“Sweeping” seems to be a favorite adjective of those who have moved into the “it’s too late to do anything anyway” stage. As Doctorow writes, the policy change

“Sweeping” seems to be a favorite adjective of those who have moved into the “it’s too late to do anything anyway” stage. As Doctorow writes, the policy changes didn’t have to be sweeping if we’d started in 1977. But we didn’t. Now all the remaining options will upturn someone’s lives. It’s just a question of balancing the effects to achieve something better than the current path which means sweeping catastrophe for our children.