Optimism/Pessimism

Jessy Tolkan from the Energy Action Coalition opened a climate change session with a brief kind of pep talk, urging people (correctly in my view) that rather than try to unite the country around a sense of crisis and doom, we need to try to unite people around an appealing vision of green jobs, clean energy, etc. To me, this is completely right. Next up was Dr. John Holdren of Harvard and Woods Hole who opened by remarking that he had little in the way of optimism or good news to report -- noting that things have actually changed faster than people predicted, and that we're now at a point where substantial climate change is inevitable and the issue is how much can we adapt and can we avoid absolute disaster.