Climate Accord Decision Is A Win For Self-Destruction

"We astronomers are trained to think long."

"A hundred million years, a hundred thousand years — after a while these impossible-seeming timescales become so familiar you can kind of feel them in your bones."

"That training also yields an unusual perspective on the daily events of politics. Sometimes, when I worry about this vote or that court decision, I think about how people in Imperial Rome (2,000 years ago), Song Dynasty China (1,000 years ago) or the Iroquois Nation (400 years ago) must have had similar worries over the events and personalities of their day. The wheel of cosmic and planetary history is always turning — and we only get our turn on it for a moment. That's why almost everything we do will be forgotten in just a few thousand years."

"Almost."