The first and introductory chapter explains the necessity of this book, in other words, why it should be read. Several questions arise to illustrate this: If climate emergency is the grand challenge, why is so difficult to address it? Is it technically feasible? Economically? Trying to address it, we frame the current climate emergency as an extreme case of the well-known phenomenon of ‘the tragedy of the commons’. As a potential solution, we introduce a new disruptive business model and environmental strategy called ‘regenerative’, characterised by two main elements: (1) cutting-edge climate science solutions (capturing and utilising atmospheric carbon dioxide capable of producing net zero and even net negative emissions or positive environmental externalities); and (2) firm purpose redefinition under a new ecological, ethical and moral paradigm. Finally, a brief description of the book’s contents is presented.

Climate change is a time horizon problem. Economics proposes a carbon tax and leaving the rest to the market. Tax levels are calculated by combining an economic growth model with climate projections. Such models predict very little economic impact, at odds with the alarmist projections of climate science. Economic methodology and selective evidence combine to induce complacency. This was endorsed by a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus, its leading exponent. Complacency was challenged within economics for not being predicted by extrapolation, disregarding future generations, and modelling the risks incorrectly. Economics bears some responsibility for the problem it tries to solve. It ignores non-rational forms of denial, and falls victim to them itself. With no guidance from economics on how to address climate change, the actual approach chosen is central government precommitment, in line with our own time-horizon model.

Congress has previously passed environmental and administrative laws that tethered the regulatory process to scientific evidence. Federal agencies were obliged to weigh scientific data, as well as dispassionate economic and legal analyses, as they developed and implemented regulations. The Trump administration sought to untether the rulemaking process from science and other forms of hard evidence and expert analysis by putting contrarian scientists in charge of science advisory boards and by sidelining the views of career scientists at federal agencies and academic scientists. That strategy paved the way for oil and gas insiders at the helm of these agencies to make decisions aligned with positions advocated by the oil and gas industry, which had shared its wish-list on deregulatory actions with the Trump administration. The administration sought to undermine the scientific basis of environmental regulations by promulgating the deceptively named Science Transparency Rule that would block federal agencies' consideration of epidemiological studies that had linked pollution to adverse public health impacts. That rule was built of the decades-long views advocated by oil- and gas-funded think tanks and pro-oil members of Congress. Fortunately for the scientific integrity of rulemaking, in January 2021 a federal court ruled that the EPA had exceeded its powers in promulgating that regulation and subsequently vacated the rule.

The crisis of anthropogenic climate change is made worse by the hegemony of neoliberal, free-market economic orthodoxy. Almost everywhere the idea of “the market” reigns supreme, like an angry god demanding constant deference and tribute. The essential problem is this: Neoliberalism is hostile to the idea of economic planning and redistribution; it maintains that the market is largely self-regulating, but adapting to and mitigating the worst of climate change will require robust and active states.

Climate change is now a significant concern for almost every government, many major international organizations, industries of every variety, thousands of nongovernmental organizations and many millions of people around the world. Climate change has moved from being a minor scientific issue in international relations, national politics and human affairs to being, as we move through the 2020s, one of the most high-profile political issues globally. In short, climate change is now high politics. Governments have negotiated agreements to study climate change and to put in place policies that limit the greenhouse gas pollution that causes it. All of this has been driven to a great extent by climate science. However, despite the high profile of climate change and actions around the world to address it, the responses of countries and other actors, including businesses and individuals, have failed to keep up with the increasing pace of change. Special interests and climate denial have gotten in the way.

This chapter examines one source of the strategic disinformation now rife in American public life: the Koch network of donors, allied organizations, and academic grantees. The architects of this network’s project to radically transform our institutions and legal system have adopted this tactic in the knowledge that the libertarian agenda is unpopular and therefore requires stealth to succeed. In the 1970s, Charles Koch and his allies determined that changes significant enough to constitute a “constitutional revolution” would be needed to protect capitalism from democracy. In the light of these foundational efforts, subsequent active disinformation by this network become more comprehensible when understood as driven by a mix of messianic dogma and self-interest. The project could not succeed by persuasion and organizing alone. Later cases include climate science denial, promotion of the myth of mass voter fraud to leverage racism to restrict the electorate, and the use of concocted memes of violent mobs requiring restraint in order to win passage of new legislation to criminalize protest, particularly against the fossil fuel industry (legislation that includes SLAPP lawsuits and laws penalizing alleged infringements on “academic freedom”).