Yes, I agree with you Mike. Having optimism is important; and to not give up is a sensible approach to living. Happily, I am an optimistic person by nature; but I also appreciate realism when contemplating the future. I keep my projects of optimism limited to a short horizon. Right now, I think it’s possible to look forward positively for a year, maybe two, and three at the most. I have prepared myself to take assessment of climate progress (or regress) as a yearly contemplation. If there is improvement in slowing climate change such a development would be uplifting but not a determinative assessment of the longer trend for our climate emergency. If the analysis of our climate trend is negative, I am prepared to shorten my horizon of optimism to day-to-day planning along short jaunts of positive thinking. In many ways I’m better off being nearly 75 years old at this time in history than being 18 or 35 years old when looking to the longterm is important for planning one’s life. My life has already unfolded along all the important parameters that normally define an individual’s status. I’m already in a stage of living that has short horizons. I guess where I fall down in having optimism is in the areas of political direction and economic straightjackets. It’s my firm belief that only cataclysmic events can alter ingrained forms of social norms that hold back rapid change that is needed to address a “slowly” unfolding catastrophe. I can’t look at the wider world around me for optimism. But I do have the will within myself to stay positive and to act optimistically day-to-day in a locally defined narrow orbit.