Climate Fatigue: Why the Story of Saving the Planet Isn’t Selling
Climate advocates have missed the mark, focusing on abstract science that doesn’t connect with daily life. Their message is confusing, contradictory, and heavy on doom, light on solutions. People feel blamed for seeking better lives through growth and prosperity.
The result? Calls to cut fossil fuels or stop growth sound alarmist and unrealistic. Worse, they’ve failed to explain why climate change matters or to offer practical, actionable solutions.
“We have not succeeded in showing them a way forward. I think our biggest failure has been our inability to capture the imagination or influence policy by demonstrating that there is a different—and better—path ahead than where we are today.”
The proposed path forward—replacing fossil fuels with renewables—doesn’t sit right with most people. Intuitively, it feels like a step backward. How can relying on energy sources abandoned centuries ago be the solution? You don’t need to be an energy expert to know a gas-powered car is cheaper and more reliable than an electric one with limited range and hard-to-find charging stations.
People might lean toward wind or solar over coal and gas, but the truth is they mostly care about having reliable power when they need it. The push for a 100% electric system doesn’t feel right because everyone’s dealt with blackouts and days-long outages after storms. Reliability matters more than the energy source.
Most people know climate change is real but don’t see it as urgent. It takes a backseat to the cost of living and political turmoil. So, it’s no surprise they dismiss frantic climate warnings as another out-of-touch, elitist cause that doesn’t affect their daily lives.
How did climate science get here? It began with something basic—survival. Babylonian astronomers used math to predict the seasons because growing food depended on it. But for ancient civilizations, weather wasn’t just nature—it was the gods at work. Predicting the climate wasn’t just practical; it was sacred. Staying in sync with the seasons meant staying in favor with divine forces.
Today, climate science has lost that spiritual weight and it has failed to offer a real path forward because it’s trapped in narrow, reductionist thinking. It’s dominated by the left-brain mindset Iain McGilchrist warns about—breaking the world into static, isolated pieces for manipulation, stripped of context and meaning.
Climate science hasn’t had a real breakthrough in over a century. Joseph Fourier nailed the core idea in 1824—the atmosphere traps heat like a greenhouse, keeping Earth warmer than it should be. Then in 1896, Svante Arrhenius took it further, calculating how rising CO₂ drives global warming. Since then, climate science has been stuck refining the same idea. The focus remains on CO₂—a gas that’s just 0.04% of the atmosphere. Yet scientists now claim this sliver of gas could collapse civilization.
Now they expect the average person to care about complex climate models from the IPCC, ancient ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Meanwhile, most people are still asking the same question: Why does this matter to me?
How did something as vital as climate lose the public’s attention? We once built sacred monuments and cities that tied survival—food, weather, the cosmos—to something greater. Now, we argue about things that seem unrelated to the daily lives of most people.
The real problem? The climate story has been told badly.
The sequel needs a new plot and a better cast. It’s time to admit mistakes—and that critics of climate action weren’t wrong about everything. Let’s be honest: renewables aren’t the silver bullet. The push for renewables wasn’t a public decision; it was driven by the same global elites voters are tossing out of office everywhere. No wonder it doesn’t resonate.
Scientifically, renewables have barely moved the needle on climate change, despite trillions spent over decades. It’s time to face reality—or fold the climate hand entirely.
Instead of gathering for yet another empty climate summit—COP30 in Brazil, no less—maybe it’s time to cancel the show. Put top climate scientists and political leaders in a room with screenwriters and storytellers. Let them figure out how to tell a story people actually care about—one that sells tickets to the Climate Show.
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Yes – and furthermore, climate-change and peak oil are only two of a multitude of existential symptoms which arise from our overarching predicament of ecological overshoot. Misdiagnosis of our root-problems leads to poor responses which often serve to further exacerbate our already dire situation. Problem capitalism? Solution socialism. Problem peak oil? Solution nuclear. Problem climate change – solution stop fossil fuels. Growth? Degrowth. Etc…. etc… Those who are only aware of one or maybe two symptoms of overshoot, often see them in isolation or, in the case of climate and fossil energy, in a relatively simplistic relationship. However, the many existential symptoms are all interrelated and endlessly interacting such that complex systems become even more complex. Whilst some will get bogged down in the detail like meteorologists of trying to determine the exact nature of next month’s weather systems, the sentinel intelligence meanwhile flies high above the clouds recognising observing the broadest of patterns and most meaningful of trends. In this regard, we can clearly observe that humanity and the world is suffering extreme human ecological overshoot, that we are in a process of systemic collapse, and that collapse is inevitable. Next to this inescapable conclusion, the various details of how much oil it takes to procure more oil, or how much co2 is required to reach tipping points, looks like obsessing with details whilst Rome burns. How long is a piece of string anyway?
Thanks for your many observations, Tristan. Society’s unshakable belief that every symptom is resolvable independently is an inconsistent with everything we know about how the universe is structured.
All the best,
Art
This is right on the nose. William R Catton’s predictions are coming true now. Do searches on “jet stream stability” and “stalled weather patterns.” In the sequence of questions and answers provided by AI for the first topic, you will find a quick lesson on how human-caused climate change has led to such bizarre recent weather incidents as snow in New Orleans and widespread wildfires in Southern California. There is a good chance that stalled high precipitation will follow the drought that set the stage for the fires. Denuded hillsides would then be subject to large=scale landslides.
Dean,
Agriculture became widespread ~10,000 years ago because climate stabilized enough to make it a feasible approach to survival. Humans knew about and planted gardens from earliest times.
Civilization and agriculture developed simultaneously. The biggest risk to civilization is an unstable climate.
All the best,
Art
Art,
I agree that we need to get vastly more people interested in climate change and the right story is crucial.
You do great things with your presentations. I think it would be great to have your story which would integrate population growth, deforestation, meat production, energy use, transportation, suggested studies and solutions.
Getting experts together in small teams of 2-5 members on key topics who respect each team members knowledge and respect the knowledge and contribution of the other teams working towards a captivating story. I would not bring in politicians until the scientists and technical people had agreed on what they want to present.
Not sure how many people understand the difference between climate and weather. That distinction faded with mass migration of people from subsistence farming to the cities. On the farm time was marked by seasons which correlated with climate.
Growing up on a subsistence farm with 90 frost free days for growing which has increased to 105 days over 75 years provides a personal marker for climate change. The southern edge of the dry zone in CA has moved 200 miles from Northern Mexico to north of the Santa Monica mountains and the dry zone in Eastern Australia has move a similar distance south into farmland. and this provides a marker for global warming.
I am pessimistic about our chances of getting an agreement to attempt solutions and have no knowledge of what these solutions might entail.
You have given this more thought than any of us and it would be good to get your views and insights in integrated presentation.
Conrad,
Thanks for your comments. I’ve done posts on all of those subjects and recommend this one I which I attempted the integration that you suggest.
Metacrisis: Getting Honest About the Human Predicament
https://www.artberman.com/blog/metacrisis-getting-honest-about-the-human-predicament/
I hope to write a book this year but make no promises.
All the best,
Art
Art, I don’t think the failure has a lot to do with how the story has been told and re-told. It’s the other stories, the recent ones, which temporarily, in a way to try to satisfy the first stories, claimed that it would be possible to achieve the same economic efficiency (to simplify everything that depends on it in the existence of modern economies and their inhabitants) while getting rid of all the bad byproducts. These are the bad stories, the worldwide green-washing mantras. These stories continue to be told but are more and more lost in the wind, while really everybody is focusing on keeping business as usual as long as they can, hiding their heads in the sand (or not even hiding).
It is often ignored that, for capitalism, growth and economic efficiency are not just options… And on the other side, while it would be one of the only viable solution, nobody is going to “get out of the economy”, it’s just not possible.
Very few people are realizing, and even fewer would be ready to sacrifice a fraction of what is necessary to go in that direction. So “business as usual” it will be, until, well…
Renaud,
The climate change story–that global heating is because of greenhouse gases–hasn’t changed since Arrhenius in 1896. Opponents of this hypothesis have been arguing that technology and efficiency can solve all of earth’s problems for centuries. Nothing has changed.
I’ve made my arguments in the post and I believe that they stand. If you disagree, you’ll have to do more than express opinions. Write a post that makes and supports your points and I’ll be glad to read it.
All the best,
Art
Art,
Thank you very much for your reply. It’s just that I could not resist the urge to communicate an opinion which has been forged by years of reflection, on the “human predicament” (but none of the fundamental ideas and concepts are mine).
Moishe Postone and Robert Kurz explain better that me the dynamics of capitalism in numerous very important books.
Postone has this expression, that capitalism has an implacable “treadmill effect” on society, once it is started (it becomes part of this society itself – and its fundamental categories are money, labor, value and the notion of commodity – and yes, Marx is still behind this, but not understood in the classical marxist sense.).
This “treadmill” effect has never been tamed, not by so-called communist systems, and surely not by capitalists
pulling frantically their levers everywhere everytime. If you’re wondering why I even mention “communism” here, well that is part of the long story…(Here my reference will be “the collapse of modernization” by Kurz).
To get back to your topic:
This “treadmilled”, now global society, is not affected by stories, demonstrations, explanations, on climate or whatever matter that would affect its course. It can pretend it is, for a while, if there is some extra money in pockets, but its efforts at “sobriety” will end here.
So there is nothing wrong with your argumentation. I just wanted to pinpoint that capitalism is not
concerned with climate change stories, but since capitalism has everything to do with our predicament, I thought the change of perspective was justified.
We can say it results in an unstoppable “superorganism”, or refer to its bad outcomes with terms like “polycrisis”, but there is only one enemy here and why don’t we name it? Most of the times it is reasonable to consider that things are more complicated than we would think at first…
But sometimes, we are so blind (and “living with the treadmill”) that we are incapable of seing behind the apparent complexity what is really the source of the problem.
Maybe it’s already very impressive all that this society has achieved to try to stick to the story of climate change
(developing renewables, measuring carbon footprints and so on). But when real difficulties come, and the
economic system is in danger of even a slight de-growth, everybody will turn its back on any story, and
go for economic yield (or a story which is compatible with it!). It is not the story’s fault. It is not because of the way it is told.
Now, this is still of course heavily discussed and criticized. But I have seen yet no better theoretical approach (than the critic of value) explaining the historical development of the global modern economic system, which is now all we have, starting just a few centuries ago (and no, not going millenias or more…). After a more or less prolonged agony (following the fatal blow of 2007), it is also headed toward a terminal outcome…
Worst of all, there is no proposal for a practical solution of how to get out of economy and how we would organize ourselves after that. Well, nobody can accuse the astronomer who has located the asteroid, that he has no proposal to avoid impact…
Renaud,
I do not accept the worn-out arguments that one kind of economic ideology or another can be identified as the cause of our predicament. It seems obvious that human psychology is what must change. There are no technological or governance solutions if the underlying behavior is the same.
I urge people to stop trying to find causes for our situation. They should first observe and describe the present state of things–without judgment or conceptual models. Once adequately described, explanations may be put forward in the form of testable hypotheses. Those that survive, may be used to speculate on the near future.
What I just described is called science.
All the best,
Art
I live in central Virginia. The first official frost date is mid-October. This year it actually occurred in the fourth week of November.
When I mention that fact to people they take an interest. When the climate affects their gardening decisions they want to know more.
Ian,
Weather is not climate.
Climate change isn’t about absolutes. It’s about the increasing instability of the climate. Human civilization didn’t develop until climate stabilized enough for agriculture 10,000 years ago. If climate continues to become less stable, civilization is in trouble.
That’s what I tell people who want to know.
All the best,
Art
My 2 cents: One of the main reasons the climate communicators lost the plot was because of the endlessly exhausting infight between cornucopians and collapseologists. Richard Heinberg saw all of this coming and wrote about it in 2006 here: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-04-30/population-resources-and-human-idealism/. If we so obviously do not even have our own act together and can’t even agree on such profund thing as economic growth and the capabilities of tech – how should people be convinced to follow us, trust us, to be lead by us? That is just not gonna happen. That is why i said you should talk to your college Michael Mann. I know that you know each other. It seems to me he is out of his “let’s just block everyone i disagree with”-phase. For the sake of it: go on nate’s podcast together and discuss WTF is wrong with the environmental movement as such and how we can move on from this desolate situation. Just an idea.
Greets
kali
Hi Kali,
Michael Mann and I might as well be in parallel universes! I respect his historical perspective on climate change but do not find his recent work very relevant or helpful.
I recommend learning to accept and even love this desolate situation because it is the story of humanity.
All the best,
Art
I accept it, no problem. I spend the last 20 years of my life trying to navigate and eventually bridge this divide in the environmental community and i know the dissent runs too deep. I am just saying as long as the cornucopians think that renewables will save the day liberal society will “merely be helping to create their own worst nightmare”, just as Heinberg said. But (un)fortunately that time will run out, soon. Who are they going to turn to then?
all the best
kali
Kali,
Those who worship at the alter of renewable energy will find a new church or religion when they lose faith in renewables.
The underlying condition is psychological. It’s an inability to face reality without the aid of magic.
I like the story of the temptations of Jesus and the Buddha. Some version of the devil offered each of them magical powers (turning stones into bread), freedom from reality (jumping from the Temple), and supreme power and glory (kingdoms of the world).
Both refused those temptations preferring to accept the way things were.
That’s what I would recommend to the folks that you call the cornucopians. They won’t accept that advice, of course, but framing it in the lens of faith, might make them think for a moment.
All the best,
Art
Beautiful piece, Art, and you got some beautiful replies. I try to imagine the year 2050. Considering Nate Hagens’ four scenarios, I rule out the green growth scenario, which is embraced by mainstream environmentalism. I imagine that in different parts of the world we shall see both the Mordor Economy and Mad Max playing out in parallel, with pockets of Simplification. The question before each of us aware-ones is how to cultivate a pocket of Simplification locally, where we live. Since that’s a localized question, the answer also has to be localized. While there are certain characteristics universal to any Simplification pocket, such as a culture of respect, reciprocity, and regeneration, getting there is unique to each location. There is no one-size-fits-all meme. But you are also right that art and narrative need to play a role. You suggest film. We also need music, plays, and graphic novels. Fashion and tattoos. Both traditional and fusion rituals. And they will be as diverse as the artists who produce them and the places those artists inhabit.
Robin,
Many thanks for those comments.
All the best,
Art
“Put top climate scientists and political leaders in a room with screenwriters and storytellers. Let them figure out how to tell a story people actually care about—one that sells tickets to the Climate Show.” Was that just cynical humor? Gallows humor? The vast majority of screenwriters and storytellers get their bucks by spinning escapist fantasies. Those have a vast audience, with big appetites for them and spare money left over from meeting basic needs — or borrowed against future earnings.
Nature is providing us with many relevant real-world stories that appear on our national news programs, and not only because “If it bleeds it leads, if it burns it earns (bucks), if it drowns it (what rhymes?). These large-scale disasters have strong connections with human-caused climate change. Stalled weather patterns result from stalled kinks in the jet stream, due to excess Arctic warming due to guess what. This stuff is really hitting home(s). Should we pay some attention?
Dean,
Many thanks for your thoughts. Climate change is a small but important part of our predicament but is probably more of a consequence than a cause. I have provided detailed analysis of climate science and its many dire warnings in other posts (use the search function and you will find them).
I recommend widening your view and framework beyond climate change.
All the best,
Art
“Population was 2.5 billion when I was born in 1950. It has more than tripled in my lifetime to more than 8 billion in 2023. Total energy consumption has increased more than 60-fold in that same period. Half of all historical oil consumption has been since 2000. Growth is the problem. Carbon emissions are a consequence of the growth in energy consumption that has enabled the growth in human population and economic activity.” — From your post on the metacrisis (as is the figure above).
The basic problem is that we have become too numerous and too greedy — especially those of us who live in the First World, with U S A # 1 (repeat that, over and over). Is it any wonder that people in other countries aspire to become more like us? — perhaps by moving here if they can? Meanwhile we continue to take our privileged position for granted, as a birthright. It’s time for us to wake up and dial things down. Feel-good story-tellers don’t have any experience in sending that message. Real news stories about human-caused freaky weather are providing clear evidence that the predictions of William Catton (Overshoot, Bottleneck) are coming true NOW. I fully agree with you that international gabfests and technological gimmickry won’t get us out of this predicament.
Dean,
I disagree that people are greedier now than in the past. Rather than try to find some cause for the way things are, I suggest focusing on observing and describing the way things are. That should produce an appreciation for the complexity of those things.
If you haven’t already, please read Nate Hagens’ “Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
Let’s talk again after you’ve read (or re-read) that!
All the best,
Art
Art,
I’ve been interested in, and studied, energy for more than half a century but I still learn from your posts.
Vince
Well Art you have finally stepped over my boundary.
In this article you have manipulated the truth of the matter. You criticize lack of context while your sweeping generalizations lack all semblance of context and historical detail.
McGilchrist, you misrepresent as criticism of climate experts as being reductionist and lacking context etc. this is not what he said. He was speaking of human civilization and it’s left brain course it has taken since the beginnings of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent and a few other suitable land climate zones in other locations.
Currently a humanity as a super organism is behaving like this and this is what McGilchrist states. Basically the large majority of us or the majority of us who have a say. Currently it is a lying convicted ignorant criminal, spoiled brat entering the White House with an equally ignorant mostly white male inner circle, who leads the left brain charge.
You speak of blame as if someone or group is to have a solution to ecological overshoot. The role and intent of the science community is to observe, measure and record. The scientific method is rigorous as possible considering the immense complexity of the world. To castigate these scientists for lack of solutions is intentional or lack of understanding their role.
The solutions must come from civilization as a whole. It is the journey we have been on forever.
Always the same. Only the deviants like, Trump and the many like him in time immemorial have influenced our human destiny to the dark side.
I have no hope.
I have responsibility.
We are beyond hope and in reality hope without action is why we are here in overshoot of our one and only BEAUTIFUL PLANET!
Civilization as usual as you promote and criticize those who try to warn us is over sooner than we all think. I am not a doomer. I am an alarmist of the many parables we all grew up with for millennia that tried to keep humans safe. These are being ignored and in their place has arisen the myth of superior individual white men.
So sad to see this happening.
On a personal level I live RESPONSIBLY in light of this situation and I see this along with some others as our only way out of our civilizational
trap.
Of the three R’s that the west touts, the only two that have merit (need I say) are REDUCE and REUSE.
I work in blue collar industry and engage with many social media influenced humans and I find many worthwhile conversations with them. My hope is they find the same. We must tone down the criticism and take on the responsibility of doing our part. Right or left, classically educated or life educated we all must do our part. We have a real chance then. When we all pull our oars together then it will be time for renewed hope.
This starts with renewed responsibility.
Not pointing fingers, false hope or continued technology solutions.
Lastly as Plato describes in the REPUBLIC, democracy is NOT the rule by the elected
Majority but rule by those chosen by lottery from the entire population. This is little known.
The black enslaved people of the U S as one example did not know democracy as the rule by the elected majority of white men nor did the women or the indigenous population of the U S that had been conquered. Yet the U S has been mythologized as a great democracy.
Come on everyone let’s get aboard and pull together with all our might. We owe it to our future generations!
Cliff,
This comment area is for dialogue, not dissertations on your point of view. Write your own post somewhere but not here.
All the best,
Art
Perhaps it’s time to put a reasonable limit on the length of submissions. If someone really needed more words to get their point across, then they could end with “I can expand on this.” No reply to that declines the offer.
Dean,
You and I wish that were the case. I love when people act like the comments page is on open-mic for their improv routine.
All the best,
Art
Art… I agree with your point. A lateral replacement of hydrocarbon combustion was was doomed to fail. The idea that you could change 150 years of development of just about everything in 50 years was bananas.
John,
Energy replacement violates the Maximum Power Principle. It is the insight that Darwin lacked in his search for what made some species more fit than others. Anyone who thinks life will magically abdicate its genetic imperative to live by accepting worse sources of energy should try feeding tofu to a tiger.
All the best,
Art
Hi Art,
Yes I agree. I don’t have anything further to add, other than this energy matrix by Tim Murphy. It’s the only way to read comparator of energy sources I’ve come across, taken from a scarcity viewpoint. It was written in 2012 so is perhaps due for an update, but nevertheless I find it a useful way to compare technologies across the factors that matter.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/
Umbra,
It’s good to see you here in addition to on X!
Tom Murphy is a friend and respected colleague who always has a unique way of helping me to understand things.
All the best,
Art
Here is Canada climate change has been used by the government to raise taxes. Co-opted to fill some people’s pockets and impoverish a nation. Greed as much as anything has disincentivized positive change.
John,
There’s a booming green industry that couldn’t exist without public money. It’s the most massive Ponzi scheme other than military defense.
All the best,
Art
“There’s a booming green industry that couldn’t exist without public money.” I wish you would expand on that thought?
Timothy,
Renewable energy is a business with massive lobbies just like oil companies. It markets as if it’s the “good guy” just trying to help save the planet. It’s brilliant marketing but that’s not the truth, nor is it a bad thing. It’s just the way of the world and we need to have our eyes wide open.
Energy substitution is a doomsday stratagem that condemns civilization to its status quo path of growth & biophysical destruction. That’s as close to the truth as my experience can bring me.
All the best,
Art
Dear Art,
I’ve been puzzling over regular peoples’ lack of alarm about dwindling energy supply since the 1970s, and yours is the first honest assessment of our predicament that does not presume we can replace one thing with another and carry on. We can’t, of course, but I have been taking some comfort in observing that we are already living in the downgrade. I have not lost my house to fire or flood yet, but extreme weather, skyrocketing food and energy costs, and practically non-existent medical care have nudged me into homesteading skills like heating with wood, foraging, harvesting and purifying water, making and mending things by hand, and especially, making friends with folks living in the downgrade, too. Thank you for your good writing.
Kimberly,
Thanks for your comments but what dwindling energy supply?
The whole problem is that energy supply and consumption keep increasing. There is of course a limit but not based on geology within the time limits of climate-change urgency.
All the best,
Art
I’m sorry Mr. Berman, I feel kind at a loss on that matter.
Isn’t oil supply diminishing ? Or won’t it happen soon ? (not soon enough to save the climate, I understand that).
I had the feeling that it was part of the whole predicament we are in, as described by Nate Hagens et al.
Thanks you.
Thomas,
Oil supply is not diminishing.
I sense that you are desperately trying to make reality fit into some models that you carry with you. I understand that. Try letting go of your models and just immersing yourself in the experience of learning–then return to your models and see what has been discovered.
All the best,
Art
Thank you, Art.
This is a very tough discussion because the global warming problem is without solution. We are a fossil fuel civilization and climate change is caused by the Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) already emitted by fossil fuels that have been burned over the past centuries. Currently, the earth’s atmosphere contains 425 PPM of CO2, other GHGs give the planet the CO2 equivalent over 500 PPM. The earth reacts slowly to this injection of GHGs but the earth will react as required by physics. Last year the average temperature rise of the planet hit 1.5 degrees C and it will continue to rise, forecast to hit 2 degrees C in the 2040’s. This will be beyond catastrophic for life on earth.
See Dr. James Hansen’s paper : Global Warming in the Pipeline – https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
Net Zero Emissions are an impossibility and if we found a solution, we are out of time.
See Vaclal Smil’s book : How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going
The true objective of humanity is to survive this event as long as possible with the least possible suffering. There’s nothing else. It might seem that there are other options but that’s just an illusion.
John,
I’m not sure why you need to explain climate change to me or refer me to papers or books that I read decades ago. Nor do I understand why you need to explain humanity’s objectives to me since I have written extensively on that subject also.
All the best,
Art
Sorry Art if I offended you.
My note was aimed at your readers.
John,
You didn’t offend me. I would merely ask you to respect that this comment page is intended for dialogue and not for reader discourses.
All the best,
Art
Climate science is complicated and climate change is very slow in comparison with people’s daily lives. No wonder why it’s hard to get traction about the long term consequences of fossil fuel carbon emissions or the effect of carbon emissions in general.
But even before climate change became a political issue, it was well known that fossil fuels were limited to being a finite resource and everyone knows that if a finite resource is used long enough, it runs out. It’s pretty easy to understand that if you keep sucking your milkshake through the straw, eventually you reach the bottom of the glass. Yet our entire energy system and civilization was built as if fossil fuels would never deplete enough to worry about. How stupid was that?
We don’t need another story about climate change. If people can’t understand a concept as simple as depletion, how can they be expected to worry about the predictions of General Circulation Models?
Joe,
Depletion will eventually be a problem but it is not now. That is a Peak Oil false meme.
You can’t dismiss the majority of people who don’t care about climate change as being too stupid.
All the best,
Art
A great bed time story Art, because to most people that’s what it is, why because people, and yes me as well, are part of the problem, as nobody having tasted the punch bowl of modernity’s elixir of energy wants it taken away, unfortunately humanity having exceeded by quite a margin its ecological footprint nature doesn’t have such qualms in culling the lives of all earthlings that go beyond its ecological boundaries.
And so as B. Sidney Smith says “all the bunnies in the meadow die” https://youtu.be/KtQG9EiDr9k?si=pFwCefkN-dFVqrCg 😱🤔
Thanks for your comments and the link, Barry.
All the best,
Art
Barry, Art,
I and I imagine we agree generally with Art’s premise as far as it goes? However, “most people” certainly in the U.S. have been ‘clueless’, at least mis-directed about the facts and consequences of the matter.
As an example please consider listening to Art’s friend Nate Hagens reading a poignant personal letter to him ‘Thank You for Ruining My Life’. Ostensibly, a very senior, well informed venture capitalist understanding his life for the first time as an adult.
I am not being critical of him at all. Me too! That is, when I realized that to be true to my life’s code I needed to change what I would commit to do for the likely last very healthy years of my life.
If as well informed a citizen as a VC is oblivious to the ‘story’ that actually changes behavior it’s difficult to imagine other citizens with much less time or access to critical information otherwise informed. That’s changing!
Very quickly in my opinion. And it’s severe enough now that certainly realizations will quicken unto each understanding that existential risk means to THEM and their THEIR family’s livelihood, health or life.
Perhaps the final note is that in times with better educated populations through the years more people ‘get’ the story by understanding the data. Where as in the current era with liberal education in general all but destroyed, now people only ‘get’ the data by being told a story. The result also relates to poly-crisis…
John,
Education has little to do with getting it. Delusional thinking is probably more common among intellectuals than among less educated and well-read people.
All the best,
Art
Well said, Art.
Thanks, Vince.
All the best,
Art
Thank you for all your data analysis, sharing it, this blog and continuing. Essential for those of us that read even if not skilled in ‘doing’ science ourselves.
Further confirmation that one need not be an intellectual to be educated but education & reading are both essential. A great example, the Wright Brothers and invention of aviation.
“One of the joys of my work on the Wright brothers was to realize that these two men, who cracked one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult problems of all time, had only an education in the humanities. And they got it at home,” David McCullough said.
As you say, well read and surely they also honored knowledge, intellect rather than denigrate it as it is now popular to the further detriment of all. Of course Leonardo Da Vinci was also ‘self taught’ and, as Einstein stated, ‘imagination is everything’, impressed in renaissance art, literature, philosophy, history…the basis of innovation and forever will be.
Unfortunately, I also agree with you, whether educated or labeled an intellectual, one can be horribly deluded. Ok, perhaps even more so pre-disposed if the later! To (pray) to avoid that outcome takes another level of understanding, but again, available at a path beginning in my opinion with those so called worthless humanities.
John,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
All the best,
Art
First I have to agree with Art Berman’s comment to you.
Now John, I’ve known of Nate Hagens since c2008, and Art Berman not long after, link being “The Oil Drum” of which Nate was Managing Editor. In 2022 was made aware of Nate starting “The Great Simplification”, he’d then produced several episodes, I’ve viewed all of them to date and quite a few more than once. Was also aware of Nate on Twitter now Xorcist, from early 2022.
My criticism of Nate, and I’ve commented this on his postings, is since his sabbatical to India, it’s become more spiritual and philosophical in its content, but then I’m an Ecological Doomist, whereas Nate and his guests are Apocaloptomists. The King of the Ecological Doomists Sam Mitchell of “Collapse Chronicles” has interviewed a number of Nate’s guests, Sam says of the majority that he’s interviewed (and many are well known names as defenders of climate change and in ecological sphere) all painted a picture of humanity heading towards a catastrophic civilisational collapse, but at the end of the interview, sometimes in camera, they say human ingenuity, inventiveness and resourcefulness will in the end save humanity, what Sam calls Hopium, and I have to agree…
https://www.youtube.com/@collapsechronicles5708/playlists 🤔
Barry,
I don’t agree that Nate has gone woo woo since his time in India. I have been urging him to be more aware of the psychological dimension to the Metacrisis for several years, and he has been more influenced by Iain McGilchrist, John Vervaeke, and Daniel Schmachtenberger in moving closer to my view than anything that happened in India.
Psychology, cosmology, and science are deeply connected. Some of the greatest contributors to modern science have written extensively on subjects that you disparage as spiritual including Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Feynman, Bohm, Hawking, Einstein and Whitehead.
Perhaps you should examine yourself and not Nate.
All the best,
Art
You are quite correct, Art. The message being delivered by climate advocates is, as you say, “confusing, contradictory, and heavy on doom, light on solutions.” Maybe what we need is an approach similar to what a good PR firm would use in introducing a new product. One of your colleagues, Ugo Bardi, has spoken of the power of left-hemisphere-leaning memes in shaping our predicament and helping it to persist. Maybe it would be a good idea if we began by with a counter-meme agenda, beginning to introduce a new set of ideas. How about these as starter counter-memes: “Enough is a feast.” (Celebrates sufficiency and counters endless accumulation); “Grow what matters, not what exhausts.” (Shifts the idea of growth to qualitative (community, knowledge) rather than quantitative (GDP, production)); “Infinite growth is a fairy tale.” (Confronts the impossibility of perpetual economic expansion in a finite world.); “Balance is the new progress.” (Reframes progress as harmony with ecological and social systems.) There are many more that can be devised. At least beginning to speak in these terms is a beginning, a new direction.
I honestly think it’s too late for a sequel, Frank.
Addressing the Metacrisis demands a fundamental shift in how we think. This crisis isn’t just environmental or social—it’s psychological. We’re disconnected from reality, nature, and each other. Modern life has drained us spiritually, leaving us trapped in ego and delusion.
There is no quick or obvious solution to this problem. We have to acknowledge that we’ve lost the war and accept what Tolkein called “the long defeat” approach. We must identify those capable of real transformation and guide them in small, focused communities through self-discovery. Done right, this could reshape education, rebuild social bonds, and reignite our lost sense of wonder and meaning. It’s a slower path than most aware people want but the fast path isn’t working.
“Little though we are, we don’t know how big that is.”
–Iain McGilchrist
All the best,
Art
As you say, we have lost the war. In preparing for the Long Defeat, perhaps we can at least try to reframe the discourse that will characterize the aftermath–if humanity survives to experience an aftermath! Yeah, we are disastrously disconnected and it is our downfall. I wrote a piece on disconnection a while back, if you’re interested. https://medium.com/literary-impulse/disconnect-d589e159fcd3?sk=a47611c1e8abf8e661719e6de9545d9f
Frank,
Thanks for the link to your article on technology. Many excellent points. I’d take things back much farther than the Enlightenment–at least to the advent of astrological mathematics, the mastery of the horse and writing c. 2500 B.C.
“Rapid advances in science and technology cast such a spell over man’s conscious mind that it forgot the unpredictable forces of the unconscious. Once more we see people cutting each other’s throats in support of childish theories of how to create paradise on earth.
“There are not a few people nowadays who are convinced that mere human reason is not entirely up to the enormous task of putting a lid on the volcano.
“But one thing is certain—that modern man has lost the protection of the ecclesiastical walls [around the psyche] erected and reinforced since Roman days and because of this loss has approached the zone of world-destroying and world-creating fire. Life has become quickened and intensified. Our world is shot through with waves of uneasiness and fear.”
—C.G. Jung (1937)
All the best,
Art