Opinion Ben Cooke: The Times in London

“Environmentalists aren’t famously keen on capitalism. Given that its rise has coincided with a two-thirds decline in wildlife worldwide, it’s not hard to see why. 

Many conclude that if capitalism got us into these dire ecological straits, it has little chance of getting us out.

Akshat Rathi cautions against that conclusion: we’ve left it so late to do anything about climate change that we don’t have time to invent a new economic system to fight it. 

What’s more, he argues, capitalism properly regulated can be very good at driving the green innovation we need. 

In Climate Capitalism he tells the story of that innovation through the perspectives of those driving it. 

He talks to the bureaucrat responsible for China’s head start in electric cars, the chief executive who transformed Unilever into one of the world’s most sustainable companies and Bill Gates, who is funding many of the technologies we’ll need.”