You’ve amassed some damning evidence of our complete and utter failure to change things. Our need to consume and advance is pathological, especially here in my country. As you articulate here, the only answer is to want less. What’s not clear to me is how we get off that conveyor belt. Thanks for providing a continuous wake up call.
This is such an important essay, and I feel so at a loss for how to fix it. It feels so clear that we need to transition to green energy (which does appear to be happening rapidly) but we also need to drastically reduce livestock production (which doesn’t appear to be happening at all). There are also whole industries that are excessive and need to be eliminated (fast-fashion, etc.) I’d be very curious to learn your ideas for a post-capitalist society that would achieve this because I definitely think we need a huge overhaul of the capitalist system but I need to think through what that might look like in practice.
I am reminded of the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Published in early 90s yet so relevant still. You may have read it already, but it’s a fantastic tale with a message about humanity’s current path. In particular I was blown away by the points about how one day we just started being ”agriculturally maximal” (the only term i can come with to describe it). We always want to grow more, so we eat more, reproduce more, which makes us need to grow more…
So much more to the book but I feel like the essence of it resonates with what you’ve said (in other comments too): It’s not just about less CO2, it’s about changing how we view life itself, what we aim for as humans, and thus how we operate as societies.
No idea how to achieve that change though 😂 Quinn wrote a sequel which is meant to be more solution oriented but i have not read it.
Another startling and confronting read, Claudia. Thanks for pulling all this data together and making it easily digestible. It's a bit alarming and sad to see clean energy seemingly not increasing since 2019 (unless I'm reading the graph wrong). I'd be curious to see those charts per country to see where any major shifts are being made.
I assume German's annual CO2 emission line trending down in the third graph is due to nuclear?
I agree: we need a massive mind-shift leading to a values shift leading to a dramatic change in our aspirations and lifestyle. It may only come about the way it did in the SU, through "collapse" of the existing system. That collapse will be traumatizing to live through, but those who survive will have the potential to regenerate a new (and ancient, back to the future) form of sustainable society. I am curious to try to imagine what will survive that cataclysm. Will we retain access to our computers, to the internet? How will we travel? I don't think we will go back to the Stone Age, but who knows? It's a scary privilege to live in on the brink of tremendous systems change. Ready or not....
Good article! And I must say that you do write well:)
There are only two things which I did not like about this article:
i) that you regard Romania as having been communism. It seems to me that you have some misconceptions about what communism is supposed to be. Some reading on the topic will probably solve those misconceptions.
ii) that you consider EU's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 commendable.
Exactly this: "Ultimately, it won’t be technology alone that saves our species from disaster, but a shift in mindset." Thank you for writing this piece, Claudia. I'm writing a near-future science fiction novel about the "polycrisis" and how the world might respond to a number of civilizational threats. Many threats appear to be intractable permanent problems because human nature is immutable, and the pleasures progress offers are so irresistible. But I have to keep reminding myself that the future is unknowable—a fact that can give us a different kind of hope, albeit a very uncomfortable kind.
Are you aware that the temperature impact of a fixed addition of CO2 diminishes as the atmospheric level rises. Consider a 100 billion ton addition of CO2 to a initial level 300, 400, 500 and 600 ppm. Assuming a 2.5 C climate sensitivity, these additions would increase equilibrium temperature by 0.15, 0.12, 0.092 and 0.077 deg C, respectively.
In my lifetime, the world's population has increased by over 300%; yes, I'm in my 80s. So, it's unsurprising that people and nations need more energy to increase prosperity. The long-term good news is that experts predict the world's population will decline.
Our hope is to couple a decline in energy demand with technological advances and a realistic approach to transitioning from fossil fuels to new energy sources.
Excellent essay, though I'm much more optimistic than you are I think. Two hundred years is a lot of time in which to make huge technological strides that we cannot conceive right now.
Good essay! I think I’m a bit more optimistic than you are, which is surprising, considering how pessimistic I am. With the way things are progressing in renewable and clean energy, I think we probably can get to a real net zero in 200 years, but probably not by 2050 (just my completely non-technical opinion). But with the way scientists are freaking out over last year’s global temperatures and ice melt, we probably don’t have that much time.
A couple of questions: I’m intrigued by the idea of “digitalizing” the grid, but I’m not sure what it means. Something like a Nest thermostat? And why does it have to include blockchain? Is there a form of blockchain that doesn’t consume vast amounts of energy? (Taken together, AI, the cloud, and crypto are going to consume so much energy that our individual choices hardly matter - except maybe swearing off using Dall-E.)
You’ve amassed some damning evidence of our complete and utter failure to change things. Our need to consume and advance is pathological, especially here in my country. As you articulate here, the only answer is to want less. What’s not clear to me is how we get off that conveyor belt. Thanks for providing a continuous wake up call.
This is such an important essay, and I feel so at a loss for how to fix it. It feels so clear that we need to transition to green energy (which does appear to be happening rapidly) but we also need to drastically reduce livestock production (which doesn’t appear to be happening at all). There are also whole industries that are excessive and need to be eliminated (fast-fashion, etc.) I’d be very curious to learn your ideas for a post-capitalist society that would achieve this because I definitely think we need a huge overhaul of the capitalist system but I need to think through what that might look like in practice.
So important that information like this gets out there in such a clear, concise, easily consumable way. Thank you.
Very discouraging, but an important and well laid out essay.
Thank you for writing this, and for your work.
I am reminded of the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Published in early 90s yet so relevant still. You may have read it already, but it’s a fantastic tale with a message about humanity’s current path. In particular I was blown away by the points about how one day we just started being ”agriculturally maximal” (the only term i can come with to describe it). We always want to grow more, so we eat more, reproduce more, which makes us need to grow more…
So much more to the book but I feel like the essence of it resonates with what you’ve said (in other comments too): It’s not just about less CO2, it’s about changing how we view life itself, what we aim for as humans, and thus how we operate as societies.
No idea how to achieve that change though 😂 Quinn wrote a sequel which is meant to be more solution oriented but i have not read it.
Another startling and confronting read, Claudia. Thanks for pulling all this data together and making it easily digestible. It's a bit alarming and sad to see clean energy seemingly not increasing since 2019 (unless I'm reading the graph wrong). I'd be curious to see those charts per country to see where any major shifts are being made.
I assume German's annual CO2 emission line trending down in the third graph is due to nuclear?
I agree: we need a massive mind-shift leading to a values shift leading to a dramatic change in our aspirations and lifestyle. It may only come about the way it did in the SU, through "collapse" of the existing system. That collapse will be traumatizing to live through, but those who survive will have the potential to regenerate a new (and ancient, back to the future) form of sustainable society. I am curious to try to imagine what will survive that cataclysm. Will we retain access to our computers, to the internet? How will we travel? I don't think we will go back to the Stone Age, but who knows? It's a scary privilege to live in on the brink of tremendous systems change. Ready or not....
Good article! And I must say that you do write well:)
There are only two things which I did not like about this article:
i) that you regard Romania as having been communism. It seems to me that you have some misconceptions about what communism is supposed to be. Some reading on the topic will probably solve those misconceptions.
ii) that you consider EU's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 commendable.
Exactly this: "Ultimately, it won’t be technology alone that saves our species from disaster, but a shift in mindset." Thank you for writing this piece, Claudia. I'm writing a near-future science fiction novel about the "polycrisis" and how the world might respond to a number of civilizational threats. Many threats appear to be intractable permanent problems because human nature is immutable, and the pleasures progress offers are so irresistible. But I have to keep reminding myself that the future is unknowable—a fact that can give us a different kind of hope, albeit a very uncomfortable kind.
Are you aware that the temperature impact of a fixed addition of CO2 diminishes as the atmospheric level rises. Consider a 100 billion ton addition of CO2 to a initial level 300, 400, 500 and 600 ppm. Assuming a 2.5 C climate sensitivity, these additions would increase equilibrium temperature by 0.15, 0.12, 0.092 and 0.077 deg C, respectively.
In my lifetime, the world's population has increased by over 300%; yes, I'm in my 80s. So, it's unsurprising that people and nations need more energy to increase prosperity. The long-term good news is that experts predict the world's population will decline.
Our hope is to couple a decline in energy demand with technological advances and a realistic approach to transitioning from fossil fuels to new energy sources.
Excellent essay, though I'm much more optimistic than you are I think. Two hundred years is a lot of time in which to make huge technological strides that we cannot conceive right now.
Good essay! I think I’m a bit more optimistic than you are, which is surprising, considering how pessimistic I am. With the way things are progressing in renewable and clean energy, I think we probably can get to a real net zero in 200 years, but probably not by 2050 (just my completely non-technical opinion). But with the way scientists are freaking out over last year’s global temperatures and ice melt, we probably don’t have that much time.
A couple of questions: I’m intrigued by the idea of “digitalizing” the grid, but I’m not sure what it means. Something like a Nest thermostat? And why does it have to include blockchain? Is there a form of blockchain that doesn’t consume vast amounts of energy? (Taken together, AI, the cloud, and crypto are going to consume so much energy that our individual choices hardly matter - except maybe swearing off using Dall-E.)