So the first question comes from another Richard who says, I was struck by Richard's assessment

in the interview that the only way forward was a steady state economy combined with

international redistribution. I think there's a positive version of this, and I'm thinking

of David Graber's caring economy. I wonder if Richard could go into more detail about this and how we convince

Western consumers to shift our values in order to build a sustainable economy. There's a lot of

different layers to that. I want to start with the bit about Western consumers because I don't

think that's where the axis of our choice and our power lies.

As consumers, we actually have very little power because,

generally speaking, you take what you're given.

I know that there's a question coming up about Amir Srinivasan,

but we can preempt that

by saying that our desires are to some extent composed for us in the register of what

Lakan called the other. So, you know, if we start off with Western consumers, we're just

going to end up shadowing at people about buying out of season fruit

and therefore contributing to airplane emissions throughout the year.

I think if we talk about this as a democratic problem, in other words, there is a planet that is at risk of dying.

I'm talking metonymically there because actually it's not the planet that will die.

But there's a risk that the Vernadsky and biosphere, which I don't know, maybe about 90 kilometers deep, depending on how you measure it, in which there is life, could be snuffed out as a result of human action. And we're all implicated in this, and humans uniquely have the capacity, the potential,

to do something about this.

And one might argue that we have a responsibility of stewardship in this sense.

Now, what can we do about it given that all the major decisions about technologies and all

the major decisions about investments are in the hands of either private sector investors

...