Thirty years ago, we almost saved the planet. This is the story of how we failed. nyti.ms/2LQWYOB 
In the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. nyti.ms/2KgVyYO
Almost nothing stood in our way — nothing except ourselves. nyti.ms/2KgVyYO
Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has warmed more than one degree Celsius. nyti.ms/2KgVyYO
The (nonbinding and unenforceable) Paris climate agreement hoped to restrict warming to two degrees, which the climate scientist James Hansen has called “a prescription for long-term disaster.” nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this? nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
Why didn’t we act? nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
A handful of people, at great personal cost, tried to warn humanity of what was coming. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
They risked their careers in a painful, escalating campaign to raise the alarm about climate change and stave off the catastrophe. And they failed. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
What follows is their story, and ours. nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
This week, our magazine tells one single story by @NathanielRich: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. Read it now: nyti.ms/2LTtuzz
