Sustainable development thinking got environmental issues onto the agenda but it may now be stopping us from taking serious action on climate change and other crucial planetary issues.Sustainable development's Faustian deal between present and future will always collapse under the pressure of 'now' because the needs of the present always win out. Inevitably, this means floating standards, movable targets and action that will always fall short of what we need. Ultimately, sustainable development is the pursuit of a mirage, the politics of never getting there.To escape the illusion, we must break through to a new way of understanding sustainability by focussing on the deep needs of the present, not slippery obligations to the future. Rise to the carbon challenge now, not trying to micro-manage the longer-term. Look to the science for orders of magnitude and direction, not a game- plan. Harness the short-term dynamics of capitalism to the cause of learning our way forward.This book outlines an alternative to the mainstream and offers the kind of bold new thinking on energy usage, governance, education and the role of enterprise that we need to win the coming war on climate change.It is guaranteed to be the most controversial book on environmental issues since Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist". It shows how sustainable development is destined to fail unless we retool it by focussing on the short term in order to tackle the urgency of climate change now not later. It is essential, challenging, provocative reading for all academics, students and professional dealing with any aspect of sustainability, environment, climate change and economics.