Climate change will get worse in 2022. But it won’t be the end

Heat-trapping carbon dioxide kept piling up in the atmosphere, peaking at 419 parts per million, up from 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution.

Hundreds of people died from extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest as several states suffered their hottest summers on record; infernos burned 2.6 million acres in yet another unprecedented wildfire season for California; drought emptied reservoirs and prompted a first-ever shortage declaration on the Colorado River. An oil spill marred the Pacific coast.

And the pandemic continued to rage, despite the existence of highly effective vaccines that might have stopped COVID-19 in its tracks, or at least made the virus easier to manage. Misinformation and fear-mongering kept far too many people from protecting themselves and their loved ones, in much the same way that climate denial and delay slowed the transition to cleaner energy.

I wish I could tell you that 2022 will bring anything much different, but I doubt it. Even with record-breaking snowfall this month in parts of California — which may not bring the drought to an end but should at least alleviate it — I’m expecting next year’s top stories to look a lot like this year’s. Prepare for deadly heat waves, brutal wildfires and occasional COVID-19 surges, accompanied by a surge of lies that will make your blood boil with disbelief but will nonetheless be believed by a great many Americans.

Here’s the thing, though — about climate and coronavirus both.

In April 2020, when the L.A. Times launched this newsletter, stay-at-home orders were still in effect, and vaccines were a distant dream. The federal government vacillated between treating climate change as a minor inconvenience and as a hoax. Clean energy technologies such as solar panels and batteries were more expensive than they are now, and toilet paper was in short supply.

If I had my choice between living in April 2020 and January 2022, it wouldn’t be a difficult decision.

Yes, Congress hasn’t been able to pass President Biden’s climate bill — and there’s plenty to criticize in the Biden administration’s climate performance thus far. Meanwhile, vaccines appear to be less effective against Omicron than against earlier variants.

But as easy as it is to live and die with each day’s news — with every disappointing headline, frustrating tweet and panicked proclamation by the talking head on your TV screen — the story of climate change is long, as is the story of the pandemic. Both crises were decades in the making. Neither will be resolved anytime soon, certainly not by the end of 2022.

The best we can hope for is incremental progress — two steps forward, one step back, a string of little victories that slowly add up to something more. As the climate journalist David Roberts wrote recently, global warming “remains stubbornly uncathartic.”

“There will be no final moment of recognition and no clear line between success and failure,” he wrote. “The result will be an unsatisfying muddle at every stage, with more suffering than there should have been but less than there could have been.”

So yes, the world is in bad shape right now, and it will be in bad shape next year. But it was in bad shape before 2021, too. And here we are still forging ahead, celebrating good news when it comes and hopefully remembering to find joy in the people and experiences that make life worth living. Whatever happens next — scary as it may be in the moment — it won’t be the end.

So good riddance to the unsatisfying muddle that was 2021, and a toast to the muddle that will be 2022.