For decades, environmentalists warned us with a phrase that became a bumper sticker, a protest sign, a hashtag: Save the Planet. It was well-meaning. It was also wrong. The planet doesn't need saving. Earth has survived five mass extinctions, asteroid impacts, and ice ages that buried continents under miles of glacial ice. It will survive us too. The real question — the one we keep avoiding — is whether we will survive ourselves.
Climate change is no longer a future threat. It is the present reality. And the gap between what science demands and what governments deliver has never been wider.
