Revolutionary Letters

Michael Robbins’s essay on the apocalypse [“Apocalypse Nowish,” Essay, December] is a prime example of climate defeatism, a misguided trend in writing about the environment that privileges pessimism over the political imperative to confront the climate crisis.

Each degree or sub-degree of global warming we prevent will make a significant difference in the number of people who die from climate disasters and food shortages. This will remain true for some years, even if we fail to limit global warming to the much-touted figure of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Robbins writes of a “crisis”…