Similarly, we are now promised even more astonishing “disruptive” innovations and AI-driven “solutions.” The reality is that any sufficiently effective steps will be decidedly non-magical, gradual, and costly. We have been transforming the environment on increasing scales and with rising intensity for millennia, and we have derived many benefits from these changes—but, inevitably, the biosphere has suffered. There are ways to reduce those impacts but the resolve to deploy them at required scales has been lacking, and if we start acting in a sufficiently effective manner (and this now requires
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