When the solution to a given problem doesnt lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong. This is not to say the world is perfect. Nor that all progress is always good. Even widespread societal gains inevitably produce losses for some people. Thats why the economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to capitalism as creative destruction. But humankind has a great capacity for finding technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and this will likely be the case for global warming. It isnt that the problem isnt potentially large. Its just that human ingenuitywhen given proper incentivesis bound to be larger. Even more encouraging, technological fixes are often far simpler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined. Indeed, in the final chapter of this book well meet a band of renegade engineers who have developed not one but three global-warming fixes, any of which could be bought for less than the annual sales tally of all the Thoroughbred horses at Keeneland auction house in Kentucky.
