A Third of the Grid Is Not a Third of the Problem

By the time you read this, the paper's front page will have told you that fusion now carries more than a third of the grid. It is true, and it is good, and I want to insist — against the mood of the morning — that it is also small. A third of the grid is not a third of the drought in Jakarta, where the reservoirs steadied this week by a single percentage point. It is not a third of the 112 million people registered as climate migrants, a number that has only ever risen. It is not a third of the plus-two-point-eight degrees we have already banked. The town in Oregon that danced last night because its lights stayed on danced for a real reason, and I will not begrudge it. But a milestone measured against how far we have come flatters us; measured against how far we must go, it is a foothold on a cliff. Emeka Okonkwo, to his lasting credit, refused all week to call his reactor a solution. The rest of us should extend him the courtesy of believing him.