persuasion

IT IS FREQUENTLY CLAIMED that the human species already possesses the know-how to avert the direst consequences of climate change and environmental collapse – it’s now simply a matter of deploying this know-how.

And if humanity does navigate the perilous 21st century, history might one day reflect how a change in attitudes and behaviours allowed those deployments to proceed. In other words, a future history’s key topic would answer this question: How did we manage to persuade ourselves to stop destroying the planet?