The transition to net zero increasingly feels like an exercise in “running to stand still.” In this provocative piece in the Conversation, my colleague Siavash Almadadi and I argue that it’s time to rethink the pace of the green transition. Counterintuitive as it may sound, slowing down could be the key to finding a realistic rhythm for what is, at its core, a complex systems transition.

Right now, we’re still clinging to a high-speed mindset inherited from the fossil fuel era. But if we truly want to live without fossil fuels, we must do more than reinvent technologies: we need to reconsider the tempo of our lives. This is a big ask, we know. Yet the current start-stop approach clearly isn’t working.