Illustration: Rad Mora for Bloomberg
To Save the Planet, We Must Sacrifice Some of It
Attempts to preserve the natural world might feel noble, but they’re stifling our chance of a decarbonized future.
In the mid-1500s, a newlywed couple set up a small print shop in the bustling Flemish city of Antwerp. The revolution they inspired is still reverberating in the way we tackle the challenges of climate change and mass extinction on a planet that will soon be home to 10 billion people.
Volcxken Diericx and Hieronymus Cock specialized in engravings they sold to the traders and bankers who’d made Antwerp the financial capital of northern Europe. (Their shop was just a few streets away from one of the world’s first stock exchanges.) Many of their prints showed the fields, villages and rivers of the Netherlands in a naturalistic style unprecedented in Western art.