Thinking through climate change

With Biden still on the brink of victory, I am planning a morning hike with the boys. Before that however, I got a chance to read a bit in Adam Briggle’s book “Thinking through climate change”. On the cover I found strong endorsements by both Steve Fuller and Daniel Sarewitz which immediately made me curious. While the book has its fair share of esoteric thinking dressed up in scientific jargon, it is not your run-of-the-mill volume criticising “capitalism” and it definitely warrants a closer reading. Having said that, the book occasionally buys into the same tired moralizing paradigm that has made progress on climate change so difficult:

“But I bicycle anyways, because it is a way of putting skin in the game. To feel the hills in my legs rather than to have them hidden under the gas pedal is a way to feel the reality of our situation. The moral imagination we are trying to expand requires us to fight against the forgetfulness a high-energy life encourages”

I bike too. But I do not see it in any way as related to the planetary process of climate change mitigation. I guess I have watched too many episodes of StarTrek but the point is that we should seek a future in which we can be precisely "forgetful" about energy as technological emancipation, rather than lifestyle moralism, holds the key to saving nature.