We know how to address climate change, and we have the technology to do so. The problem is that key agents like governments and businesses will not act soon enough—in the existing structural context, meaningful climate action is against their immediate interests. Call this the problem of agency. This paper fleshes out the problem of agency in relation to climate action and argues that existing proposals for solving it fail. Our best hope for solving the problem of agency and addressing climate change lies in social movements.
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Max Fedoseev (2026) studied this question.
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