Why Are We Still Burning Carbon? The way we make food, clothes, medicine, and energy right now is not the only way those things can be made. It is the way they are currently made, because specific decisions were taken by specific institutions, for specific reasons, over the last hundred years. Some of that dependency is genuinely structural and takes time to unpick. Some of it is just habit. And some of it is actively stupid — fast fashion being the clearest example. Nobody needs a new polyester