Here’s the story about climate that we liberals like to tell ourselves: once we get rid of dinosaur politicians like Trump, we’ll take on the fossil-fuel lobby and greedy corporations and vote through a “green new deal”.
It will fund clean, fast-growing industries: solar, wind, electric vehicles, sustainable clothes. That will be a win-win: we can green our societies and keep consuming. This story is called “green growth”.
Unfortunately, green growth probably doesn’t exist — at least not for the next couple of decades, during which time we’ll have to cut most of our carbon emissions to keep the planet habitable. Our generation has to choose: we can be green or we can have growth, but we can’t have both together.