How should we think about the end of the world as we know it?

(Inside Climate News, 19 Nov 2022) “Yes, it’s a catastrophe,” Elizabeth Weil writes of climate change. “And no, you would not be better off if you continued to tell yourself otherwise.”

In the 14th century, the Italian poet Petrarch wrote a letter to a friend in Avignon, describing his sense of “foreboding” after an earthquake shook the foundations of Rome’s churches. “What should I do first, lament or be frightened?” he asked. “Everywhere there is cause for fear, everywhere reason for grief.” 

The earthquake was only one in a series of calamities endured in the poet’s lifetime to that point: floods, storms, fires, wars and finally, “the plague from heaven that is unequaled through the ages,” the dreaded Black Death, which would eventually kill more than a third of Europe’s population.  

In his letter, Petrarch was distressed by the suffering of the present, but he was equally worried about what it meant for the future. His fears were “not only about the quaking of land but its effect on minds.” 

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Inside Climate News, 19 Nov 2022: How should we think about the end of the world as we know it?