Please talk me out of a grim climate crisis analysis and forecast

As I revise Universities on Fire I have been mulling over one way of looking at the climate crisis in recent history and the near future. It’s a grim view, specifically of the United States, and yet I can’t shake it. Please help talk me out of it.

Fair warning: I’m writing this in a hurry, caught between competing deadlines, so it’ll be a short post without a ton of links or development.

I’ll explain this shortly.