http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/climate_change/time-to-end-the-multigenerational-ponzi-scheme
*Y'know, he's a science fiction writer, and he's never lacked for out-there visionary brio either, but he is really, really trying to talk coherent practical sense to the unwitting public here. I'd give him a medal, if I had a medal to give.
"Given this analysis, what are my suggestions?
"Believe in science.
"Believe in government, remembering always that it is of the people, by the people, and for the people, and crucial in the current situation.
"Support a really strong follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol.
"Institute carbon cap-and-trade systems.
"Impose a carbon tax designed to charge for the real costs of burning carbon.
"Follow the full “Green New Deal” program now coming together in discussions by the Obama administration.
"Structure global economic policy to reward rapid transitions from carbon-burning to carbon-neutral technologies.
"Support the full slate of human rights everywhere, even in countries that claim such justice is not part of their tradition.
"Support global universal education as part of human-rights advocacy.
"Dispense with all magical, talismanic phrases such as “free markets” and promote a larger systems analysis that is more empirical, without fundamentalist biases.
"Encourage all business schools to include foundational classes in ecology, environmental economics, biology, and history.
"Start programs at these same schools in postcapitalist studies.
"Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it’s really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future—as if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed...".
