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In North America this summer, drought,fire, and heat are putting climate back in the headlines —
if not, yet, in the election-year political debate. At such moments, it’s tempting for anyone who’s been talking about the issue all along to pile on with
the “see what we mean?”s and “we told you so”s. But it’s far more important to use the moment to catalyze understanding and action.

Two articles this weekend set the moment’s choices in deep relief. On the cover of
Rolling Stone, sharing display space with Justin Bieber’s
come-hither pout and
Eraserhead ‘do,

Bill McKibben sketches an arrestingly urgent map of our plight

, using three numbers to explain why the fate of the planet comes down to fossil-fuel company finances. In the Sunday
New York Times, David
Leonhardt, the paper’s Washington bureau chief, finds a “ ray of hope on climate change” in global clean-energy
trends.

Let’s start with Leonhardt. He tells us, “The world’s largest economies may now be in the process of creating a climate-change response that does not
depend on the politically painful process of raising the price of dirty energy.” Solar and wind investments are largely paying off; natural gas
development, however controversial, has brought prices down for a fossil fuel that puts less carbon into the atmosphere than coal.

All this means we’re already a lot closer to clean-energy nirvana than most people think — and if government would keep funding research and deployment, we
could get there.