It’s been a long road. Not noble. Not heroic. Just long. Quiet toil behind screens and under lamps, reading things no one will ever read again. Statutes. Protocols. Case law on carbon credits and sea walls. The words changed but the work stayed the same.

Law is slow. Climate is not. That is the essential tension. You can draft a regulation, hold a consultation, publish a guidance note—and the glaciers still melt. Whole coastlines still vanish. But without law, there is only plea and protest. Without law, there is only the market, the state, and the fire.

The most interesting conflicts lie in the interstices: where sustainability collides with trade, with property, with investment. Who pays when mitigation fails? What is owed to future generations under fiduciary duty? Can a pension fund divest without breaching its charter? These are the new battlegrounds. Not marches. Not speeches. But term sheets and judicial review.

You lose time in it. Seasons go by. Friends disappear into lives. You wonder if you did something wrong. But the answer is always: no. This is the cost.

Now it’s almost done. There’s a chair waiting. A title. A sinecure, they call it. Work without worry. A soft landing in a hard world. You’ll take it. No shame in that.

It isn’t glory. But it is peace.

And that, at last, is enough.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5709828&forum_id=2:#48881086)