How to Blow Up a Pipeline Highlight

Jonathan Franzen, a rather more senior member of the American literary pantheon. From his pulpit in the New Yorker, he has periodically held forth on how unwise it is to attempt to have climate change abated. Like Scranton, he believes that ‘planetary overheating is a done deal’. As his evidence, he points to the fact that ‘no head of state has ever made a commitment to leaving any carbon in the ground’. Before the 1790s, no head of a state had ever made a commitment to freeing African slaves; in July 1791, someone of Franzen’s disposition could have argued, on these grounds alone, that eternal slavery is a done deal.