Missing the Present

This year is likely to be the warmest on record--exceeding the years 2016 and 2020. Berkley Earth estimates there is a 55 percent chance the temperature anomaly for 2023 will reach 1.5 degrees Celcius.

And as Émile Torres points out, this summer will be among the mildest for the rest of our lives.

In a few decades, we'll look back on 2023 as the calm before the storm, when life was still fairly normal. Our children may even remember this year with nostalgia, as a fading glimpse of a world they never got to know — one marked by relative stability rather than environmental chaos and catastrophic collapse. For all the horrors of this summer, we should perhaps take a moment to appreciate it, because this may be as good as it gets moving forward.