More on, "We're Doomed"

 Consulting firm McKinsey has written:

“While the immediate tasks ahead may seem daunting, human ingenuity can ultimately solve the net zero equation, just as it has solved other seemingly intractable problems over the past 10,000 years,” the McKinsey report says. “The key issue is whether the world can muster the requisite boldness and resolve.”

First of all, "human ingenuity" has never solved any of the "intractable problems" it has encountered over the past 10,000 years.  It is the earth, Gaia, Mother Nature, if you will, who has "solved" these problems, mostly by culling the human population.

Humans did not "solve" the Black Death, they just died, or the remainder became more resistant to the disease.  Humans did not "solve" hurricanes; they just survived them, or moved to safer places or built slightly stronger houses.  Humans have not "solved" droughts; they simply wait the out, or take water from elsewhere.  

Humans have not "solved" racism, or misogyny, or the exploitation of the weak by the strong.  In fact, these actions are typically the way humans solve their problems

The McKinsey report estimates it will cost about $9,200,000,000 a year for a long time, to achieve sustainability.  The report puts this sum in terms of corporate investment and profits, but if history is any guide to the future, those costs will not be paid by corporations, but rather by people -- mostly by poor and working people.  This is the lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic which saw the fortunes of the richest double in the course of the pandemic.

For thousands of years, the rich and powerful have battled to accumulate and retain wealth and power over everyone else; and they have done this at the expense of everyone else.  Everyone else has, more or less, accepted this state of affairs, so long as what was left was enough.  But this was in a world where human power did not extend around the globe and controlled every resource.

In the past, as they do even now, when the rich would no longer share with the poor, the poor tried to escape their oppressors by migrating, seeking a land of their own.  In the past, when the world was sparsely populated, such migrations were possible.  Recently, Europe colonized a large part of the planet by sending their unwanted poor elsewhere, mostly to Australia and the Americas.

But now, the earth, its land and seas, has been almost completely enclosed, commodified, so that no one can go anywhere with stepping on someone's toes or property rights, and so migration has become a problem rather than a solution.

McKinsey is hoping that $9.2 trillion a year will solve this problem.  This may be so if the $9.2 trillion a year is presented as a gift, with no strings attached, from the developed world to the undeveloped world; in the form of materials, technology, education, infrastructure; rather than money which is too easily manipulated and stolen.

Does this seem likely. No.  Rather, the rich and powerful will hold on to their wealth and power and if someone tries to take it, they will defend it with all the power of Western technology at their disposal.  Most likely, they will prevail, at least in the short run, at great cost.  

For example, if China were to send a 100,000,000 man army to invade the United States, the Chinese would first have to move these people to the Americas, and this can only be done by flying or sailing.  But passenger boats and airplanes are easy targets for missiles, drones, fighter aircraft. And the attempt to launch such an invasion would be obvious from far off and long before any actual launch, so there would be ample time to prepare for such an invasion.

The $9.2 trillion must be the opposite of the kind imposed by the World Bank.  Instead of austerity for the troubled nation, $9.2 trillion must be the amount of austerity embraced by the West.  $9.2 trillion is what must flow from the developed to the undeveloped world, and the developed world must tighten its belt to do this, they must learn to exist on $9.2 trillion a year less than they were used to.