A crisis is acute and inherently short-term. But despite mountains of marketing meant to make it a series of deadlines and checkpoints, climate change is a fundamentally continuous, long-term problem that grows a little more every day.

The Ukraine situation by contrast had the contours of a crisis, and so did COVID-19 in the beginning. And in both cases we in the "developed" world watched our leaders squabble and foible and generally reveal their total unpreparedness. I can see how that's depressing.