Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich tells the fascinating and terrifying story of how we have known about the devastating impacts of climate change caused by the burning of fossile fuels for almost half a century, without being able to address the issue properly. With serious action being taken by politicians and the oil industry 30 years ago, we could have already limited temperature rise to even below 1,5 degrees. What went wrong?
“If the world had adopted the proposal widely endorsed at the end of the ’80s — a freezing of carbon emissions, with a reduction of 20 percent by 2005 — warming could have been held to less than 1.5 degrees.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
Although this extensive article is extremely well written, well documented and in every aspect a must read for everyone concerned about our future on earth, the conclusion that “human nature” is to blame for our failure in addressing climate change when had the chance (and hence, our continued failure in addressing it properly even today) – is only in part true.
The one other, big obstacle keeping us from really addressing climate change, is – as Naomi Klein claims in her critique of “Loosing Earth” – capitalism
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/03/climate-change-new-york-times-magazine/