We Can’t Handle The Truth About The Human Predicament
Climate change is as obvious as gravity. The only people who debate gravity have advanced degrees in theoretical physics. Almost everyone in America—regardless of training or experience—has a strong opinion about climate change for some reason.
Cognitive dissonance is part of the problem. This is what happens when two strongly held beliefs conflict.
Most Americans believe in the progress narrative—that human ingenuity, technology and hard work can overcome almost any obstacle. The idea that the effects of progress may be harming the planet, other species and future generations of humans creates psychologic conflict or cognitive dissonance. We cannot hold both beliefs at the same time so we deny the existence of one or the other—in this case, climate change.
For many, the default position is—in the unlikely event that climate change is a problem—that technology, ingenuity and hard work will find a solution. That works just fine as long as we are energy- and systems-ignorant. Once we open our eyes to the bigger picture, it becomes clear that it’s not that simple.
The progress narrative is only partly true. It leaves out the fact that most of civilization’s progress—at least as measured by economic growth or GDP (gross domestic product)—over the last few centuries is because of fossil fuels (Figure 1). The role of technology and innovation was secondary.
Oil is the economy and profits are linked to its consumption. The R-squared (r2) correlation between oil consumption and global GDP is 96% (Figure 2). That correlation is as statistically perfect as it gets in the real world.
For all of our technology and ingenuity, oil, natural gas and coal are responsible for the wealth of nations. Every barrel of oil equivalent (boe) contains about 4.5 human-years of work. That means that our civilization has more than 380 billion fossil-energy slaves working for us all of the time (Table 1).
We have added an average of 4.7 billion fossil slaves every year for the last decade in addition to the base amount of almost 340 billion 10 years ago (Figure 3).
This broader perspective shows that simply switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is not a solution, certainly not in the time window of urgency for climate change. Nor has anyone proven that net emissions from renewable energy are substantially less than from fossil fuels once all of the embedded energy consumption in their extraction, transportation, manufacture and distribution are taken into account.
Assuming that renewable emissions are lower, there is simply not time nor resources available to scale from about 7% wind and solar to a large enough percentage of world energy consumption to make a difference. Even the most optimistic net-zero projections do not indicate that wind and solar energy will account for more than one-third of total final energy by 2050.
More importantly, climate change is not the biggest problem facing the world. It is a symptom of the much larger problem of overshoot.
Overshoot means that humans are using natural resources and polluting at rates beyond the planet’s capacity to recover. The main cause of overshoot is the extraordinary growth of human population made possible by fossil energy.
Overshoot is more difficult to dispute than climate change—the destruction of rainforests, the extinction of other species, the pollution of land, river and seas, the acidification of the oceans, and loss of fisheries and coral reefs. These are not part of any natural process and human activity is clearly responsible.
Technology, unfortunately, is no more a solution to climate change, overshoot or the human predicament that it was the primary cause for human prosperity.
Carbon emissions and the overshooting of planetary boundaries are unlikely to decrease as long as energy consumption, world GDP and population continue to increase (Figure 4). The interrelationship of these factors with the degradation of Earth’s ecosystem means that there are no solutions without a structural change in all of these factors as a starting point.
This implies that a civilization paradigm shift is required but I think that we are psychologically incapable of acknowledging that. Even if we could notionally concede this possibility, we would immediately start rationalizing that of course technology, efficiency and human ingenuity are central to any path forward. In short order, we’d be back to carbon capture, renewable energy, circular economies and related fantasies.
We just can’t handle the truth about the human predicament.
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Based on this, best solution might be mass genocide on a global scale
John,
Nature will resolve the imbalance by some means that humans will not like.
All the best,
Art
Art, thanks again for your perspective.
You state:
James Hansen wrote in his 2009 book titled Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity:
For the first time in recorded history, North Atlantic mean sea surface temperatures are above 25°C (77°F).
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1687483298942177280
For more than a month, a record breaking global mean 2 m air temperature ‘heatwave’ has persisted.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1687793375855194112
The historic extreme event in the Antarctic continues.
https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1687996268063141889
And here’s another excellent explainer from glaciologist Professor Jason Box in his latest YouTube video published 4 Aug 2023 titled 5 factors behind the Global Heatwave 2023, and it’s not just El Niño, duration 0:11:54.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdvn2pGyOw
Warming is only going to accelerate while the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) keeps getting larger.
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1684966795826929666
Decades of compromise have stolen our once safe habitat. As global mean surface temperatures rise further, more places around the world will become progressively unlivable.
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Either we/humanity make the paradigm shift very soon or civilisation is on a trajectory to collapse before 2100.
The final paragraph really does explain my own situation quite well. Even if I can accept that immense change has to occur, I immediately consider bio-diesels/mushroom plastics/ancient desert cooling architecture etc. Finger crossed for a StarTrek Replicator. Perhaps that is what it means to be human.
It feels like my own style of living is already scaled back : on a low income salary I cannot afford my own retirement, savings for a child, or to fund my signifigant other’s retirement/living expenses while they raise the child. Is it true you have earn half a million USD per year before the taxman gets their cut?
Also heard some of Nate Higgins’ 10 degrowth ideas ; one was worldwide communism/authoritarianism & I think a lot of people would die over that.
I’ve been saying this myself for years now, that climate change is ‘merely’ a symptom. But we can’t handle that, either. The idea that if we “solved” it we would still be going down the drain for myriad other reasons related to overshoot. It’s a perfect storm out there like no previous perfect storm we’ve brewed with the machine age. The ride from hereon in will be epic and for most of us final. Great summary piece.
Coal worldwide today is – diesel – powering trucks, trains and other machinery – a 400-600 tonnes a load.
8 billion tonnes of coal per annum no longer can be extracted using steam engines – or most of the coal extracted would be burned in the process of the extraction and transportation to last point of use.
Iraq in the last few days suffered a total blackout – BAU – but oil extraction and exportation continued unimpacted – like a swiss watch – BAU.
Grid generation in Iraq is primarily to animate the oil extraction and export operation – itself.
Electricity consumption per capita in Iraq is 11+ folds less than per-capita in the neighbouring Kuwait.
If Iraq’s enjoyed same grid per-capita as hot-weather Texas, power generation in Iraq needed to increase by 7+ folds.
That would cause a rapid increase in the already skyrocketing population growth in the nation.
Some attribute the on-steroid population growth in the war-torn nation to Life being exposed to existential threats non-stop since 1914 – when Britain invaded the country for its finite resources for the first time – the rest is hisotry.
Our Western Civilisation Science, though, never acknowledges this phenomena, but rather, and on the contrary, inspires that the nearly exponential growth is a result of Life turning parasitic, producing armies of useless eaters.
Nobody knows for sure how many people will be able to survive post fossil fuels age, but we are readily able to find out that to extract 8 billion tonnes of coal per annum, 100 barrels of oil and atmospheres of natural gas daily – by hand using buckets and ropes – would have required a workforce of 8 billion people, flat out, 24/7 – strong.
“In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
Time taken in stocking energy to build an energy system, adding to it the time taken in building the system will always be longer than the entire useful lifetime of the system.
No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all systems.
Energy, like time, flows from past to future” (2017).