THERE is a hole in the green imagination about 20 years away. In the short term—the next ten years, say—the environmentalists’ vision is usually of a world similar to this one with a bit less of one thing (carbon dioxide) and a bit more of a panoply of others (windmills, forests, smartgrids and the like). In the far off future of 2050 and beyond, the world is meant to look very different indeed. Carbon-dioxide emissions should, by then, be less than half what they are now; in today’s rich countries they should have fallen by 90% or so. This means entirely new infrastructures and technologies, and perhaps entirely new ways of life, too.
www.economist.com/node/16266900