Climate change - a rare opportunity?

The fossil fuel age changed every detail of western human life – where we lived, how we travelled (and how much), what we ate, how our economies worked.

But there were two changes in particular that it wrought – huge changes. Changes so huge they redefine the meaning of huge. One is physical – the sudden onset of a rapid warming that will change the very geography of the planet in almost unbelievable fashion over the next century. We live on a different earth already, and it is going to get worse fast. Way worse. The other is psychological – cheap fossil fuel tipped the balance in the modern mind between self as individual and self as member of community. It made us different people. Worse people. And so here’s the good news – fighting either problem means fighting them both. We’ve been backed into a...

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