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We want to believe that climate change can be stopped, that humanity can summon the political will to take decisive and meaningful action to avert disaster and save civilization. But the difficult reality is that even if we make our very best efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change is coming. The real question now is how bad are we going to allow it to get?

There is perhaps no one better suited to discuss humanity\u2019s unwitting impact on the planet than this episode\u2019s guest, Elizabeth Kolbert. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History\xa0and as a staff writer at The New Yorker\xa0she has chronicled the agonizing but undeniable realities of the ecological damage wrought by humans and the complicated politics of confronting \u2014 or ignoring \u2014 that damage.

Kolbert talks to Point of Inquiry host Paul Fidalgo about how we as a society and as individuals think and talk about climate change and the inevitable environmental and political disruptions to come.

BONUS FEATURE: Point of Inquiry bids a fond farewell to Nora Hurley, the show\u2019s producer since 2014, with a kind of \u201cexit interview.\u201d Nora and Paul discuss what\u2019s next for her, as well as what working on (and listening to) Point of Inquiry has meant to them both.