In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proved to be false—or at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.As we lurched into the 2010s, you wouldn't have been crazy for thinking that a solution for the climate emergency was within reach. It seemed it could even be accomplished without profound economic change. All we had to do, the prevailing early Obama-era political logic went, was bring together people of opposing viewpoints (Democrats and Republicans, environmentalists and oil companies), hash out a plan to apply the appropriate tweaks on our economy, and voila, watch as capitalism took care of the rest.
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But a decade of GOP climate denial, fossil fuel industry obstruction, mounting climate disasters, and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump pushed the climate fight into a much more radical and confrontational mode, so much so that the optimism of 2010 now seems bizarre, if not delusional. The young leaders demanding an economy-transforming Green New Deal, people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement's Varshini Prakash, along with social movements they help represent, take it as a given that capitalism is not the solution to impending climate doom, it's what's feeding the crisis. The policies held up as solutions in 2010 are today regarded by many as insufficient half-measures, and more people think drastic, society-altering moves are the only way forward. Here's how we arrived at this point.
July 22, 2010: "We don't have the votes." the Waxman-Markey climate bill collapses and companies avoid shouldering the burden of their emissions
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Autumn, 2011: The Keystone XL pipeline battle becomes an emblem of the fight against the fossil fuel industry
July 19, 2012: Fossil fuel divestment arrives
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December 4, 2013: We wake up to the reality of a looming $674 billion loss in the form of abandoned energy projects
September 2014: Naomi Klein's blockbuster 'This Changes Everything' pins the blame for the climate emergency on capitalism
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December 12, 2015: World leaders negotiate the Paris climate treaty
April, 2016: Indigenous people put their bodies on the line to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock
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June 1, 2017: Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty
November 13, 2018: Activists and AOC launch the Green New Deal from Nancy Pelosi's office
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September 23, 2019: "How dare you?" Greta Thunberg addresses the United Nations after millions of teens skip school for climate
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation Is Fighting to Survive Climate Change. Follow him on Twitter.