The science tells us that policymakers and investors have so far been wrong to advocate so strongly for mechanical carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) solutions to the detriment of biological ones. The fate of future generations is at stake, and we cannot afford to waste both time and money on techno-fixes that are ineffective at achieving our climate goals.

Sure, the end of economic expansion and population growth is a challenging prospect. But it’s not nearly as daunting as the crisis we are setting up for ourselves if we continue to destroy nature through wasteful consumption and pollution. China’s slowdown is a welcome opportunity to get our priorities straight and set ourselves on a path of sustainable happiness and wellbeing.

Despite all the renewable energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That’s largely due to economic growth. Indeed, as Richard Heinberg writes, the more the world economy grows, the harder it is for additions of renewable energy to turn the tide by actually replacing energy from fossil fuels, rather than just adding to it.

If the energy transition is the biggest technical challenge ever, it is also the biggest social, economic, and political challenge in human history. It may also turn out to be an enormous geopolitical challenge, if nations end up fighting over access to the minerals and metals that will be the enablers of the energy transition.

Similar to the two navigational hazards mythologized as sea monsters in ancient Greece which gave rise to sayings such as “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” modern energy policy has its own Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand is the requirement to maintain sufficient energy flows to avoid economic peril.

With the conservation of resources will come the necessity to stabilize and reduce human populations. The challenging reality is that making society sustainable will require a large-scale reform of governments and economic systems, and the use of mechanisms of authority to apply penalties and offer incentives.