Saving the World From Bad Ideas

Can technology save us from environmental collapse — or is it just another false promise? 
In this epic conversation, Mark Lynas sits down with Adam Dorr, Director of Research at RethinkX and author of The Degrowth Delusion, to explore four simultaneous technological revolutions reshaping our world: energy (solar, wind, batteries), transportation (EVs and autonomous vehicles), food (precision fermentation), and labor (AI).

🧠 Topics Discussed:
💡 Technology as "practical knowledge" and how it compounds autocatalytically (self-accelerating)
📈 S-curve adoption and X-curve decline: Why disruptions happen in 15-20 years, not centuries⚡
Solar, wind, batteries (SWB): Now the cheapest electricity ever, with near-zero marginal cost
🌞 Why massive solar overbuilding beats battery storage (the Clean Energy U-curve)
📦 Modularity advantage: Solar/batteries work from wristwatches to gigawatt plants
🔌 From scarcity to super-abundance: Rethinking efficiency as "use what's available" not "use less"
🚗 EVs and autonomous vehicles: Battery breakthroughs and transportation-as-a-service
🥩 Precision fermentation and cellular agriculture: 10-100x more efficient than animal farming
🏛️ Political resistance: GMO bans, cellular meat bans, and horseshoe theory opposition
🤖 The fourth disruption: AI replacing cognitive, operator, and general human labor
💼 Post-labor economics: Universal basic income, luxury services, and navigating abundance
🌍 Why abundance makes allocation easier than scarcity (and nobody has all the answers yet)
⚛️ AI existential risk vs opportunity: Superintelligence as doom or salvation?
🌟 Star Trek vs Terminator: Which future will we choose?
👨‍🏫 Guest Bio:
Adam Dorr is Director of Research at RethinkX, a nonprofit think tank analyzing technology disruption. He authored The Degrowth Delusion: Dispelling One of History's Truly Terrible Ideas and researches energy, food, transportation, and labor disruption. He's also a science fiction author exploring superintelligence and humanity's cosmic future.
📚 Recommended Reading & Resources:
● The Degrowth Delusion — Adam Dorr
● RethinkX research reports⁠ https://www.rethinkx.com⁠
● Clayton Christensen — The Innovator's Dilemma
● Tony Seba and disruption theory⁠ https://tonyseba.com⁠
● Mark Lynas — Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet⁠ https://www.marklynas.org/books/six-degrees/⁠💬
Quote Highlights:
"Life is unequivocally better on almost every indicator you care to measure than it was historically — life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy, everything down the line." — Adam Dorr
"The more energy we have available, the more abundant energy is, the more useful things we can do to garner prosperity." — Adam Dorr
"My team has documented more than 1,700 instances of new technologies spreading like wildfire once they catch — it only takes 15 to 20 years." — Adam Dorr
"Solar panels just sit there and happily make electricity for decades at near zero marginal cost. They really are a marvelous technology." — Adam Dorr
"We're headed into a world of fantastic abundance. That means hugely expanding our capacity to restore ecologies we've damaged." — Adam Dorr
"Our environmental issues are not an epic struggle of good versus evil. They are just problems. And problems are solvable with the right tools. Now for the first time in history, we finally have the tools we need." — Adam Dorr
🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human progress. Learn more at weplanet.org
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Can we really solve climate change just by fixing energy — and ignore food? 
In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with Bruce Friedrich, founder and President of the Good Food Institute, to tackle Bad Idea #37: “Solving energy is enough for solving climate.”
Bruce argues that focusing exclusively on decarbonising energy while ignoring food systems is one of the biggest blind spots in climate policy.
From antibiotic resistance and zoonotic disease to geopolitics, national security, and the S-curve of technological change, this conversation makes the case that the protein transition must stand alongside the energy transition if we’re serious about saving the planet.

🧠 Topics Discussed:
● ⚡ Why decarbonising energy alone only solves about half the climate problem
● 🍖 Global meat demand: why “eat less meat” has never worked
● 🌍 Land use, deforestation, and rewilding at planetary scale ● 🧫 Cultivated meat, fermentation, and next-generation plant proteins
● 📉 The inefficiency of feeding crops to animals
● 🦠 Antibiotic resistance and industrial animal agriculture
● 🦆 Pandemic risk and zoonotic spillover from livestock systems
● 🐟 Cultivated seafood and the future of ocean recovery
● 📈 The protein S-curve and lessons from solar, EVs, and the internet
● 🏛️ Why government support matters — and where it’s already happening
● 🇨🇳🇮🇳 China, India, and the geopolitics of alternative proteins
● 🌱 Farmers, land sparing, and the future of agriculture
● 🌎 Food security, resilience, and feeding a growing world
👨‍🏫 Guest Bio:
Bruce Friedrich is the founder and President of the Good Food Institute (GFI), a global non-profit accelerating the transition to alternative proteins. He has worked for more than three decades at the intersection of food, climate, and innovation. Bruce is the author of Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food and Our Future, and a leading global advocate for plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat as climate, biodiversity, and food-security solutions.
📚 Recommended Reading & Resources:
● Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food and Our Future
● Good Food Institute
● GFI Europe
● SYSTEMIQ & Good Food Institute – The Protein Transition: Pathways to Lower Climate, Land, and Water Impacts
● What’s Cooking? (UNEP alternative proteins report)
● Livestock’s Long Shadow (FAO)
● World Resources Institute: Creating a Sustainable Food Future
● IIASA land-use & food systems research
● Our World in Data: Meat and dairy production
● UNEP & ILRI: Preventing the Next Pandemic

💬 Quote Highlights:
“Focusing on energy alone while ignoring food is like lifting your foot off the accelerator — but keeping it on the highway to hell.”
“If alternative proteins reach 50%, we could free more land than the entire Amazon rainforest.”
“People aren’t going to give up meat — so we need to change how meat is made.”
“This isn’t a moral problem. It’s a science and engineering problem.”
“The protein transition is one of the most tractable climate solutions we have.”

🌐 About WePlanet:WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human well-being. Learn more at https://weplanet.org

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Is the 1.5°C temperature target helping or hindering climate action? In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with his co-authors Kwesi Quagraine (climate scientist at NCAR) and Erle Ellis (professor at University of Maryland Baltimore County) to discuss their groundbreaking new paper published in Nature that proposes a complete rethinking of how we measure climate progress.
The team argues that global average temperature targets — the organizing principle of climate policy since Paris 2015 — are intangible, unactionable, and increasingly counterproductive now that we've essentially crossed the 1.5°C threshold. Instead, they propose the Clean Energy Shift (CES) — a simple, measurable metric that tracks how fast clean energy is displacing fossil fuels in real time.

🧠 Topics Discussed:
🌡️ Why global average temperature targets are intangible and don't translate into clear policy actions
🔢 The problem with "1.5 to stay alive": What happens when you cross a threshold framed as a limit of safety?
📊 Introducing the Clean Energy Shift (CES): Growth rate of clean energy minus growth rate of total energy demand
🔌 Why clean energy is now the cheapest option in most developing countries
🌍 How regional climate impacts differ dramatically from global average temperature (Africa vs Europe vs small islands)
🎯 Why "percent clean energy" should replace temperature as our north star metric (aiming for 100%)
📉 The challenge of measuring energy: Primary vs useful energy, and why efficiency gains complicate the numbers
⚡ Heat pumps, electric vehicles, and electrification:
💡 Why clean energy shift creates positive competition between countries (not just climate guilt)
🗳️ Why clean energy targets need to enter UNFCCC discussions alongside temperature goals
🔬 The data challenge: Why IEA and others need to release standardized, open-access energy data
📐 The paradox of our time: Passing "safety limits" while developing real solutions
🔭 The narrative shift from "avoid catastrophe" to "build clean energy abundance"

👨‍🏫 Guest Bios:
Kwesi Quagraine is a climate scientist at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) and former senior lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where he taught physics, meteorology, and atmospheric science. Originally from Ghana, Kwesi brings vital perspectives on how climate policy impacts developing nations and expertise in climate modeling, including solar radiation management research.
Erle Ellis is a professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. His work with the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report focuses on aspirational indicators for making a better future. Erle has spent decades studying global environmental change and teaching students how human societies interact with planetary systems.

📚 Recommended Reading & Resources:
● The Clean Energy Shift paper — Quagraine, Ellis, Lynas et al. (Nature, 2025) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00246-z
● Michael Liebreich — "The Pragmatic Climate Reset" essay Part 1 / Part 2
● EMBER energy data and analysis https://ember-climate.org
● International Energy Agency (IEA) energy statistics https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics
● Mark Lynas — Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet https://www.marklynas.org/books/six-degrees/
● WMO (World Meteorological Organization) temperature data https://wmo.int/topics/climate
● Paris Agreement (2015) — text and NDC framework https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human progress. Learn more at weplanet.org

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Is “degrowth” a noble environmental solution — or one of history’s truly terrible ideas? In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with Adam Dorr, Director of Research at RethinkX and author of The Degrowth Delusion: Dispelling One of History’s Truly Terrible Ideas.
Dorr argues that degrowth — the increasingly popular environmental movement calling for economic contraction — meets every criterion of a “Truly Terrible Idea”: it sounds virtuous, promises the moon, spreads easily, appeals especially to the young, and catastrophically backfires when implemented.
Mark and Adam explore why degrowth misunderstands economic growth itself, why material “stuff” is not the same as value, how technological progress consistently decouples prosperity from environmental harm, and why shrinking the global economy could never solve climate change — and would instead cause mass deprivation, collapse, and tyranny.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet,” this conversation will challenge your assumptions. And it lays the groundwork for next episode’s deep dive into the optimistic, data-driven alternative: a future where humanity and nature both thrive.
🧠 Topics Discussed:
💡 What makes an idea a “Truly Terrible Idea” (TTI) — and why degrowth qualifies

🌍 Why degrowth’s core logic (“too many people consuming too much”) is seductive but false

📉 Why “infinite growth on a finite planet” misunderstands value, not stuff

🐎 How technological progress (e.g., cars replacing horses, digital replacing film) eliminates old harms

🔌 Why degrowth would block the very innovations (solar, EVs, biotech) that solve environmental problems

🔥 The “house on fire” analogy: why reducing emissions 50% still leaves the house burning

📉 GDP vs wellbeing: is economic growth actually correlated with human development?

🌐 Why degrowth is a luxury belief seldom embraced by people who’ve experienced real poverty

😡 The role of resentment, pessimism and misanthropy in the appeal of degrowth

🏛️ Why degrowth requires authoritarian state control and cannot be implemented democratically

🤝 The win–win path: how technology enables prosperity and ecological restoration

🔭 Why environmentalism desperately needs a credible, optimistic, tech-enabled vision of the future

👨‍🏫 Guest Bio:Adam Dorr is the Director of Research at RethinkX, a nonprofit think tank analyzing how new technologies disrupt existing systems. He is the lead author of The Degrowth Delusion, a sweeping critique of degrowth ideology and a roadmap for a technologically enabled, sustainable future. Dorr’s work spans energy, food, transportation, and long-term civilizational pathways.
📚 Recommended Reading & Resources: ● The Degrowth Delusion — Adam Dorr
● RethinkX research reports (energy, food, transport disruptions)
● Studies on GDP vs Human Development Index (UNDP)
● The Limits to Growth: Malthus and the Classical Economists
● Steven Pinker — Enlightenment Now
● Literature on zero-sum vs non-zero-sum thinking
💬 Quote Highlights:
“Truly terrible ideas don’t die out on their own — they must be actively refuted.” — Adam Dorr
“It’s not that we need to do less — it’s that we need to do better.” — Adam Dorr
“There is no sustainable amount of fire. Reducing emissions by half still leaves your house burning.” — Adam Dorr
“Poverty is not virtuous. It is not something to aspire to. To believe otherwise is a failure of compassion.” — Adam Dorr
“Technology is the only way we have a rational, data-driven basis for optimism.” — Adam Dorr

🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human progress. Learn more at weplanet.org
📥 Join the Conversation
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Welcome to season three of Saving The World From BAD IDEAS
Bad Idea #35: ‘THIS is the Future’ Why Forecasts Fail – with David Wallace-Wells

In the season three opener of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with David Wallace-Wells, New York Times columnist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth, to tackle a deceptively simple bad idea: the belief that we can predict the future with confidence.
David explains how even sophisticated models can be wildly sensitive to small assumptions, drawing on examples from climate economics and the pandemic era, when many expert forecasts failed to anticipate outcomes even a couple of weeks ahead. The conversation moves from climate targets and energy transitions to the psychology of “normalisation”, the social aftershocks of COVID, and the way politics can swing dramatically with small changes in public mood.
The result is a wide-ranging, clear-eyed discussion about uncertainty, risk, and how to stay serious about climate and democracy without pretending the future comes with a reliable timetable.
🧠 Topics Discussed:
Why long-range climate and economic modelling can hinge on fragile assumptions

What COVID forecasting revealed about the limits of near-term prediction

How humility about uncertainty gets weaponised by those who want inaction

David’s shift since The Uninhabitable Earth: less apocalyptic certainty, more systems thinking

Faster-than-expected clean energy rollout, and the stubborn unknowns around fossil retirement

“Normalisation” as a human superpower, and as a moral failure when disasters fade from view

The post-pandemic social hangover: loss of trust, atomisation, and the politics of public health

Vaccine backlash, the contradictions inside “anti-establishment” health coalitions, and what might endure

Why the “world is drifting inexorably right” narrative misses how messy politics really is

A cautious look toward 2050: warming, geopolitics, AI hype cycles, and nuclear risk

👩‍🏫 Guest Bio:
David Wallace-Wells is a journalist, writer, and weekly columnist at The New York Times. He rose to global prominence with his 2017 essay “The Uninhabitable Earth”, later expanded into the bestselling book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. His work spans climate change, politics, and the social consequences of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Penguin Random House)

David Wallace-Wells, “After Climate Alarmism” (New York Magazine, 2021)

Martin L. Weitzman, “Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change” (Review of Environmental Economics and Policy)

💬 Quote Highlights:“Everything we think we know about where we’re heading is bedevilled by epistemic problems.” David Wallace Wells
“The future is more manageable than what we feared, though the system is still full of unknowns.” David Wallace Wells
“We normalise a lot, and that will govern a lot of our climate future.” David Wallace Wells
“Every small shift in the vibes feels permanent, until a few weeks later it doesn’t.” David Wallace Wells
“Treating one percent per year as a precise forecast feels abstracted from how decisions actually get made.”
David Wallace Wells

🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement advancing bold, evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and prosperity. We challenge bad ideas and champion better ones, grounded in human wellbeing and ecological restoration. Learn more at weplanet.org.

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