Without seeking to ‘naturalize’ the unsustainable status quo and barriers to a shift towards resource-extensive forms of life - arguably a key prerequisite for coming to terms with current socio-ecological crises, such as climate change - this intervention foregrounds the importance of engaging with the status quo/barriers to transformative socio-ecological change in order to narrow the gap between the ideal and the real. This strikes me as important for scientific analyses to point not only to the (normatively) desirable for, which may be convincing to those who already agree and are committed to ‘a good life for all within planetary boundaries’, but to maybe also open channels of communication towards/to better understand those (who are) profoundly critical of a (materially) ‘reductive modernity’ or a ‘good life for all within planetary boundaries’.