I’m less than a fifth through A. C. Grayling’s For the Good of the World and already I’m in awe of the way he pithily encapsulates realities (p. 35).
Broadly speaking, the options available to humanity are: either break the negative version of the self-interest Law (what can be done will not be done) by radically switching direction from a growth model to a sustainability model of economic activity, or make the decoupling agenda work — that is, find the fixes that would make renewable energy cheap and plentiful, would remove and safely store the excess CO2e in the atmosphere, and would positively incentivize doing both. At time of writing the first option is not in play and the second is a mixture of insufficiencies and wishful thinking.
His words strike true. I see economists and philosophers arguing for radical decoupling but there is no evidence for any change or appetite for change to ”growth as king.” Bill Gates is the obvious barometer of the ”fixes” approach, and sure, we can see renewable heading south in terms of unit costs, but the pace is too slow and the process is muddied by technological mirages on offer.