IS IT OK, JUST FOR A MOMENT, not to be all jolly about the environmental crisis we now face?

I am entirely in favor of green building, smart metering, carbon-neutral reggaeton festivals, presidential solar panels, eco-christenings, eco-weddings, eco-funerals. We've made more political progress on environmental issues this year than in the previous 20. Al Gore won the Nobel. The hipster band Guster is on board.

But it's still a crisis. Global warming is the biggest thing we've ever done to the earth, and the news from science is getting worse at least as fast as the news from politics is improving. Dealing with it is going to take more than getting your tail in a Prius—it will even take more than getting the respective tails of Alicia Silverstone, Dr. Andrew Weil, Billy Crystal, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Donny Osmond, Ed Begley, Harrison Ford, Kevin Bacon, Kirk Douglas, Dr. Oliver Sacks, and Robin Williams into Priuses.

In fact, if you want to be realistic—which in my experience increases your chances of being right—the only question is what kind of a crisis we're talking about: the nasty kind you get through or the nasty kind you don't get through.

The first kind—bad but bearable—can seem impossible when contemplated from a distance. Like divorce: impossible enough that people do all they can to avoid it. But then you're sucked out of the smooth water and into the rapids and you're no longer contemplating something dauntingly large; you're just handling the details as they come roaring at you: court dates, separate apartments, garnishments, weekend-visitation rights. It's not fun, but half the country has been through a divorce. You deal, and eventually you're out the other side, maybe chastened, maybe poorer, definitely different, but still intact.

Global warming might work out like that. We've spent two decades hoping it would get better on its own, but now, pretty clearly, we're going to start doing something. New technologies are coming online faster than we could have hoped, and political attitudes are starting to change, too. Lightbulbs, carbon taxes,
international treaties: We're in the process of rolling up our sleeves, and any minute now we're actually going to get at it—and then it's going to be OK, yes? Things will be different, but different is good, right?