It may be selfish and amoral, Andrew McAfee says, but nothing works better than capitalism to drive progress. In “More From Less,” Mr. McAfee, borrowing from Lincoln’s praise of the patent system, argues that when the “fuel of interest” is joined with the “fire of genius”—that is, when incentive and talent combine—seemingly impossible things can happen, even environmentally friendly ones.

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that our insatiable needs and desires require more and more natural goods, inexorably stripping...