The reports issued<\/span> by the U.N.\u2019s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are usually grim affairs. But even by that standard, last week\u2019s seemed particularly bleak.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that the world has already warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius, and we\u2019re on track to hit 1.5 degrees Celsius \u2014 the \u201csafe\u201d limit set by the Paris Agreement \u2014 in the early 2030s. So unless we make drastic changes, the world will blow past the amount of warming deemed safe just 10 years from now.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a good chance that by the time 30- and 40-year-olds hit retirement, the world will be shitting the bed. The hurricanes, heat waves, polar vortices, fires, floods, droughts \u2014 all the things that make us stock the pantry, invest in backup power and beef up our insurance policies \u2014 we\u2019ll be waxing nostalgic about those. Wasn\u2019t it cute how bad we thought things were back then?<\/i><\/p>\n

Where the fuck is the panic?<\/p>\n

To be sure, plenty of people are worried. Problem is, most of them don\u2019t have (or can\u2019t marshal) the sorts of sums required to put a dent in the problem. Meanwhile, those who do are largely sitting out one of the biggest crises \u2014 and one of the biggest opportunities \u2014 of their lifetimes.<\/p>\n