Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

20 years ago, futurologists were going on about "Living on Thin Air" and the "Weightless Economy". Digitisation would do away with the need for material resources. It was always magical thinking. But now the brutal reality is really hitting home. theguardian.com/technology/202…

The media sucked it up like a sponge, uncritically promoting the idea that future growth would have scarcely any environmental cost. Some of us called it out as BS (Anita Roddick was especially good at doing so). We were, of course, dismissed as "doomsters".

Magical thinking is a common trait among both economists and journalists. It's a result of being detached from material realities (such as planetary boundaries): realities they reduce to abstractions and then airily dismiss.
These are extremely dangerous people.

We're now seeing similar levels of BS about electric cars. There's a near-consensus in the media and in government that they're the answer to the environmental costs of passenger transport. But they require extraction and disposal of new materials on an Earth-shattering scale.

What we need instead are new ways of approaching transport. Starting with: how do we reduce the need to travel? The 15-Minute City is a good example.
Then: how do we move people with the minimum number of journeys? See Alan Storkey's coach system: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

New technologies can help us address our environmental crisis. But they are not a magic wand. The most effective innovations are social, political and organisational.
It's about reimagining the system from first principles. Not releasing a herd of wifi-enabled unicorns.