The IPCC projections of global GDP and population in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Nakicenovic and Swart 2000) apparently do not consider the possibility that a world with highly elevated temperatures and other consequences of climate change might find it difficult to grow at the rates projected. The scenario builders seem to have assumed that such problems can be solved through technology, which according to the SRES summary for policymakers was defined as “at least as important a driving force as demographic change and economic development.” There is no discussion in the IPCC literature (that we have been able to find) of how seven billion people or more would be able to live comfortably, or at least tolerably, in the global growth scenario A1, in temperatures four or more degrees Celsius above pre‐industrial levels (comparable to the warming from the ice age to the 19th century). This might possibly work for the richest nations but it stretches credibility to extend the assumption to all nations – despite the embedded assertion that average incomes in developing and rich nations would converge in the high‐growth scenario A1.