The consensus is that climate change ranks along with nuclear warfare as the top two risks facing human civilization.

Technology is a many-headed monster and perhaps it would be better to regress to a safer past and avoid technological change; it is tempting to think like that.

The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge.

While denial leads to certainty, it is only the certainty of death. This is true for individuals and also for civilizations.

We have to remove the CO2 that the industrial economy has already emitted, which otherwise will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and alter the Earth's climate irreversibly. It is possible to do this.

We have used the majority of our carbon budget and we are already at dangerous levels of CO2 concentrations, about 400 parts per million. The levels were 250 before industrialization. So the problem is what we have done already and, therefore, what must be undone.

The change in economic values created by the new markets for global public goods will reorient our global economy and under the right conditions can usher the satisfaction of basic needs of the present and of the future. This is what is needed right now.