‘Can this planet (still) be saved?’

In the decades to come, humans will have to reckon with wildfires, droughts, floods, disease, species extinction, famine, and millions of displaced people, all caused by climate change.

If there's any consolation in this grim future, it's that things may be improving — not enough to prevent the terrible, but enough to ward off the even worse.

That's one of the messages from four panelists at the filming of “Can This Planet (Still) Be Saved?” at Wamogo High School in Litchfield last month.

The show was a presentation of “Common Ground with Jane Whitney,” a public affairs forum syndicated nationally on PBS.

At the show, David Wallace-Wells, a New York Times reporter and author of the 2019 book “The Uninhabitable Earth” acknowledged that because of human efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth's warming may be held to 2 to 3 degrees centigrade, rather than 4 to 5 degrees.

That halving of global temperature predictions, he said, would give humanity a “sub-apocalyptic world” — a livable, albeit, hugely changed world.

It will still mean that people around the world will have to adapt to hundreds of changes.

“Our Goldilocks planet — not too hot, not too cold — is gone,” said Bill Weir, CNN's chief climate correspondent, and one of the panelists at the show.

Progress is slow because of the inertia of governments and people, used to living in a petroleum-dependent economy.

A recent U.N. report found that only 26 of 193 countries worldwide are moving aggressively to curb climate change. The report concludes that because of such limited progress, global temperatures will rise to 2.1 to 2.9 degree C. by 2100 — considerably higher than the goal of 1.5 degrees C. needed to keep the hard consequences of climate change at bay.

Wallace-Wells said that we still have an economy that has grown up for centuries fired by fossil fuels and the people who want that economy to continue still wield an enormous amount of power.

But because renewable energy is proving itself to be an affordable alternative to petroleum-based fuels, a huge change is already underway.

“In five to 10 years, it will be a different place,” he said.

Humans will have to change as well. CNN”s Weir said he's interviewed people living in southern Louisiana who would rather rebuild and raise their homes another 3 feet every few years than acknowledge that rising ocean levels are flooding them out.

But increasingly, people are having to face this changing world because they have no choice.

Cindy McCain — wife of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain and one of the participants on the “Common Ground” filming — said that's happening now in her home state of Arizona.

“We're going to water rationing, which is something I never thought I'd see,” she said.

McCain is the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture. She said the droughts and flooding seen around the world are devastating for food production in those places

“It affects everything,” she said.

Wallace-Wells emphasized throughout the show's filming that people living in developing countries emitting far less greenhouse gases than industrialized countries are the people who will suffer most from climate change.

“Pakistan's entire carbon contribution in all its history is equal to the carbon the US produces in one year,” he said. “The people who have done the least will feel it the most.”

To change this trajectory means changing people.

Cristina Mittermeier, a Mexican marine biologist turned acclaimed photojournalist and one of the “Common Ground” panelists, said her images of the consequences of climate change allows her to engage people in a way data sets often fail to do.

“It touches every aspect of our lives,” she said of climate change. “But I don't think people think about that.”

Wallace-Wells said new technology — however costly — may help turn things towards a less hot planet. But the panelists also said combating climate change means work on a personal and local level.

“Maybe the best thing you can do is run for the zoning board in your town,” CNN's Weir said. “Any local contribution you can make is valuable.”

Mittermeier said there's also a generational shift of the issue.

“I find a lot of hope in the young people who are involved with this issue,” she said.

“The culture is moving in the right direction,” WallaceWells said. “Is it moving fast enough? No. But it is moving on the right direction.”

Hearst Connecticut Media file photo A house on Park Lane in Harborview in Norwalk is raised to meet post-Superstorm Sandy flood standards in 2018. Climate change and a rising sea level on Connecticut’s coast have brought more frequent and devastating flooding during storms.