What's the point of caring deeply about the Great Barrier Reef if the only offered solution is to accept that I can never visit it? That's selfish, of course, but so is demanding that others curtail their lifestyles so some faraway coral you care about doesn't disappear.

Frankly, the "challenge" of how to convince people to live as if most of the fruits of the industrial and technological revolutions never arrived is deeply unappealing. It's also nonsense on stilts: We don't get iPhones or specialized cancer cures without the consumer economy big enough to support demand for them.