I have a feeling that no one here has read the full article. The most I have seen is "by the fourth word I knew it was a loser".

While most of the article is indeed dedicated to "works [that] tend to be of the techno-futurist variety", a significant portion of the article is dedicated to voices ciritical of this type of optimism:

To emphasize a cheerier one, examples tend to be cherry picked or gently massaged. A section in Ritchie’s book argues, correctly, that deaths from extreme weather events are fewer than they were in the past. But this section all but ignores the fact that extreme weather events are becoming more severe and more frequent, a trend that will continue even if harmful emissions are slowed. And it ignores any deaths from extreme heat, which Ritchie attributed, in conversation, to the insufficiency of the data.

The journalist Jeff Goodell has studied that data. The title of his recent book, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” suggests a more sober perspective. (In conversation, he described himself as broadly bullish about the climate crisis, which came as a surprise.) He wanted to use his storytelling, he said, not necessarily to inspire hope or even anger, but to communicate what the planet faces. “Because you can’t talk about solutions until you understand the scope and scale,” he said. He is also skeptical, he said, of much of the sunny, solutions-minded messaging.

“It makes it feel like climate change is like a broken leg, “ he said. “With a broken leg, you’re in a cast for six or eight weeks. You suffer some pain, then you go back into your old life.” He doesn’t believe that’s the case here.

“We’re not going to fix this,” he said. “It’s going to be how do we manage to live in this new world.”

Another excerpt:

Can a better future arrive without political intervention? Fisher doesn’t think so. Her book, “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action,” which she describes as a “data driven manifesto,” posits a world in which climate shocks become so great that they spur mass protest and force government and industry to transition to clean energy. “It’s the most realistically hopeful way to think about where we get to the other side of the climate crisis,” she said.

That realism imagines a future of food scarcity, water scarcity, climate-spurred migration and increasing incidences of extreme weather. Fisher also predicts some level of mass death. “There’s no question that there are going to be lives lost,” she said. “Already lives are being lost.” Which may not sound especially optimistic. But Fisher’s research has taught her to believe in, as she terms it, “people power.” She has found that people who have had a visceral experience of climate change are more likely to be angry and active rather than doomy and depressed.

“The whole point of apocalyptic optimism is being optimistic in a way that actually helps get us somewhere,” she said. “It’s not shiny and rosy and like cotton candy. It’s a bitter pill. But here we are and we can still do something.” In this sense, hope is a spur, a prod, an uncomfortable goad. And imagining a better future is a brave and even necessary act.

My takeaway is that it does try to investigate the question at least, and not as an endorsement of that "techno-futurist" optimism. But more than anything, it pulls up different voices and then does the whole "who knows who is right?" that is so prevalent in Western journalism trying to be neutral.

I feel like people in this instance are jumping to conclusions based off first impressions and presumptions. Presumptions that happened to be incorrect this time. This may come across as me defending the NYT as a whole to some, which isn't my intention. I just find it disappointing when people are making points that are brought up in the article itself and those are made by all the others as well. No one has talked about the critical voices mentioned, and how right or wrong they are, which could be an interesting discussion. Instead people are all rehashing the familiar talking points against the techno-optimism stuff (which are valid!), and it all feels kinda stale.