Thank you tng. A very small start. :) I agree that every generation has its challenges, unique to them and seemingly greater than the last's. And I would even say that the next generation may feel the climate change crisis more acutely than we feel it now (for many today it's still too abstract). But if I'm not mistaken, my index fund only grows if the market grows overall. And wouldn't this ever increasing growth be the first thing that had to go to address climate change?
I think that we are near a tipping point where renewable energy is going to have a better cost/utility ratio than fossil fuels. While the infrastructure and the industries that run on fossil fuels still represents the majority, we can see that north european countries (think : Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland) finds a way with renewable. With the development of competitive companies like Tesla and Solar City, it's going to be a slow change, but I think it's going to move in the right direction. In the long run, sustainable growth should be the norm.
I hope! I recall hearing somewhere that Solar City's wildest estimates of solar cell technology penetration didn't predict how popular the service is today.