Options and Prospects for a Global Low-Carbon Transition

Abstract

Humanity faces a stark option: revolutionary transformation or potential collapse and social disintegration. This chapter explores prospects for choosing benign pathways over the latter. It begins by summarising the argument of the book and then focuses on how more robust political economy approaches can be fostered, looking at the role of the state, its relationship to market actors and the essential need for an activist civil society, within guardrails of justice and social ethics. Section three examines what could be done to keep to the pathways laid out in the face of setbacks and obstacles such as the election of Trump in the US. It also examines the conditions being created by the Paris Agreement and what can be done to strengthen the resilience of the process.