In tackling climate change, don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good

“It was getting hotter.” So opens “The Ministry for the Future,” the disturbing novel by science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The opening chapter, set in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, depicts a heat wave that kills millions across the subcontinent and galvanizes people to radical action.

Such dire warnings may seem far-fetched today. But the heat waves we are now experiencing are going to get worse. That, of course, will have dire consequences. More likely than mass death is mass migration. As Bill Gates points out, the area around the equator could become too hot for people to work outdoors; that could mean a decline in farming, the most common occupation in low-income countries. Stressed by heat, lack of water and no jobs, millions of people could start moving from these areas to more temperate climates mostly in the north: Europe and the United States.

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