My neighbor Swamp Rabbit and I saw a news report about Elon Musk, who wants to direct the course of wars and launch billionaires to Mars. He owns a big chunk of social media and is in the electric car business, but he seems to have nothing but contempt for his fellow humans.

I asked Swamp Rabbit if he agrees that it’s hard to have faith in a future that’s being molded by psychos who control all the capital. We’ll be lucky if we make it through the winter, I told him.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “We made it through the summer, we’ll make it through the winter.”

“The hottest summer ever recorded,” I said. “The world was on fire.”

He got out his phone and showed me a news story in which the world’s foremost energy economist states that “the rapid uptake of solar panels and electric vehicles” has renewed his hope that the nations of the world will achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and thus avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. This despite the fact that the climate continues to change “at frightening speed.”

“Glad to hear about someone who looks on the bright side,” I said, making an effort to suppress my doubts.

For one thing, reaching net zero would require a consistently high level of cooperation among the nations that spew the largest amounts of greenhouse gas — China, the US, India, the European Union and Russia. How likely is long-term cooperation given the current levels of enmity and mistrust among world powers?

Another reason for pessimism is Musk and the other obscenely wealthy jackasses who dominate the news cycle. Musk’s Teslas run clean but he has made it clear that he’s a bigoted kook who’s more committed to establishing a “multiplanetary” civilization than to averting climate disaster on Earth. He wants to use Twitter — X, as he calls it — and his other holdings to fight the “the woke-mind virus,” as he told Walter Isaacson, his biographer and most well-regarded cheerleader.

“You’re just mad because you can’t afford one of them electric cars,” Swamp Rabbit said as I continued to badmouth Musk.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, but if I could afford an EV, I wouldn’t buy one of his.”