The false summit of climate change progress

Stephen Mulkey
8 min readDec 28, 2020
Wikimedia Commons 2020

As a novice backpacker in the Pacific Northwest there were several times when I mistook the peak in my near field of view to be the top of whatever mountain that was my destination. The phenomenon of the false summit is something that most people have experienced as a metaphor for life’s challenges. Present progress on addressing climate change is a false summit unless we fully understand the nature of any…

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Stephen Mulkey

Environmental scientist and educator; forest and climate change ecologist.