The trajectory of Green Progress hurtles us along a track where resources will be consumed to maintain a style of life, albeit “green,” that we instead need to abandon. Why for example do we need bullet trains? Why not direct a fraction of the money needed to build bullet trains and refurbish track and rolling stock of the already-in-place Amtrak lines? And instead of speed the goal, have an affordable, pleasurable experience be the purpose for train travel.

You see, the real downside of the green-profit narrative has been that it created the assumption in many people’s minds that the solution to climate change and other environmental dilemmas is technical, and that policy makers and industrialists will implement it for us, so that the way we live doesn’t need to change in any fundamental way. That’s never been true. The sooner we get that through our heads, the more time we will have to get used to living happily within limits—without nature imposing those limits in ways that aren’t so pleasant.

Thomas Sankara’s revolutionary government regulated the mining sector, limiting multinational companies ability to plunder Burkina Faso’s rich gold resources.