Or perhaps we should say enlightened self-interest does.

We present two tales from yesterday’s Guardian. First:

The Indian coal mining tycoon Gautam Adani has become Asia’s richest person thanks to a push into green energy that has boosted his fortune to $88.5bn.

He and his companies are investing fortunes in that green energy:

The group is in the process of ploughing $70bn into green energy projects by 2030 with the aim of becoming the world’s largest renewable-energy producer.

Of course, this may work and it may not. But something is indeed happening at least.

The second:

British farmers must reduce their production of meat and dairy by a third in the next 10 years if scientific advice on limiting greenhouse gas emissions is to be met, the conservation charity WWF has said.

British farmers must reduce production, reduce their incomes, for some lovely but societal goal. Act against their own immediate, even medium term, incentives that is.

Which structure do we think is going to work better? A system in which someone beats Croesus by reducing climate change or one in which stout yeomen must attempt to rival Lazarus for poverty? No, not which would work better if humans were not as they are but given the nature of the species, which is going to work?

Quite, the solution to climate change is to engineer the price system so that people become rich by creating that solution. As M’Lord Stern has pointed out, Bill Nordhaus got the Nobel for saying and as 90% of polled economists shout very loudly indeed when asked.

So why are we allowing the loons to try and plan this for us using method 2?