One small step for a writer, one giant leap for mankind.

“I think that by 2050, or whenever it is that the world has successfully transitioned away from fossil fuels, Musk will be seen as a hero.” John Lanchester, London Review of Books, 10 September 2015. However right Lanchester might be about Elon Musk, the idea that we’ll manage a’successful’ transition by 2050 is pure fantasy – unless his criteria for success are an only-slowly-declining (rather than plummeting) global population and OECD living standards not too far south of Mexico’s today.