"Let's be realistic." That's the advice coming from a growing number of voices in climate circles in the United States. In October, billionaire Bill Gates argued that a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius is unavoidable and not a " super bad outcome"-a view unlikely to be shared by the millions of people whose homes would be destroyed by the resulting killer storms and rising seas.
For half a century, scientists have been warning about the risk of the planet warming by "2 degrees." It's a catchphrase that plagues the conversation about climate concerns, including at the United Nation's COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil, this month. Take U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock's remarks to the press this week, in which she stated that member countries had previously committed to limiting global warming " well below two degrees." That's a huge mistake. Well, the math is right. But the wording, at least where Americans are concerned, is dead wrong.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming awfulness, the climate crisis has been oddly underrepresented on stage and screen. Humanity's greatest challenge has often been deemed too much of a downer, too complex or too dull a topic to spawn shows and movies. A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output, however, suggests this may be changing. Weather Girl, a one-woman play about the unraveling of a TV meteorologist who can no longer bear to gloss over climate breakdown in California,
