THE NEW YORKER • January 22, 2021
If one wanted a basic rule of thumb for dealing with the climate crisis, it would be: stop burning things. Human beings have made use of combustion for a very long time, ever since the first campfires cooked the first animals for dinner, allowing our brains to get larger. Now those large brains have come to understand that burning stuff is destroying the stable climate on which civilization depends. In the early years of the climate crisis, scientists thought that “biomass” was an exception to the burning rule. But, in recent years, researchers have upended those calculations. We’re breaking the back of the climate system in real time and, as we’ve known for years, burning wood hurts, not helps.