Solutions: The Art of Avoiding Reality
In The End of Climate-Change Idealism, I challenged the failed paradigm that renewables can “solve” climate change. The reactions were revealing. Some dismissed me as too pessimistic for rejecting easy fixes. Others thought I wasn’t pessimistic enough, convinced that collapse is inevitable.
Most, however, acknowledged that solutions avoid the real issue—unchecked growth—only to immediately search for one! Thorium reactors, geoengineering, carbon removal—different methods, same reflex: there must be a way out.
Let me be clear: our impulse to chase solutions to existential threats is a psychological problem. It’s a form of denial that allows us to sidestep the full depth and systemic nature of our predicament—along with our role in driving it forward.
We like to think of ourselves as uniquely curious problem-solvers, but that’s just hubris. All species solve problems. What sets us apart is having to solve the ones of our own making—a far more complicated challenge.
The Lost Balance
Modern humans pride themselves on outwitting self-inflicted crises, but our ancestors saw this as a flaw. To them, survival was a sacred exchange—animals weren’t just prey but willing participants in the cycle of life. They honored this through rituals of gratitude—prayers, songs, offerings—maintaining balance with nature. Taking life carried responsibility, deepening their connection to the world.
With agriculture, this awareness persisted. Early farmers saw cultivation as taking from nature, disrupting its order. To atone, they performed harvest rituals—animal offerings, human sacrifice, even regicide—symbolically returning life to the earth. These ceremonies sought to restore harmony and ensure fertility for the next season.
Then came the rise of disruptive technology a few millennia ago—astronomical mathematics for predicting seasons, mastery of the horse and chariot for war, and the advent of writing. Humans began seeing themselves as masters of nature. The earth became something to exploit rather than respect. Instead of honoring nature’s limits, we turned to ever more complex technologies and regulations to manage the unintended consequences of our actions—struggling to curb our worst instincts before they destroyed the very foundation of our survival.
The Fall
Many cultures tell of a dreamlike age without birth, death, or self-awareness, where harmony with nature was effortless. In the Western tradition, this is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve lived in innocence until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, awakening self-consciousness and the power to manipulate nature, shattering their balance with it. That original transgression set humanity on a path of domination and exploitation, leading to the crisis we now face—a wounded Earth and problems, like climate change, that may be beyond our ability to solve.
The Myth of Progress
Modern society runs on the myth of endless progress—the belief that every problem has a solution. This fuels relentless action and blind optimism, even when realism is needed. We cling to solutions as a way to maintain control in an uncertain world, unwilling to accept that some problems have no easy fix or demand painful sacrifices.
The drive for solutions is a defense mechanism against discomfort. Facing limits and loss is painful, so we distract ourselves with fixes instead of reckoning with reality. Politicians, CEOs, and activists push simplistic fixes that sound good but don’t work.
I wrote this to offer perspective to the many people who thoughtfully engaged with my recent post. I’m not claiming to have answers—because I don’t.
But I do know this: chasing solutions without deeper understanding isn’t progress—it’s just accelerating the next disaster.
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Loren Eiseley, echoing Thoreau and the other New England natural philosophers, exhorted humanity to re-insert itself into Nature before it’s too late. It was never going to happen. We probably haven’t got the psychological toolkit to do so. Once we found ourselves on the so-called “good life” track with many “energy slaves” why would you spoil the party by reflecting on the waiting abyss. Somebody summed it up correctly with the statement “humans cannot tolerate much reality”.
Thanks for those observations, Ray.
All the best,
Art
I think you are right that we have a very difficult problem that we may not be able to solve and that renewables will not fix the problem. However, I believe that God created this world and there will be a fix by his intervention. In the past, the earth has had earthquakes and volcanos causing catastrophic climate changes, such as volcanos which left atmospheric pollution over the entire earth. It killed a lot of living creatures and plant life. But over time, maybe millions of years, the earth survived, and life began to thrive again. This, in my opinion, can happen again. Asteroids have hit the earth in the past too! Also, we might be able to establish a colony on Mars, as Elon Musk proposes. Eventually God will have an answer one way or the other, we just may not be here to see it!
Mark,
Nature’s negative feedback mechanisms once kept human population and impact in check. The carbon pulse disrupted that balance, but those same forces are now reasserting themselves—stronger and more unpredictable—ultimately restoring equilibrium. Call it God if you like; I see it as the natural complexity of the universe at work.
All the best,
Art
What if God the Spirit working through humans is what we need to focus on. Then maybe strong communities focused on mutual aid and good stewardship of Earth can help get us through our predicament with the least amount of suffering possible. I think if enough humans were able to do this (I am very far from perfect), it would be a profound miracle.
I am skeptical of our current ability to colonize Mars. However, even if we could, I worry that it wouldn’t really solve our problems on this planet. I think our economic systems would still rely on infinite growth of population, energy, and materials to keep from collapsing. A Martian colony would probably need support from Earth for a very long time before it would be self-sufficient, making our predicament even worse.
I don’t mean to sound hopeless, and I am personally not without hope. I have just started to hope for different things than a lot of other people. I hope that we humans can come together to help get as many of us as possible through tough times. I hope that we can become better, wiser, humbler stewards. I hope that I can contribute to my community. I hope that my children can also grow to be accepted contributing members of their local communities. I have stopped hoping that our modern techno-industrial society can somehow become sustainable over the long term. I have stopped hoping for a way to live 200 years. I have stopped hoping to attain great personal financial wealth. I have stopped wanting to impress people with my new car/giant TV/smartphone/meat smoker.
What do you think about what I wrote. I know that it is extremely unlikely, but it’s the best way through, in my opinion.
Scott,
You are achieving the shift in consciousness that people like Nate Hagens, Dougald Hine, Iain McGilchrist, Jon Rowson and many others have been signaling for some time.
All the best,
Art
Art, you are right on as usual. There is no way out of this predicament until we realize that the current path is absolutely unsustainable. I just read a paper that says that human greenhouse gas emissions are over riding the Milankovitch forcing putting off the next ice age by 25,000 to 500,000 years. Then end of humanity is likely in sight.
John
John,
It’s good to hear from you.
I’m not as pessimistic about human extinction—it’s on the probability distribution, but I see it as a lower-risk outcome. Population decline seems inevitable, and the adjustments will be painful, even traumatic, reshaping how we live and organize.
All the best,
Art
I totally agree. I see this as coming down to what Bill Rees, the noted ecologist, has pointed out: You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the real problem is.
I suspect that even if we understood the problem, we would not attempt to solve it. Our predicament obviously requires some kind of collective action that includes sacrifice. To most of my neighbors and fellow countrymen taking collective action smacks of the “sin of socialism.” We should have paid more attention to people like Henry David Thoreau, but never did (myself included).
Edward,
Bill Rees is a friend and among the wiser people I know.
What if life were about aligning with the universe rather than trying to reshape it to fit our desires?
Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.
The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
All the best,
Art
Great line from Te Ching. The opposite of where we are now. Unfortunately higher education today indoctrinates us to see the world as something to manipulate for our own ends. We tamper with it and are ruining it.
Edward,
Philosophy remains among the most noble of human activities–literally, love of wisdom.
All the best,
Art
For a Christian like myself, despair is not an option. It may sound sophisticated, but the future belongs to those who show up. It does not belong to those who believe there is no future.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Germany’s Energiewende worked. Windmills and solar cells delivered cheap, reliable, on demand power. Electric cars were popular and the IC engine was on its way out. The renewable future was here, and it worked.
If that had happened, I do not believe we would be having this conversation.
Richard,
Energiewende was built on the flawed assumption that electricity alone could sustain civilization. Its failure was inevitable because it was a solution designed for a different kind of society than the one we actually live in.
“Belief protects people from direct experience.”
–Carl Jung
All the best,
Art
Art
Your comments are spot on. I’m often told even by fellow scientists that when I teach global limits to growth I have to offer solutions. It’s a Human Predicament we are in. Predicaments don’t have solutions. But they could have pathways to a better future. I often use your posts and interviews to get pithy quotes to summarise our global problems and thinking.
Cheers
Phil
Thanks, Phil. You know my opinion of solutions.
All the best,
Art
You are entitled to your back-to-nature, spiritual opinion. Perhaps, you would like to live in a cave.
But I reject the notion that the problem is unchecked growth. Technologies have been increasing the standard of living since the end of the Dark Ages, even with unchecked government-created monopolies. Malthus has been proven wrong, even without free competitive markets, and we still haven’t started space travel.
I also reject the notion that wind and solar can’t contribute in a big way if one significant short- and intermediate-term problem is solved. The problem with wind and solar is primarily that they can’t be efficiently backed up with any energy source, not even natural gas. Economic batteries need to be developed.
Another problem is policymakers favor energy sources like oil and gas and wind and solar. We need diversification. Nations must move to free markets, and as an interim step, provide all other possible energy solutions with equal subsidies. It would be an economic disaster to promote other technologies by removing all environmental exemptions and subsidies favoring oil and gas at this time.
Mike,
Your comments reflect a reductionist viewpoint that may not fully recognize its own limitations, dismissing what it doesn’t understand as foolish.
All the best,
Art
Ditto to your solution of restricted growth.
Mike,
I never claimed lower growth was a solution. I simply pointed out that other proposals would fail because they ignore growth as the root cause of exceeding planetary boundaries. I’ve been openly critical of “degrowth” because it’s just another way to avoid reality—so impractical that it borders on neurotic delusion rather than the usual wishful thinking of most solutions.
All the best,
Art
I never claimed your solution was lower growth or degrowth, but rather I said it was restricted growth. Apparently, if you are proposing something, it is something that promotes growth while recognizing growth as the root cause of exceeding planetary boundaries. I would guess that you are proposing space travel but you seemed to ignore that in my original post. And if not that either, I need for you to be clear what you are proposing or I am just wasting my time on your website.
Mike,
I never said restricted growth either. I said that would be a likely outcome when Nature imposes its will on humans but not because of any program or voluntary actions.
I don’t propose—I describe and explain. That’s what science does.
If you’re looking for solutions, you’re in the wrong place. Expecting definitive answers where none exist is a waste of both our time.
All the best,
Art
Thanks Art, really good. I love, “The Sacred Exchange”.
Thanks, Bill.
All the best,
Art
Thank you for your insights. I appreciate them because they deal with what seems like the big question. Why with all our potential to create heaven on earth are we remaining on an existential path ,experiencing greater disorder and overall suffering?
We are caught in a self conscious trap a fallen state. There seems to be considerable knowledge as to our fallen state, ego -centric divided ,mind -body ,brain hemispheres ,but yet we remain trapped in the disorder of our own making. If we look at the Garden of Eden story as the Hero’s journey ie Joseph Campbell’s mono myth we might gain insight as to the way out of the trap and our return to the Garden. The hero overcomes and gains access to the tree of life which lies in the Paradise of God. Is what the hero overcomes that which put humans outside the Garden?
.
Bob,
The hero doesn’t return to Paradise. He returns to the world transformed to benefit others. He’s the bodhisatva.
Spirit is uncompromising like the right hemisphere. That’s why religion is orthodox.
I’ve been studying John Tarrant’s “Light Inside the Dark” for almost as long as Joseph Campbell’s work
All the best,
Art
Yep… the penny drops… I wrote this a couple of years ago:
“Even in this ‘age of information’ we live of course with overwhelming uncertainty.”
Philip,
The universe is a probability distribution—the quantum wave function describes its propagation.
All the best,
Art
Technology is greatly overblown. ie….. our predominant method of generating energy is still fundamentally the same as the caveman’s. We combust hydrocarbons. If anything the greatest piece of tech that came along was the diesel engine. It is the single invention that made it possible to grow the developed world to the size it became. In Spite of the fact that a good part of its use was used to blow ourselves up.
John,
I disagree but thanks for your perspective.
All the best,
Art
Art, I think you are correct in calling our dilemma a psychological problem. We are certainly not equipped to accept and deal with what we have created. But there may be another, more purely biological component as well. As your friend Bill Rees said in a recent podcast with Reuben Nelson, biologically, the evolutionary state of our brains is about at the Paleozoic level. Meanwhile our cultural evolution has created a complexity level far in advance of our hunter/gatherer brains’ ability to comprehend and apprehend. Evolution moves slowly; culture is quick to change. We may not be cognitively equipped, and out of our depth.
Frank,
I disagree with many friends and colleagues about almost everything that evolutionary psychology has back-projected onto Paleolithic humans.
All the best,
Art
Fire leads to full consciousness, which then leads to domestication, agriculture, and mining. Which then leads to fossil energy, which then leads to self-induced mass extinction.
Most advanced overshoot aware people can agree with the above… but for some reason they can’t agree with the below:
Those good ole days of “maintaining balance with nature”…. is just a stage in the process that cannot be prolonged. Very similar to when Old World collided with New World. The Native Americans were at a stage in the process where they looked “good” compared to the stage in the process where the “evil” Europeans were at. But the Natives would have gotten to that European level eventually (with time and energy). Just like those Colonialists used to be “good” back when they were in their earlier stage of the process (3000BC Mesopotamia?).
No species that conquers fire can ever fit in with the web of life. At certain stages it might appear possible, but it’s just an illusion. Let it play out and it will always end up miserably for everyone else. The easiest solution is to remove the fire users. Hence the mass extinction that comes guaranteed when you start playing with fossil fuels. Yes, lots of innocent victims perish, but it’s the only way for Mother Earth to rid herself of the megacancer called humans.
Paqnation,
Appreciate your thoughts, even if I don’t share them.
If fire doesn’t belong in the equation for living in balance with nature, where do you draw the line? Do we strip out all technology—arrows, spears, stone tools, language?
Follow that logic far enough, and humans wouldn’t have lasted 10,000 years.
All the best,
Art
I recognize you, paqnation, from un-denial.
Human digestive systems have evolved since the mastery of fire over 200,000 years ago to where we now cannot subsist entirely on raw food. Take away cooking, and that’s the end of the homo genus.
I agree that addiction to fire led us to this dreadful precipice, but not that it prevents us from backing away. Humans are capable of restraint, and also capable of acting in the role of a keystone species. The early first Americans hunted much megafauna to extinction, and somehow learned from that experience. I disagree that they would inevitably have become colonist-Cannibals.
We need a different story.
Paqnation (and Robin),
You can’t just claim fire led to the human predicament—you need data to back it up.
Evidence from Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) and Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (Israel) shows hominids controlled fire at least 1 million years ago, and it was widespread by the time Homo sapiens emerged (~300,000 years ago).
Yet, for nearly 300,000 years, human population remained stable at under 1 million.
The first measurable population growth didn’t begin until ~10,000 years ago, with the Neolithic Revolution and the shift to agriculture. There’s no evidence that fire alone caused population increases, species declines, or pollution spikes—including carbon emissions—until farming enabled large-scale ecological transformation.
If you’re making a claim, you need evidence—not just a story that fits your narrative.
All the best,
Art
Yes, Art, humans controlled fire for at least a million years, as homo erectus and homo habilis. Maybe it was an overstatement to say that fire led us here, but it was a prerequisite. “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” by Richard Wrangham and “Denial: self-deception, false beliefs, and the origins of the human mind” by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower were both thought provoking and informative. I found nothing in Wrangham’s book to disagree with. I found much in Denial to at least regard with skepticism, but found most of its narrative around fire pretty convincing.
In any case, the physiological changes initiated by mastery and then addiction to fire were necessary if not sufficient to lead to the kind of power-hunger post-agricultural homo sapiens has exhibited. Arguably, the second necessary ingredient was Holocene climate stability, without which agriculture would have been impossible, and might again become impossible. Art, you point at the horse; Daniel Schmachtenberger points at the ox. Each of these was a stepping stone towards the predicament you articulate so well. Heck, even the horse wasn’t sufficient. We needed fossil hydrocarbons to finish tying the noose around our own necks.
Robin,
All species find methods to maximize power. You can’t expect them to become extinct.
All the best,
Art