The global consumer-capitalist machine is well-programmed to consume the planet in its quest to produce ever-more stuff. Avoiding pollution is incompatible with its present functioning. If we want to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions we need to know how to get inside the machine and turn it off, or transform it.

The 2024 State of the Climate Report begins:

We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.

Like so many warnings over recent decades, this one has been widely ignored, despite its completely clear and blunt message that the climate threat could hardly be more dire: ‘the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled’.

Given the context of still-rising greenhouse gas emissions and increasing numbers and intensities of climate-related disasters, many of them widely reported, we can safely conclude that nothing our rulers have been doing will stop our accelerating rush towards the abyss. We need to find an approach that actually works, and people to implement it.

It is no use just to decry the venality and timidity of politicians, nor the greed of CEOs. We need to understand why they don’t change their ways. Even if the CEOs wished to change, they seem unable to. Elon Musk has said ‘artificial intelligence’ (so........

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