One evening in July, Stephanie Felts was lying in bed trying to process simultaneous climate disasters all over the world. From a crushing Canadian heatwave to U.S. wildfires and flooding in China, the drumbeat triggered memories of a close call her family had with a raging inferno when they lived in Salt Lake City a few years ago.
"I just realized, OK, this is as good as it will ever be. Not because we can’t do anything to make things better, but because we just won’t,” said Felts, 43, who works in financial services and now lives near Atlanta. "It makes you feel like, ‘hey, the apocalypse is starting.’”
She’s not alone. More people are finding it hard to cope with a growing sense that governments and businesses won’t do enough to slow global warming. To make matters worse, there’s the knowledge that even if humanity suddenly unified in a historic shift to renewable energy, it’s too late to avoid the grim consequences already baked in.