Quixote
WHAT HAPPENED? This is the question Nathaniel Rich attempts to answer in Losing Earth: A Recent History, an extended version of his 30,000-word article that took up most of the August 5, 2018, issue of the New York Times Magazine. “Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979,” he begins, and goes on to tell us that in the decade that followed, “we had an excellent chance” of solving the problem. “The conditions for success were so favorable,” he writes, “that they have the quality of a fable.” Yet more carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere in the