Time to go back.

The idea of ​​progress with environmental preservation has failed. We burn fossil fuels, destroy forests and ecosystems, and in return, we get increasingly intense heat waves. It will be necessary to reverse political decisions made decades ago. Individual transportation, asphalt, and air conditioning? I believe we will have to backtrack on many choices in the coming years.

The concept of progress is at the heart of all development theories. When we propose a new idea, we never say that it represents a retreat or a regression, even a calculated one. The discourse is always one of advancement, growth, and ascension. "Regression" refers to error, to bad decisions that need to be reviewed.

In the debate on climate change, we must start from a logic opposite to the usual vision of success. If we want to survive as a species, we will need to accept some setbacks. It will not be possible to "reconcile progress with environmental preservation," as so many documents on development claim. True progress will be respecting the environment—and this will require severe restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, industrial production, and waste generation, especially plastics. More than containing growth, it will be necessary to organize the regression. Banning plastic straws in fast food restaurants will not be enough. Cities will need to return large areas to nature. Channelized rivers should be renaturalized, allowing their floodplains to once again fulfill their ecological role. Urban spaces should be contained, preserving areas for forests and green reserves.

Concrete examples will be inevitable. Jardim Pantanal, in São Paulo, for example, will need to be vacated. The area, which currently houses around 45 people, will revert to being a floodplain of the Tietê River. And this will not be the only necessary eviction in the city.

In this new scenario, any undertaking will need to estimate and measure its energy consumption, as well as the source of that supply. Recycling processes that result in the creation of new materials and solutions should be a priority—if not the only alternative. Architecture will have to be extremely creative to deal with the new demands.

We are already living this reality. Who watched... An Inconvenient Truth (2006) already knew what was coming. Today, Brazilian cities are registering temperatures up to 4°C higher than at any other time in recent history. This affects everyone, but it impacts the elderly and children in a particularly cruel way.

The solution to the planet's major environmental problems requires, at a minimum, confrontation. Air pollution, global warming, contamination of water and soil resources, deforestation, wildfires, desertification, and biodiversity loss demand new legislation—more restrictive, with greater reach and harsher penalties.

But how can such a radical, science-based vision be implemented in a world where a significant portion of the population still believes the Earth is flat? Which government would have the political capacity to confront this crisis? Will we need even more serious disasters for people to finally realize that a society based on rampant consumerism cannot perpetuate itself?