Amazing! But this line may not age well since software developers may be gone before coal miners: "A 50-year-old coal miner cannot simply retrain as a software developer overnight."
If I were not already committed to the necessity of fundamental change in our culture, I might
be frightened away by this. My first impression is that there's no way this can be even planned, let alone implemented without strong governance and leadership in all sectors both nationally and internationally. This should be required reading for all students. I shall flag it for my grandkids. Thank you for this enormous effort.
Some historical comment around other similar transitions (horse to train to car...whale oil to electricity...etc.) would help frame what's at stake, I think. This transition would be many times bigger in magnitude, of course.
As you know, the transition to a lower carbon economy is well underway. If it's successful, the upcoming conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels will accelerate it. The tragedy is that the fossil fuel industry, with the support of the current administration, is doubling down, increasing the total value of assets that will become stranded, when they should be phasing new investments out.
I'm skeptical that either DAC or BECCS will be capable of scaling to the point of being meaningful. Increased ocean alkalinity and enhanced chemical weathering may be more effective because they do have the ability to scale without using land area needed for forests and agriculture, although more research is needed on both before deployment can be considered.
Hi Andrew -- For a combination of thermodynamic and technoeconomic reasons, DAC will be far more expensive than biological methods (which include BECCS and BiCRS). Based on the chemical exergy of CO2 being ~20 kJ/mole, it's easily shown that DAC will be more than $100/tonne, and it's currently hard to get to under $200/tonne, just for the capture part.
I'll also add that biomass-based processes don't have to involve combustion, which is an exergetically-inefficient process, and which leads to having to separate CO2 from nitrogen. Steam reforming of bio-methane produces hydrogen at a few dollars per kg H2, along with a high concentration CO2 stream. DOE's "Roads to Removal" document includes considerable discussion of BiCRS pathways for hydrogen.
The other thing that shouldn't be ignored is that the natural sinks continue to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at rates that are directly proportional to the partial pressure of atmospheric CO2.
Recent findings on the natural sinks include that the ocean's biological carbon pump, which directly transports carbon from near-surface water into the dense interior of the ocean, is substantially stronger than had recently been assumed, and that the ocean has consistently pulled more CO2 from the atmosphere than the land. See Friedlingstein et.al. 2025.
Drawdown rates from the natural sinks have increased from about +10 GT/year in the 1970s to over +20 GT/year currently based on higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and, contrary to a popular talking point, would continue to operate at high levels -- far, far higher than we could remove CO2 using DAC technology -- even if we stopped anthropogenic CO2 overnight, declining only as atmospheric levels fall. CO2 doesn't simply stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
Delegates that drew up the 2015 Paris Agreement rejected a goal of hitting net-zero by 2050 but did specifically include calls for a) peaking anthropogenic emissions as soon as possible and b) achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions and removals by sinks in the second half of the century. Bottom line here is that we are getting substantial help on these two explicit objectives through the combination of reduced emissions by developing and deploying advanced, low- and zero-carbon technologies and continued drawdown by the natural sinks. We could readily achieve both a) and b) through additional technology advances providing modest anthropogenic emission reductions of just a few percent per year.
We really should be talking now about hitting a target, like the 350 ppm CO2 target that was proposed by Hansen several years ago. Again, the natural sinks can help us do this, but we really have to make sure that we protect them.
1. The photo is not of a 6000 foot house going into the ocean; it is of the small garage next to the house going into the ocean. Yes, this is nitpicking, but for climate communication, we need to filter out misleading details/errors that can be used to discredit the messenger and the message.
2. It could be useful to note that the context for transition may not be the predictable, smooth incremental line we have been seduced into believing is the path of climate change. Instead, the potential for rapid jagged tipping-point changes adds another level of complexity to risk management.
3. The impact of climate disruption on the insurance industry is a case study worth highlighting in your chapter on transition risk. Of course, financial pain to the industry does not just affect that industry, but everybody who depends on it, which in highly organized modern societies is everybody. The climate change -home insurance - mortgage interaction crisis is here now in some areas.
Hi Andrew, thank you for an engaging read! I wonder if this may be inaccurate:
"As electric vehicles improve and battery costs fall (technology risk), governments implement EV mandates and phase out internal combustion engines — Norway by 2025, the UK by 2030 (policy risk)."
We still sell fossil fuel cars here in Norway, though the vast majority (95-96%) are electric. There was never a mandate, just a "goal" of reaching a 100% EV share of new cars by 2025 – however, this goal has to a large extent been reached even in the absence of a mandate. As a policy tool, you could perhaps focus on EV subsidies instead. These are still in play, though they have been reduced in recent years, since public transport and "soft mobility" are after all more climate friendly than cars.
Great work here! One tiny suggested edit for you to consider. When you discuss the likely decline in the value of fossil fuel assets, you say "...that are worth trillions..." - I wonder if the sentence would be more accurate if you added the word "currently" before "worth."
Lots of good stuff but I wonder whether net zero will ever happen? It may be fine as a goal, but perhaps not achievable? What you write about are both carrots and sticks. The market place and economics creates a carrot and the imposition of costs to emit a stick. At some point, what if everyone wants to buy carbon credits and no-one has them to sell? This relates especially to the costs of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which are extraordinarily high and Microsoft, which had been promoting these, has now withdrawn, I believe. Who is really going to pay the exorbitant costs to remove carbon?
You don't mention methane, which is a big issue in NZ. It has a short life and should, in my view, be treated separately from CO2, and then the issues of biophysical v fossil sources come in. Those ought to be separate also. The former are circular (CO2 in atmosphere gets taken up by plants and grass, eaten by cattle and humans, and goes back into atmosphere as methane but decays and is gone in 20 years).
As soon as international aspects come in, these issues get a lot more complex. cf the rise in emissions by China, then followed by China, but perhaps Africa is next???
No one knows how hard it’s going to be to get to net zero. And I think worrying about it is counterproductive. Rather, we should just be focusing on installing as much renewable energy as we can, which yields benefits by reducing emissions and air pollution and our national security.
Maybe it’ll be really hard to get to net zero, maybe not. No one knows! But one thing we do know is that in previous environmental issues (eg, ozone depletion), it’s always much cheaper to achieve the targets than even the most optimistic estimate was beforehand.
As far as methane goes, I think the challenges are going to be similar. As the methane supply chain evaporates, there’s going to be social and economic dislocation that needs to be handled by transition policy.
If "net-zero" is defined to occur when anthropogenic, direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere equals anthropogenic CO2 emissions, we know from basic thermodynamics that it will be very hard, very costly, and very energy-intensive to directly, actively remove substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. After all, the annual, worldwide anthropogenic CO2 emission rate, including fossil fuel consumption and land use change, is currently a bit greater than 40 GT CO2 per year (Friedlingstein et.al., 2025). However, the natural sinks operate without a large cost. if the objectives (per the 2015 Paris Agreement) include a) a near-term peaking of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, we're getting close to that (based on the last ~15 years); and b) achieving a balance of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and removals by sinks (including natural sinks), then we can achieve that balance in just a few decades with modest annual reductions in CO2 emissions (e.g., about 1-3% per year).
The best economics IMO, will involve a mix of baseload energy, load-following energy, and variable renewable energy. However, if one insists that it pretty much all has to be variable renewable energy, then it would be much more costly. And, frankly, ignoring economics is pretty much the surest way to fail.
In the USA, we have succeeded in using lower-carbon energy technologies to reduce emissions by an average of more than 1% per year because we developed and deployed new energy systems that are economically-preferable to high-carbon emission energy infrastructure.
Let's not ignore a technoeconomic approach that is already working: Continued development of advanced energy technologies -- 21st Century advanced energy infrastructure -- that is low- and zero- carbon emissions AND economically preferable to 20th Century fossil energy infrastructure. This approach has halted what was previously exponentially-rising anthropogenic CO2 emission rates and has enabled the shutdown of several hundred coal-fired powerplants (which were also bad for human health).
Net zero is a goal. Perhaps unattainable. My own guess is that this is the case but it should still be the objective. The thing is that adaptation will also be essential and perhaps should be mentioned
I presume *collective* adaptation is implied? Because adaptation, i.e. rebuilding, hardening and/or resilience measures, migration, etc., is already happening, by private individuals, as well as communities on multiple scales. Much of the cost is still being borne by individuals, however.
Good insights although I take issue with "targeted programs for a just transition," most of which seem to target the highest paid, most resilient workers (i.e. your example of offshore oil pros). These programs will naturally favor better paid, more politically powerful groups, leaving out the vastly larger mass of lower paid, more vulnerable folk who'll see only costs. A much better approach, in my humble view, would be much broader economic redistribution aimed at lower-income people. Offer EVs swapped for gas guzzlers, and heat pumps for furnaces. Offer lower income rural folk support to move to cities where they'll prosper more and pollute less. Subsidize home builders who build in cities while tightening regulations on those who don't.
With respect, global heating is a daunting problem but climate change is only one co-symptom of ecological overshoot. Overshoot means that humanity is extracting even renewable resources faster than they can regenerate and dumping wastes beyond nature's assimilation capacity. Anthropogenic climate change is an excess waste (carbon dioxide) problem.
The world’s focus on climate change is actually a distraction from overshoot and clearly counterproductive. Overshoot is ultimately a terminal condition, yet virtually everything society is doing to address climate change—wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, etc.— is demonstrably not fixing the climate and is worsening overshoot. These techno-fixes are carbon-intensive and perpetuate the growthist mentality of modern techno-industrial society. This reality is well documented and shows that current approaches to climate in isolation are rather dumb.
Climate change and its co-symptoms (plunging biodiversity, ocean acidification, tropical deforestation, spreading ocean dead zones, micro-plastic contamination, all other forms of pollution) can be solved only by significant reductions of economic throughput (energy/resource consumption and pollution) and human population. If proposed ‘solutions’ do not reduce throughput or population, then they are a waste of resources and contribute to the problem.
I challenge the idea that solar panels and wind turbines are not fixing the problem. They use resources only during their manufacture, unlike fossil fuels that are continually depleting a resource that will run out. And they can be part of a circular economy, with their parts reused endlessly. They are part of the solution.
Are you proposing that people stop using electricity altogether? Otherwise they are crucial.
EVs are more problematic, since they help to proliferate cars at the expense of more sustainable means of transportation. But less resource-intensive options, like e-bikes, open up bicycling to those who can't, for whatever reason, just use bicycles to get around. Recycling EV parts, particularly their batteries, is well underway.
As for reduction of human population, we are on track to plateau in a few decades, according to the UN. And the "good" news is that this projection fails to take into account the millions of deaths we are almost certain to see due to extreme heat waves, agriculture failures, lengthy droughts, and other disasters before the climate starts to recover.
Dan, it would take pages and more time than I have to address all your comments so I can only briefly point out that modern 'renewable' technologies like wind and solar are actually only replacable every 15 to 30 years mostly using fossil fuels and that the circular economy is partially a myth. Every process, including those associated with recycling requires available energy (essergy) which can be used only once (no recyling). Moreover, many materials cannot be recycled usefully and a portion of even those that can be recycled is irreversibly lost, so new material is always involved in the so-called circular economy. In any case, if the material economy is growing, say at 2%/yr, then everything doubles in 35 years so even with (theoretically impossible) 100% recyling, we would still need twice as much material. The real point of my original comment was that all techno fixes and mythic constructs like green growth and the circular economy are directed at maintaining the status quo. But the status quo is one of overshoot in which humans are depleting and polluting the biophysical world faster than it can regenerate and recover. This is ultimately a fatally terminal condition for which we are beginning to see early symptoms. You seem to recognize this by commenting on the millions of deaths likely to result from global heating, extensive drought, failing agriculture, etc. attributable to just one co-symptom of overshoot. Now add in the effects of the other co-symptoms. So, I repeat, if you want to increase the chances for some folks to survive the post-modernity simplification then valid approaches must involve, "significant reductions of economic throughput (energy/resource consumption and pollution) and human population."
Yes, energy is the one resource that cannot be recycled. Fortunately, we get a tremendous amount of energy every day from the sun; we are using only a small fraction. There is no danger of overshoot on this resource as long as we recognize that current sunlight and its effects like wind are all we ought to use.
Yes, currently we use fossil fuels in the production and recycling of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc. But there's nothing inherent in their production that requires fossil fuels; it's just what we've got right now.
Yes, recycling is imperfect, but as we get better at it we will improve. We do have to make sure we don't exhaust the supply.
I'm not denying that our current overshoot is a problem and is going to get worse. And we need to reduce our per capita consumption as well as our total population. What I'm saying is that we have some time to make the transition.
I do wonder what you envision as the endgame. Are you envisioning a world going back to 1800, with no electricity? Because I don't think it's necessary to give up electricity. Although it requires minerals and other materials in finite supply, we need to recognize that everything we dig out of the ground is a finite resource and husband it.
Fundamentaally, the status quo is untenable. But the tech changes you dismiss as myths are vital to the transition.
I don't disagree with you preferred outcome, more with prospects of getting there. For example, I have never suggested that tech changes are myths; the mytic part is that people belief the tech changes will somehow save us. Here's a much condensed version of my thinking: https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/mything-out-on-sustainable-development
This is great! Have you considered flagging the difference between a 'just transition' and 'justice'? I'm sure you'll cover in further chapters, but when you say 'a just transition is an effort to ensure that the benefits of a green economy are shared broadly and that the costs do not fall unfairly on those who can least afford them', and then that the 'core idea' of this is workers and retraining ... this ignores the other complexities of true justice across the world, i.e., international resource allocation, access to new/green tech, vulnerabilities due to class/race/geography/gender; overall, that those that have contributed least to the crisis are those most affected (Tuvalu is the classic case study). As we know, climate change will very much make existing vulnerabilities and injustices worse, so I wonder if you might at least broadening this explanation here a little bit (or noting that there's other large areas of work on this, apart from just worker retraining). But - overall great chapter and intro!
Fundamentally overhauling the global economic system around a single issue is perhaps the most historically risky enterprise ever conceived. The scale and historical scope of this is vastly under appreciated in this book chapter. Profound moral problems arise by subordinating all other human values, ethics, and societal needs to a single lens.
"Fundamentally overhauling the global economic system around a single issue is perhaps the most historically risky enterprise ever conceived."
This is sheer, hyperbolic alarmism. Decarbonization won't require "fundamentally overhauling" the global economic system, only reducing or abolishing the price advantage over renewables that fossil carbon enjoys by socializing its emissions. That's already happening in many places around the world. It should be accelerated by collective intervention, i.e. by national and sub-national governments, to either internalize the cost of emissions in the price of fossil carbon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax), or subsidize the build-out of carbon-neutral energy supplies and storage, to drive their prices down further (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/government-energy-spending-tracker-policy-database). See the US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, or China.
"Profound moral problems arise by subordinating all other human values, ethics, and societal needs to a single lens."
Good thing Zeke isn't proposing that, and no governments are implementing it, nor does global decarbonization depend on it. Your moral claim is approved by fossil fuel producers and investors hoping to forestall collective intervention in their profit streams. I, for one, infer you're either a mercenary disinformer, or an ideologically motivated volunteer obstructionist (see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon": https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Important point not given sufficient attention. Impact of Iran War could be assessed. Timing issues need attention. Gemini gave me a 10 year projection of oil&gas industry demand, price, cash flow and reserves value. Contact me at ron2randall@gmail.com for copy and discussion. If you are near NYC, I would like you to consider giving a talk at my club.
Amazing! But this line may not age well since software developers may be gone before coal miners: "A 50-year-old coal miner cannot simply retrain as a software developer overnight."
Thanks, this is a good suggestion. I've fixed it in my copy.
If I were not already committed to the necessity of fundamental change in our culture, I might
be frightened away by this. My first impression is that there's no way this can be even planned, let alone implemented without strong governance and leadership in all sectors both nationally and internationally. This should be required reading for all students. I shall flag it for my grandkids. Thank you for this enormous effort.
Some historical comment around other similar transitions (horse to train to car...whale oil to electricity...etc.) would help frame what's at stake, I think. This transition would be many times bigger in magnitude, of course.
As you know, the transition to a lower carbon economy is well underway. If it's successful, the upcoming conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels will accelerate it. The tragedy is that the fossil fuel industry, with the support of the current administration, is doubling down, increasing the total value of assets that will become stranded, when they should be phasing new investments out.
I'm skeptical that either DAC or BECCS will be capable of scaling to the point of being meaningful. Increased ocean alkalinity and enhanced chemical weathering may be more effective because they do have the ability to scale without using land area needed for forests and agriculture, although more research is needed on both before deployment can be considered.
Hi Andrew -- For a combination of thermodynamic and technoeconomic reasons, DAC will be far more expensive than biological methods (which include BECCS and BiCRS). Based on the chemical exergy of CO2 being ~20 kJ/mole, it's easily shown that DAC will be more than $100/tonne, and it's currently hard to get to under $200/tonne, just for the capture part.
I'll also add that biomass-based processes don't have to involve combustion, which is an exergetically-inefficient process, and which leads to having to separate CO2 from nitrogen. Steam reforming of bio-methane produces hydrogen at a few dollars per kg H2, along with a high concentration CO2 stream. DOE's "Roads to Removal" document includes considerable discussion of BiCRS pathways for hydrogen.
The other thing that shouldn't be ignored is that the natural sinks continue to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at rates that are directly proportional to the partial pressure of atmospheric CO2.
Recent findings on the natural sinks include that the ocean's biological carbon pump, which directly transports carbon from near-surface water into the dense interior of the ocean, is substantially stronger than had recently been assumed, and that the ocean has consistently pulled more CO2 from the atmosphere than the land. See Friedlingstein et.al. 2025.
Drawdown rates from the natural sinks have increased from about +10 GT/year in the 1970s to over +20 GT/year currently based on higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and, contrary to a popular talking point, would continue to operate at high levels -- far, far higher than we could remove CO2 using DAC technology -- even if we stopped anthropogenic CO2 overnight, declining only as atmospheric levels fall. CO2 doesn't simply stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
Delegates that drew up the 2015 Paris Agreement rejected a goal of hitting net-zero by 2050 but did specifically include calls for a) peaking anthropogenic emissions as soon as possible and b) achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions and removals by sinks in the second half of the century. Bottom line here is that we are getting substantial help on these two explicit objectives through the combination of reduced emissions by developing and deploying advanced, low- and zero-carbon technologies and continued drawdown by the natural sinks. We could readily achieve both a) and b) through additional technology advances providing modest anthropogenic emission reductions of just a few percent per year.
We really should be talking now about hitting a target, like the 350 ppm CO2 target that was proposed by Hansen several years ago. Again, the natural sinks can help us do this, but we really have to make sure that we protect them.
I can send you more on this if you'd like.
Three suggestions
1. The photo is not of a 6000 foot house going into the ocean; it is of the small garage next to the house going into the ocean. Yes, this is nitpicking, but for climate communication, we need to filter out misleading details/errors that can be used to discredit the messenger and the message.
2. It could be useful to note that the context for transition may not be the predictable, smooth incremental line we have been seduced into believing is the path of climate change. Instead, the potential for rapid jagged tipping-point changes adds another level of complexity to risk management.
3. The impact of climate disruption on the insurance industry is a case study worth highlighting in your chapter on transition risk. Of course, financial pain to the industry does not just affect that industry, but everybody who depends on it, which in highly organized modern societies is everybody. The climate change -home insurance - mortgage interaction crisis is here now in some areas.
Thanks for the clarification on point 1. That's very helpful. For #3, I have an entire chapter on insurance, which I should post soon.
You might have to revisit the oil price you use... ;-)
Hi Andrew, thank you for an engaging read! I wonder if this may be inaccurate:
"As electric vehicles improve and battery costs fall (technology risk), governments implement EV mandates and phase out internal combustion engines — Norway by 2025, the UK by 2030 (policy risk)."
We still sell fossil fuel cars here in Norway, though the vast majority (95-96%) are electric. There was never a mandate, just a "goal" of reaching a 100% EV share of new cars by 2025 – however, this goal has to a large extent been reached even in the absence of a mandate. As a policy tool, you could perhaps focus on EV subsidies instead. These are still in play, though they have been reduced in recent years, since public transport and "soft mobility" are after all more climate friendly than cars.
Thanks, fixed this in my copy.
Great work here! One tiny suggested edit for you to consider. When you discuss the likely decline in the value of fossil fuel assets, you say "...that are worth trillions..." - I wonder if the sentence would be more accurate if you added the word "currently" before "worth."
Thanks, this is a good suggestion. I've added the word it in my copy.
Hi Andrew
Lots of good stuff but I wonder whether net zero will ever happen? It may be fine as a goal, but perhaps not achievable? What you write about are both carrots and sticks. The market place and economics creates a carrot and the imposition of costs to emit a stick. At some point, what if everyone wants to buy carbon credits and no-one has them to sell? This relates especially to the costs of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which are extraordinarily high and Microsoft, which had been promoting these, has now withdrawn, I believe. Who is really going to pay the exorbitant costs to remove carbon?
You don't mention methane, which is a big issue in NZ. It has a short life and should, in my view, be treated separately from CO2, and then the issues of biophysical v fossil sources come in. Those ought to be separate also. The former are circular (CO2 in atmosphere gets taken up by plants and grass, eaten by cattle and humans, and goes back into atmosphere as methane but decays and is gone in 20 years).
As soon as international aspects come in, these issues get a lot more complex. cf the rise in emissions by China, then followed by China, but perhaps Africa is next???
Kevin
No one knows how hard it’s going to be to get to net zero. And I think worrying about it is counterproductive. Rather, we should just be focusing on installing as much renewable energy as we can, which yields benefits by reducing emissions and air pollution and our national security.
Maybe it’ll be really hard to get to net zero, maybe not. No one knows! But one thing we do know is that in previous environmental issues (eg, ozone depletion), it’s always much cheaper to achieve the targets than even the most optimistic estimate was beforehand.
As far as methane goes, I think the challenges are going to be similar. As the methane supply chain evaporates, there’s going to be social and economic dislocation that needs to be handled by transition policy.
Economic gravity (nearly) always wins.
If "net-zero" is defined to occur when anthropogenic, direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere equals anthropogenic CO2 emissions, we know from basic thermodynamics that it will be very hard, very costly, and very energy-intensive to directly, actively remove substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. After all, the annual, worldwide anthropogenic CO2 emission rate, including fossil fuel consumption and land use change, is currently a bit greater than 40 GT CO2 per year (Friedlingstein et.al., 2025). However, the natural sinks operate without a large cost. if the objectives (per the 2015 Paris Agreement) include a) a near-term peaking of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, we're getting close to that (based on the last ~15 years); and b) achieving a balance of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and removals by sinks (including natural sinks), then we can achieve that balance in just a few decades with modest annual reductions in CO2 emissions (e.g., about 1-3% per year).
The best economics IMO, will involve a mix of baseload energy, load-following energy, and variable renewable energy. However, if one insists that it pretty much all has to be variable renewable energy, then it would be much more costly. And, frankly, ignoring economics is pretty much the surest way to fail.
In the USA, we have succeeded in using lower-carbon energy technologies to reduce emissions by an average of more than 1% per year because we developed and deployed new energy systems that are economically-preferable to high-carbon emission energy infrastructure.
Let's not ignore a technoeconomic approach that is already working: Continued development of advanced energy technologies -- 21st Century advanced energy infrastructure -- that is low- and zero- carbon emissions AND economically preferable to 20th Century fossil energy infrastructure. This approach has halted what was previously exponentially-rising anthropogenic CO2 emission rates and has enabled the shutdown of several hundred coal-fired powerplants (which were also bad for human health).
Net zero is a goal. Perhaps unattainable. My own guess is that this is the case but it should still be the objective. The thing is that adaptation will also be essential and perhaps should be mentioned
Kevin
I have an entire chapter on adaptation. That’s coming up in a few weeks.
I presume *collective* adaptation is implied? Because adaptation, i.e. rebuilding, hardening and/or resilience measures, migration, etc., is already happening, by private individuals, as well as communities on multiple scales. Much of the cost is still being borne by individuals, however.
Good insights although I take issue with "targeted programs for a just transition," most of which seem to target the highest paid, most resilient workers (i.e. your example of offshore oil pros). These programs will naturally favor better paid, more politically powerful groups, leaving out the vastly larger mass of lower paid, more vulnerable folk who'll see only costs. A much better approach, in my humble view, would be much broader economic redistribution aimed at lower-income people. Offer EVs swapped for gas guzzlers, and heat pumps for furnaces. Offer lower income rural folk support to move to cities where they'll prosper more and pollute less. Subsidize home builders who build in cities while tightening regulations on those who don't.
Some good points, thanks!
With respect, global heating is a daunting problem but climate change is only one co-symptom of ecological overshoot. Overshoot means that humanity is extracting even renewable resources faster than they can regenerate and dumping wastes beyond nature's assimilation capacity. Anthropogenic climate change is an excess waste (carbon dioxide) problem.
The world’s focus on climate change is actually a distraction from overshoot and clearly counterproductive. Overshoot is ultimately a terminal condition, yet virtually everything society is doing to address climate change—wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, etc.— is demonstrably not fixing the climate and is worsening overshoot. These techno-fixes are carbon-intensive and perpetuate the growthist mentality of modern techno-industrial society. This reality is well documented and shows that current approaches to climate in isolation are rather dumb.
Climate change and its co-symptoms (plunging biodiversity, ocean acidification, tropical deforestation, spreading ocean dead zones, micro-plastic contamination, all other forms of pollution) can be solved only by significant reductions of economic throughput (energy/resource consumption and pollution) and human population. If proposed ‘solutions’ do not reduce throughput or population, then they are a waste of resources and contribute to the problem.
I challenge the idea that solar panels and wind turbines are not fixing the problem. They use resources only during their manufacture, unlike fossil fuels that are continually depleting a resource that will run out. And they can be part of a circular economy, with their parts reused endlessly. They are part of the solution.
Are you proposing that people stop using electricity altogether? Otherwise they are crucial.
EVs are more problematic, since they help to proliferate cars at the expense of more sustainable means of transportation. But less resource-intensive options, like e-bikes, open up bicycling to those who can't, for whatever reason, just use bicycles to get around. Recycling EV parts, particularly their batteries, is well underway.
As for reduction of human population, we are on track to plateau in a few decades, according to the UN. And the "good" news is that this projection fails to take into account the millions of deaths we are almost certain to see due to extreme heat waves, agriculture failures, lengthy droughts, and other disasters before the climate starts to recover.
Dan, it would take pages and more time than I have to address all your comments so I can only briefly point out that modern 'renewable' technologies like wind and solar are actually only replacable every 15 to 30 years mostly using fossil fuels and that the circular economy is partially a myth. Every process, including those associated with recycling requires available energy (essergy) which can be used only once (no recyling). Moreover, many materials cannot be recycled usefully and a portion of even those that can be recycled is irreversibly lost, so new material is always involved in the so-called circular economy. In any case, if the material economy is growing, say at 2%/yr, then everything doubles in 35 years so even with (theoretically impossible) 100% recyling, we would still need twice as much material. The real point of my original comment was that all techno fixes and mythic constructs like green growth and the circular economy are directed at maintaining the status quo. But the status quo is one of overshoot in which humans are depleting and polluting the biophysical world faster than it can regenerate and recover. This is ultimately a fatally terminal condition for which we are beginning to see early symptoms. You seem to recognize this by commenting on the millions of deaths likely to result from global heating, extensive drought, failing agriculture, etc. attributable to just one co-symptom of overshoot. Now add in the effects of the other co-symptoms. So, I repeat, if you want to increase the chances for some folks to survive the post-modernity simplification then valid approaches must involve, "significant reductions of economic throughput (energy/resource consumption and pollution) and human population."
Yes, energy is the one resource that cannot be recycled. Fortunately, we get a tremendous amount of energy every day from the sun; we are using only a small fraction. There is no danger of overshoot on this resource as long as we recognize that current sunlight and its effects like wind are all we ought to use.
Yes, currently we use fossil fuels in the production and recycling of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc. But there's nothing inherent in their production that requires fossil fuels; it's just what we've got right now.
Yes, recycling is imperfect, but as we get better at it we will improve. We do have to make sure we don't exhaust the supply.
I'm not denying that our current overshoot is a problem and is going to get worse. And we need to reduce our per capita consumption as well as our total population. What I'm saying is that we have some time to make the transition.
I do wonder what you envision as the endgame. Are you envisioning a world going back to 1800, with no electricity? Because I don't think it's necessary to give up electricity. Although it requires minerals and other materials in finite supply, we need to recognize that everything we dig out of the ground is a finite resource and husband it.
Fundamentaally, the status quo is untenable. But the tech changes you dismiss as myths are vital to the transition.
Dan -
I don't disagree with you preferred outcome, more with prospects of getting there. For example, I have never suggested that tech changes are myths; the mytic part is that people belief the tech changes will somehow save us. Here's a much condensed version of my thinking: https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/mything-out-on-sustainable-development
This is great! Have you considered flagging the difference between a 'just transition' and 'justice'? I'm sure you'll cover in further chapters, but when you say 'a just transition is an effort to ensure that the benefits of a green economy are shared broadly and that the costs do not fall unfairly on those who can least afford them', and then that the 'core idea' of this is workers and retraining ... this ignores the other complexities of true justice across the world, i.e., international resource allocation, access to new/green tech, vulnerabilities due to class/race/geography/gender; overall, that those that have contributed least to the crisis are those most affected (Tuvalu is the classic case study). As we know, climate change will very much make existing vulnerabilities and injustices worse, so I wonder if you might at least broadening this explanation here a little bit (or noting that there's other large areas of work on this, apart from just worker retraining). But - overall great chapter and intro!
Thanks for the suggestion, that would be a good addition to this chapter.
Fundamentally overhauling the global economic system around a single issue is perhaps the most historically risky enterprise ever conceived. The scale and historical scope of this is vastly under appreciated in this book chapter. Profound moral problems arise by subordinating all other human values, ethics, and societal needs to a single lens.
"Fundamentally overhauling the global economic system around a single issue is perhaps the most historically risky enterprise ever conceived."
This is sheer, hyperbolic alarmism. Decarbonization won't require "fundamentally overhauling" the global economic system, only reducing or abolishing the price advantage over renewables that fossil carbon enjoys by socializing its emissions. That's already happening in many places around the world. It should be accelerated by collective intervention, i.e. by national and sub-national governments, to either internalize the cost of emissions in the price of fossil carbon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax), or subsidize the build-out of carbon-neutral energy supplies and storage, to drive their prices down further (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/government-energy-spending-tracker-policy-database). See the US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, or China.
"Profound moral problems arise by subordinating all other human values, ethics, and societal needs to a single lens."
Good thing Zeke isn't proposing that, and no governments are implementing it, nor does global decarbonization depend on it. Your moral claim is approved by fossil fuel producers and investors hoping to forestall collective intervention in their profit streams. I, for one, infer you're either a mercenary disinformer, or an ideologically motivated volunteer obstructionist (see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon": https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Important point not given sufficient attention. Impact of Iran War could be assessed. Timing issues need attention. Gemini gave me a 10 year projection of oil&gas industry demand, price, cash flow and reserves value. Contact me at ron2randall@gmail.com for copy and discussion. If you are near NYC, I would like you to consider giving a talk at my club.
Fossil industry exploiters made enormous profits and damages during the past decades. Now it's over. It's great time the share the price of repairs.