| In a tumultuous week for Donald Trump, now facing an impeachment inquiry, the U.S. president still found time to mock teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg after she excoriated world leaders for their inaction on climate change ("How dare you!") in an angry speech at the United Nations. "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future," Trump tweeted sarcastically. In an ideal world, of course, we wouldn't need a 16-year-old girl with pigtails to shame adult politicians into doing their jobs. The depressing reality, though, is that the best efforts of world leaders so far—the Paris climate accords—may not be enough to head off a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius above their pre-industrial revolution levels. And climate change is but one of a legion of threats to our civilization that include the depletion of aquifers, soil erosion, light pollution, the decline of bee populations and seaborne plastic waste. A UN report highlighted the heating of oceans that endangers the lives of hundreds of millions of people along coastlines—like Houstonians still cleaning up after catastrophic flooding earlier this month (below). In addition to rising seas and unprecedented storms, global warming is also causing ocean acidification, helping speed the demise of what lives beneath the surface.  Trump's White House has no issues with a bit of extra warmth. In fact, some administration officials seem to welcome the prospect of balmier days, pushing the debunked narrative that the planet is emerging from a "Little Ice Age" and about to enjoy temperatures that once nourished farming in Greenland and vineyards in England. This sort of reasoning, rejected by scientists as a misunderstanding of what were regional phenomenons, explains why a recent report from the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, seeking to justify oil drilling in the Arctic, could boldly assert that "There is not a climate crisis." Trump may actually believe that Thunberg and her peers will inherit a better Earth. The millions of young protesters who poured into the streets of cities around the world last week have more sense. It is this shifting consciousness—a shared understanding among an entire generation that we are hurtling toward disaster—that is forcing energy companies to ignore the White House and go with science. "It doesn't matter whether it's real, or not real, or what the issues are," the Washington Post quoted fossil fuel industry lawyer Mark Barron telling a recent closed-door meeting of oil and gas executives. "That ship has sailed from a political perspective." A similar dynamic is at work in the auto industry, too.  Will technology save the day? U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has his doubts about tech in general; beware "pink-eyed terminators" and "terrifying limbless chickens," he warned the UN General Assembly, summoning his signature comic absurdity to make a point about the dangers of techno-optimism. More seriously, German Chancellor Angela Merkel thinks that Thunberg (above) has "underplayed the role of technology" in coming up with solutions, including in the area of energy-saving, that will enable countries to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords. To Thunberg and her fellow activists, this misses the point. They're not interested in engineering marvels that will extend an economic model predicated on ever-increasing consumption and growth. In their view, growth is the problem, not the solution. "People are dying; entire ecosystems are collapsing," Thunberg scolded her audience of elders in New York. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!" The rise of "de-growth" Intellectually, Thunberg is in good company. In his book "Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities," the Czech-Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil declares that growth must end in richer parts of the world, or rather "de-growth" must begin. A reversion to plainer lifestyles that countries like Sweden and Canada enjoyed a few decades ago (before jetting off thousands of miles for a weekend holiday was an option) will allow poorer countries like Ethiopia to catch up, Smil says. He points out the obvious: Infinite growth is impossible in a finite world. If all of humanity consumed like Americans, we'd need the regenerative resources of another four or five planets. In destroying the ecosystem and marginalizing wild animals, he writes, the human species has become a race of "super predators." None of this has given pause to Trump and other climate change deniers. Indeed, right-wing commentators launched vicious attacks at Thunberg following her UN speech. One called the schoolgirl, who has Asperger's syndrome, a "mentally ill Swedish child." Another compared her likeness to Nazi imagery. Thunberg, however, flung Trump's mockery back at him: her Twitter profile now reads: "A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future." _______________________________________________________________ Like Turning Points? Subscribe to Bloomberg.com. You'll get our unmatched global news coverage and two premium daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close, and much, much more. See our limited-time introductory offer. The best in-depth reporting from Asia Pacific and beyond , delivered to your inbox every Friday. Sign up here for The Reading List , a new weekly email. Download the Bloomberg app: It's available for iOS and Android. | 
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