THE NEW GLOBAL POSSIBLE

Net zero will require technological innovation, government coordination, urban planning, and steady amelioration of poverty and inequality, according to this far-reaching manifesto on climate policy.

Dasgupta, the president of the World Resources Institute, warns that decarbonization is flagging and urges a systematic transition to a green economy based on several key themes, which he illustrates with concrete examples. New technologies must be created, he asserts, citing WRI’s development of satellite systems to monitor deforestation, a driver of rising emissions. Cities will be “laboratories for change,” Dasgupta forecasts, from rapid-transit bus schemes to crafting “15-minute cities” that provide everything residents need within a 15-minute walk. The author argues that decarbonization must prioritize the needs of Indigenous people, poor communities, the Global South, and displaced workers, and he suggests that rich nations contribute to a climate adaptation fund for developing countries. Dasgupta finally posits that decarbonization can be an economic boon and extols Green New Deal programs like Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Walmart’s experiment with stores that lower emissions using LEDs, green rooftops, and auxiliary power supplies, all while improving efficiency and cutting costs. Dasgupta’s treatise is a wide-ranging, ambitious call to action, with many urgent, perhaps impossible, targets. (“To avoid the worst climate impacts, the world must slash emissions 43 percent by 2030…relative to 2019 levels,” he writes—a tall order given that global emissions are still rising.) Fortunately, he makes his case compelling with real-world specifics and stories of leaders who achieved remarkable progress with limited means, like Wangari Maathai, who won a Nobel Prize for her grassroots tree-planting campaign in Kenya. Dasgupta explains it all in straightforward and very readable prose that cuts the wonkery with empathy. (“I understand the helplessness when people ask, ‘Does it really matter if I give up meat?’ or ‘Will switching to an electric vehicle even make a difference?’ And yet the answer is always: Yes, it does matter.”) Readers daunted by the scale of the climate emergency will find much stimulating food for thought here.

An incisive, inspiring call to combat climate change.