‘Mobility’ Is a New Kind of Climate-Change Novel

When did we become guilty of the crime of climate change? It’s worth trying to determine when plausible deniability was lost. There are some milestones: Was it in 1988, when scientist testified before Congress with NASA-grade data? Or 2003, when a Powerpoint-wielding had to add a second and third story to his carbon-dioxide line graph? Or some other date, far earlier or far later, depending on accidents of information flow and party affiliation? The verdict of guilt is seemingly a foregone one; the task is only to backdate that guilt, and decide how much of our pasts—miles driven, products used, all the things we did and did not do—must be viewed through a pall of retrospective