The New York Times was a little schizophrenic today. One headline said the Paris climate talks were going great: "High Hopes For Accord As Second Week Starts." On the facing page sat tidings of doom: "Pledges On Climate Will Be Useless Without Action and Funding."

I sympathize. As The Times was finishing up these stories the day before, I was trudging down to the lobby of my Paris hotel carrying a bag heavy with pieces of hope–flyers from hundreds of dreamers and business people who gathered in the "solutions" section of the U.N.'s conference center to show off their carbon-eating grass and carbon-soaking char, 3D-printed electric sports cars and futuristic solar systems. Maybe somewhere in there we would find a magic bullet or an accumulation of little successes that would add up to some magic. At the least, the pile of flyers was an encouraging reminder of all the millions of tinkerers and builders who are, in the absence of meaningful government action, trying to take personal responsibility for the planet. Humanity can be beautiful that way.

But down in the lobby, I sat down near a very serious-looking woman staring somberly at her laptop through thick horn rimmed glasses. "I'm thinking of leaving myself," she said. "I'm booked through Thursday, but it's just so discouraging. I might as well go home and learn how to knit socks."

Her name is Dr. Makere Stewart-Harawira, and she's a professor who studies the impact of climate change on indigenous communities at the University of Alberta, Canada. To her, the "high hopes for accord" were better described as "hammering out a text everyone can agree on," followed by "ridiculous statements of celebration." Suddenly she looked very tired. "We've already passed one degree," she said. "We can't absorb any more carbon."

But like the Times, she also tried to look on the bright side. There were some good things being done, like progress on "mechanisms of carbon procurement" and other things that were too technical for me to understand. At least virtually everyone now agrees on the science, she said.

Like most on the scientific, economic, and environmental-activist side of the issue, Dr. Stewart-Harawira said the only real mechanism for change is a global carbon tax that could harness the power of capitalism to drive innovation in alternative energy; this has been the position of The Economist since 1989. Now, 26 years later, Senator Bernie Sanders became the first and only American presidential candidate to adopt this position, issuing a characteristically uncompromising statement:

"Right now, we have an energy policy that is rigged to boost the profits of big oil companies like Exxon, BP, and Shell at the expense of average Americans. CEO's are raking in record profits while climate change ravages our planet and our people—all because the wealthiest industry in the history of our planet has bribed politicians into complacency in the face of climate change."

With a carbon tax, Dr. Stewart-Harawira said, "We can fix all this tomorrow."

As it happens, Dr. James Hansen is staying in the same small hotel. He is the retired climate scientist from NASA who has become legendary for his historic testimony to Congress in 1988. For years now, he's been traveling the planet and meeting with global leaders in an effort to promote the idea of a carbon tax, which he calls the carbon "fee and dividend" instead of a tax, because he thinks the carbon money should immediately be returned to every citizen to lessen the pain of the change (and because they're breathing the air that fossil fuels have fouled). Dr. Stewart-Harawira is a little star-struck. "I agree with Jim Hansen on everything."

Except, that is, on the question of nuclear power. Hansen is the rare advocate for drastic action who includes nuclear power among the solutions. To most of his allies on the left, that's as unthinkable as climate change itself seems to be to so many on the right. "I think he lost his brains there," Dr. Stewart-Harawira said.

But if climate change is such a serious problem, an existential problem, wouldn't an ugly but practical solution be better than another futile stab of niceness? Don't we fight cancer with deadly toxins? Especially when renewable electricity is still just 21 percent of the global energy mix and shows no sign of scaling up fast enough to solve the problem–and if it did, the heat-generation of all the resource extraction and manufacturing necessary would just add its own risky burden of deadly gases. To say that climate change is an existential problem and then draw the line at an ugly solution, isn't that the same as saying you don't think climate change is that big a problem?

At this, Dr. Stewart-Harawira looked pained. "I agree with you," she said. "It's a very fair comment."

But still, she just couldn't accept the idea of nuclear power. She mentioned Chernobyl and Fukushima.

"But those are local problems," I said.

"Local?" she said, a little shocked.

"I live in New York. Chernobyl and Fukishima don't affect me at all."

"So who do we sacrifice?" she asked. "Where are the sacrifice zones?"

If we had the time and expertise, the conversation might have gone on to new nuclear technology like sodium-cooled fast reactors and passive safety mechanisms and modular construction and international inspections and the possibility of global cooperation on safety and construction. Or the millions of people who are actively dying right now of cancers and lung diseases because of fossil fuel pollution, as opposed to the dozens killed and thousands sickened by Chernobyl and Fukishima, the only significant accidents in 60 years of carbon-free nuclear power. But her distress seemed so genuine, I didn't have the heart. Add exhaustion and the human urge to find agreement in times of trouble and the even more human urge to shrug off the world and get on with your little private life—I had promised my wife a gift of some French lingerie, an errand far more pleasant than yet another bleak conversation about climate change—and the dilemma of the world leaders had settled in beside us on the lobby's red velvet chairs. Dr. Stewart-Harawira seemed to sense it. "Things are changing much more rapidly," she said. "We have less and less time."

At the climate conference, she added, one word kept coming up. It had become a default expression, a kind of verbal shrug, the simplest way to sum it all up without getting into all the details: interesting.

As in the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

"Interesting," she repeated, rolling the syllables around in her mouth. "What a shocking word that is."

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