There's Nothing You Can Do About Climate Change

It's about time we stopped the hubris in front of Mother Nature

Odd thought - climate change is real but accelerated by the appearance of humans and industrialisation. We see the effects and the extremities because we're a global species with the technologies to view and record it happening.

No other species did in the past so they were never aware of it, nor the great extinction events that were taking place. These took millions of years and it's still incomprehensible for humans to think along those timeframes. Change on a planetary scale isn't going to be altered by some man-made doohickery or planting trees, it's an unstoppable force of nature at work that will last beyond human civilization.

The chances are that every species that has lived or will ever live on Earth has and will be a part of this cycle and we're just one of them with the capacity to grasp what is happening and the audacity to believe we can stop it.

In a million years the surface of the Earth could be an arid wasteland with oceans choked with plastic and an atmosphere that isn't breathable. It could take another hundred million years to become habitable again with new life that might not be human anymore.

Who knows?
No-one does.

The point is, what we think we can do now with all our fancy promises about carbon emissions in 2050 and technologies we can chat to will have absolutely no effect on a chain of events that takes thousands upon thousands of years to unfold.

We're just not prepared to accept it.

Think about the evolutionary cycles the planet has already witnessed in 4 billion years and will witness again. Our involvement has only hurried some of that along by wiping out species by our own actions but arguably they could have been wiped out anyway.

Or maybe that species would have been the seed for another evolutionary cycle that would have driven life to emerge again and in destroying them we've removed the chance for life to survive this next cataclysm.

The Earth ends up like Mars.

What’s also pretty clear is that the “Climate Scam” people are partially correct but not in the way they believe.

There is climate change. It's coming. It's happening and will continue to happen over millennia. The real 'scam' is the narrative that any human impact can be mitigated with political will and increased taxation to slow/ reverse/ halt/ alter the trajectory of something this big. It's sheer nonsense. As is the Stop Oil bullshit performance art.

Not even science can explain what happened in the past accurately as much as it can project accurately what will happen over the next 10 million years.

Plastics can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose, depending on the material and structure and it takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Unfortunately, the bags don't break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute the environment. But even in that timeframe that's just yet another blip in terms of how long this planet's climate will take to recycle to its eventual conclusion and bring around another extinction and evolutionary beginning as it has done many times before.

The climate tech market that is worth $20bn is absolutely meaningless, nothing more than feel-good technologies to ease the troubled mind and make it appear we’re doing something impactful. There is no impact here, no moving of a planetary-sized needle by tiny hands. We will try, we can’t even claim that we’ll try our best because we don’t, we do enough to signal that we made an effort and no more, all the while burning more resources to make products and technologies that really do fuck all in the grand scheme of things. Venture capitalists who claim to look for exponential ideas or concepts to accelerate humanity really don’t stand by any of it.

Gotta love VCs whose investment thesis revolves around funding technologies that accelerate humanity while civilization is on the brink thanks to the collapse of the climate caused by funding technologies that accelerate humanity.

The chances are, that when this extinction event is finished, there will be nothing left to show we existed, no wonderous technologies or buildings, nor anything in terms of new life that will emerge who can make sense of any of it. It’s funny to think that humanoids are at the top of the evolutionary process and possess the ability to harness the world around them, even funnier to consider that they all get one shot with the planet they inhabit. The Fermi Paradox may well be explained not just by distance and time but by the fact that every life bearing planet went through several evolutionary extinctions to produce a humanoid species capable of understanding and intelligence only for them to fuck it all up every single time.

Who knows, there may well be an infinitely small percentage that makes it, that don’t make the same mistakes we do and are, like us at this moment in time, searching for themselves elsewhere in the Universe.

Read World Without Us by Alan Weisman then go live your best life.

The dinosaurs certainly did.

---

Let’s continue with a simple experiment. I’ll tell you the equation that can get us to Net Zero. For free. I’m the saviour of human civilisation and it’s extraordinarily simple.

Stop existing.

There. I can now retire on this monumental achievement and display of scientific, political and economic prowess. Of course, I’m joking but then again I am not. The very simple act of reading this passage so far has contributed to the problems we face but you can’t ‘offset’ this by simply planting a tree sapling or buying a “carbon credit” from a website that didn’t exist last month to fund a green project that either doesn’t exist or cannot prove any positive environmental impact. The system is rigged after all.

Now before you go off half-cocked and claim I am a denialist be assured I am nothing of the sort. You’ve gotten this far already so you’ll understand the thought process behind all of this c̶y̶n̶i̶c̶i̶s̶m̶ realism.

Let’s start with the latest COP itself. We’re to believe that suddenly and without provocation, over 200 leaders of the world decided to unilaterally phase out fossil fuels by 2050? We’re to believe that 200+ people sitting around a 10-course dinner who flew over on private jets managed to agree to phase out fossil fuel when they know full well they’d go to war with each other if one insulted their god or grandmother at the drop of a hat? And then there’s the arguments that we shouldn’t call it “phase out” because that’s quite scary to some people so we should find another softer term, like “phase down” instead, because that way we can get away with not meeting a target because we’re just rounding down another accounting error on the balance sheet not removing it entirely.

Remember — by 2050 not one of them will still be around to take accountability for the false promises they’ve made so words come as easy as the money sitting in a Cayman Islands account to them.

It’s also worth noting some of the phrasings of this historic climate kumbaya.

I’m beginning to think someone is using ChatGPT to write these pacts now.

You have to remember that the President of COP himself has openly admitted that he does not believe in the science. Now, context is useful here because he too was also discussing why phase out is not a scientific goal — and so we have Get-Out Clause #1 — we can just bring our oil projections and consumption down but we don’t need to turn off the tap completely.

The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting revealed earlier this month. Al Jaber also said a phase out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”. It’s funny because he’s actually speaking truth here. Civilisation and the world of capitalism isn’t prepared for the changes needed in how society functions. It’s not just fossil fuels and the evil internal combustion engine that has to go, we’ve got to find replacements for pretty much everything else that the byproducts and derivatives of oil is used in — from the 99% of plastic that’s saturating the oceans and in our bloodstream, the tens of “bags for life” you’ve collected this year from the supermarket that are sitting in your kitchen, the plastic that covers the interior of the cheap EV you bought from China because EVs will save the planet, the plastic parts in every item around your house….the list is endless. But it’s always only about cars. Because cars are easier to paint as ‘bad’ for the environment.

You can’t stage a Just Stop Oil protest outside a shop selling toasters after all.

Let’s not forget that the road you drove along today in your Audi TDI, potholes and all especially in the UK, was made from crude oil. Or the crap you coated the top of the roof of your fucking shed with so your precious garden tools wouldn’t get wet and rust.

And then we have Get-Out Clause #2 — “in keeping with the science” — and so the scientists once more will be vilified by the press and public and averting blame from the politicians because it was them what got the science wrong innit. And if we can’t trust the science to get it right then why should we bother in the first place?

And the thing is, we can’t trust the science because there’s no supercomputer in the world that can accurately model what is going to happen. And it will happen. It’s happening now. We are in the middle of a climate shift of our own making but no amount of phasing out or phasing down is going to make a blind bit of difference because the whole concept around Net Zero is a fundamental lie. It defies even the most basic laws of physics.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction — ergo for everything you do you are impacting the world around you, no matter how small and it all adds up. Even if you were the most altruistic and giving person on Earth the very act of making a decision costs in an unending chain of events you have no control over. What’s worse is that all these initiatives take fuck all account of the livelihoods of everyone on the planet in their various emotional, personal and financial states, something no climate scientist or supercomputer really understands or would be expected to. They’re only interested in modeling and simulating climatological impacts and effects over the next century. They don’t care about the millions of families with absolutely no choice but to make the same decisions every day because they live in poverty and cannot afford to make the right choices. They live day by day, quite literally in some cases, but they’re being asked to change because they must think about the next 50 years instead. And think about the 50 million other people around them.

The idea of Net Zero is as offensive as Carbon Offsetting, that excel spreadsheet exercise of claiming that the billion tonnes of CO2 you output last year in the UK can be written down by planting trees in Jamaica.

That’s not how the fucking planet works.

The people we are supposed to believe know what is happening overestimate the impact and underestimate the apathy to take action in the first place. I’m not saying don’t bother, I’m saying be realistic because there are planetary scale forces at work that we still don’t understand. If we can’t predict the weather you’re telling me we can predict climate change that consists of thousands of unpredictable patterns, plus events like volcanic eruptions and pandemics, a potential atomic explosion or another reactor meltdown in the next 30 years, and so on and so on?

Now go back to the start of this article. Go on. Our hubris is our downfall.

Do you honestly believe that (1) small changes will amount to anything when every single action in a single second of every single day by every single human being that has a knock on effect and climate impact can reach this imaginary and civilisation saving threshold called Net Zero, and/or (2) there will be some magical technological breakthrough like skyscraper sized carbon scrubbers or artificial intelligence to usher in a last minute Hail Mary and save the climate and human race from extinction, and/or (3) we harness the power of the sun and give away free energy for everyone.

Do you hear yourself when you read these words back and how foolish it all sounds?

For a start, any technological solution will have its own impact on the climate, the resources have to come from somewhere after all. The idea of having massive carbon scrubbers that suck meagre amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to turn into another type of fuel that contributes back to climate change, only to have been made from materials and effort that negates the value of its existence in the first place is something that is constantly overlooked.

And let’s tackle (2) here because there’s an awful lot of bullshit being peddled that AI will solve this and create abundance for all. No. No, it won’t. An AI does not solve the problems of capitalism or an ever growing species that continues to consume resources faster than the planet can replenish. Not only consume but continue to demand the superfluous and frivolous because we want to be distracted from the truths. These supercharged chatbots won’t solve global inequality, or increase food production, or find miraculous ways to generate free energy because if it could and we all had access to it then why would we bother with the society we’ve built? That’s a step change too far and those 200-odd folks living it up at COP are not going to want that for you.

I had no idea Spock would taste so chewy.

In Star Trek, society thrives in a post-capitalist, post-scarcity world driven by a magical MacGuffin called The Replicator. In The Orville, it’s the same thing. Human civilisation peaks when we finally figure out how to make shit from nothing. But it’s not going to happen, there are no brightly coloured food cubes for you, or a hot Earl Grey on command. It’s more likely you’ll be fed Soylent Green at the local food bank and wonder why you’ve not seen your neighbour for over a week…but according to some of the biggest names in venture capital and pop-culture futurists, AI will make this a reality. We will have money for all, medicare for all, want for nothing and the robots will seize the means of production and do everything for us. We will become a renaissance society, a protopian or utopian future driven by art and humanity and creativity and striving to better ourselves.

But we won’t. Because that’s not how humans operate.

The ability to have whatever we want will fuel the desire to possess whatever we want and quell the desire to strive for anything. Without a struggle or a challenge, we’ll grow ever more hungry for whatever someone else managed to create from nothing and seek to own it too. A never ending cycle of needs and wants in a capitalist society is replaced by an unending cycle of wanting more in a post-scarcity society. The idea that ‘life owes me a living’ will become an exponentially louder cry for help that becomes ‘living owes me a life’.

And the capitalists will welcome you back with open arms.

Now add to this the current impacts of climate change, which are happening around us as we speak, and add those already infinite wants and needs and things going to get as heated as the planet is when swathes of people start trying to migrate to better corners of the world that won’t be hit as hard. Because climate change doesn’t care about your fucking society, or religion, or political leanings.

It will continue to do what it’s doing now regardless — which is changing because we will continue to do what we’re doing now regardless — which is impacting it.

We’re so back, baby!

I’d go as far as saying that post-scarce societies are the last thing we need right now. The first step is a post-status society, one where we’re not driven to level up material consumption because Janice has a better SUV and OLED TV than you do, or the man in the advert told you that having a 5.0 V8 to drive to and from the school 400 yards away from your whopping 6-bed house for a family of 3 was the ultimate expression of manhood. When Steve Jobs uttered ‘just one more thing’ at the end of every Apple keynote, or when Columbo said the same as he questioned the suspect he knew committed the murder, they may as well have been talking about our inbred push to achieve status.

Status will be the undoing of UBI, that other silver bullet tipped panacea to solve all of our societal woes on top of artificial intelligence. There isn’t a money printer going brrrrr big enough to take on that challenge and then when the middle managers find out that the bottom of society has a foot on the ladder they worked so hard to climb they’ll be pissed off. And when that UBI doesn’t stretch to support the middle management lifestyle they've built by stepping on the lower runged they’ll be even more pissed off.

That poor money printer will be working so hard it’ll eventually contribute more CO2 than the fucking human race it’s meant to support.

And let’s not get onto the possibilities of a Personal Carbon Tax, this is not a joke. It’ll happen.

It’ll be included in your medical bills, your food shopping, and higher rates applied if you still drive an ICE….it won’t be just a monthly tax on your salary, it’ll be across everything you do. You’ll probably have some kind of digital tracker applied to payments so the Government can get a sense of how obedient or reckless you are with our precious atmosphere. The rich will enjoy their continued existence, the poor will not.

What the Gov will ‘give’ you in the form of UBI will be taken back just as quickly to fund your continued existence in a world set on fire.

Sound familiar? There is no utopian vision coming. Not Star Trek MacGuffin to save the day and the human race.

It doesn’t matter if COP succeeds in this latest version of an ever changing mission statement — one that will be rewritten next year when a new bunch of leaders sit at the table anyway — or if the next one does or the next. There is no “oh but if we all make small changes it will help us get to Net Zero” because there is no such thing, you cannot switch off the impact and attitudes of 8 billion people living on this planet without switching off the people.

And so we’re back to the start and our little thought experiment. You can either stop existing or you can start living with the knowledge that we are a civilisation living on the brink of an environmental collapse and there are forces in motion that we will not prevent from cycling to its next inevitable conclusion.

The best we can do is prepare for it.