What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.

That's what's happening now. The world is being held up a mirror: "All roads lead here. Do you like it?" A lot of people don't like it. A lot of people are saying, "Wait a minute, if our system can produce that, there's something wrong with this system." That opening is ours to seize. It matters how we name it: It's not called Donald Trump. It's called capitalism.

Indeed the three policy pillars of the neoliberal age-privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending-are each incompatible with many of the actions we must take to bring our emissions to safe levels.

When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?

Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change.

In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality.

The anti-war movement should turn itself into a pro-democracy movement