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Climate despair is all wrong. The idea that economic growth and climate action are incompatible may sound hardheaded and realistic, but it’s actually a fuzzy-minded misconception. If we ever get past the special interests and ideology that have blocked action to save the planet, we’ll find that it’s cheaper and easier than almost anyone imagines.

Allowing Cubans to sign cellphone contracts helped swell the state coffers but gave citizens a tool for information and communication. Every little move toward flexibility has provided some economic relief to the administration and, simultaneously, a relative loss of control.

“Raúlist reforms.” The octogenarian leader appears to know that if he speeds up change, the entire sociopolitical model could dismantle before his eyes. While he keeps delivering the same message and proclaiming that changes are “for more socialism,” the reality makes it clear that Cuba is transitioning to a sort of capitalism exempt of labor rights and civic freedom.

A growing number of Cubans build their own receivers to enjoy television programming from Florida. Copies of those shows, popularly known as “the package,” are distributed on USB sticks or external hard drives by clandestine networks.

Every morning as a child, I'd watch thousands of men walk down that hill to work in the shipyard. I'd watch those same men walking back home every night. It has to be said, the shipyard was not the most pleasant place to live next door to, or indeed work in. The shipyard was noisy, dangerous, highly toxic, with an appalling health and safety record. 2:34 Despite that, the men and women who worked on those ships were extraordinarily proud of the work they did, and justifiably so. Some of the largest vessels ever constructed on planet Earth were built right at the end of my street.

He said, "What the hell are you gonna do?" ♪ 11:23 ♪ I said, "Anything but this!" ♪ 11:26 ♪ These dead man's boots know their way down the hill ♪ 11:29 ♪ They can walk there themselves and they probably will ♪ 11:32 ♪ But they won't walk with me ‘cause I'm off the other way ♪ 11:35 ♪ I've had it up to here, I'm gonna have my say ♪ 11:37 ♪ When all you've got left is that cross on the wall ♪ 11:40 ♪ I want nothing from you, I want nothing at all ♪ 11:43 ♪ Not a pension, nor a pittance, when your whole life is through ♪ 11:46 ♪ Get this through your head, I'm nothing like you ♪ 11:49 ♪ I'm done with all the arguments, there'll be no more disputes ♪ 11:54 ♪ And you'll die before you see me in your dead man's boots ♪

So the procession is moving at a stately pace down my street, and as it approaches my house, I start to wave my flag vigorously, and there is the Queen Mother. I see her, and she seems to see me. She acknowledges me. She waves, and she smiles. And I wave my flag even more vigorously. We're having a moment, me and the Queen Mother. She's acknowledged me. And then she's gone. 13:50 Well, I wasn't cured of anything. It was the opposite, actually. I was infected. I was infected with an idea. I don't belong in this street. I don't want to live in that house. I don't want to end up in that shipyard. I want to be in that car.

pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, according to the Global Burden of Disease study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Faustian bargain

recent reports from the United Nations and the the American Association for the Advancement of Science

effort to measure the extent to which countries provide for the non-economic needs of their citizens.

So what do we do? This cascade of self-perpetuating, pernicious, negative effects could seem like something that's spun out of control, and there's nothing we can do about it, certainly nothing we as individuals could do. But in fact, we've been finding in our own laboratory research that small psychological interventions, small changes to people's values, small nudges in certain directions, can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy. For instance, reminding people of the benefits of cooperation, or the advantages of community, cause wealthier individuals to be just as egalitarian as poor people.

At this point, coal mining accounts for only one-sixteenth of 1 percent of overall U.S. employment; shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9.

The idea that money is available for the taking defies economic logic. But sometimes it’s true.

The opportunity is investing in energy efficiency. “The returns are tremendous, and there’s virtually no risk,” said Mark Orlowski, the founder and executive director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute,

Although no one is refusing to consider the idea, he explained, “People say, ‘We’re overloaded and this isn’t a fire that needs to be put out now.’ But if they actually did an energy audit, they would find millions of dollars in savings — and that money could be used for all sorts of things: scholarships, new faculty positions, even more pay for the university president.”