I wrote “The Green Architect” — a chapter of “Down Detour Road: An Architect in Search of Practice,” excerpted below — in 2009, shortly after the world watched the CCP dramatically curtail manufacturing and traffic around Beijing to improve air quality for the 2008 Olympic games. It was an odd phenomenon to watch: Could the world’s pollution merely be . . . stopped? Through state action? It needled at the idea that what was missing in our fight against climate change was simply the will to do something about it. Tesla had recently announced its entry into the electric vehicle market, and there was a sense that maybe hope was in sight — that the confluence of strong state action and inspired technology would save us from the coming climate catastrophe. It hasn’t. Nearly every environmental metric is worse, and the prospects for a normal future are essentially nil. While green design and green technology have made great strides, they haven’t successfully arrested our path towards a chaotic climate future. Why not?