How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bulldozer

demanding that governments set up regulatory structures in which new technologies can succeed. Are political leaders focusing on the biggest sources of emissions and the toughest technical challenges? Are they talking about grid-scale energy storage, electrofuels, nuclear fusion, carbon capture, and zero-carbon cement and steel?

For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize—switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fue