Stop trying to prevent a worse Climate Crisis. Reverse it instead.
The three major power centres that could've prevent the climate crisis have failed, and we have run out of time. Now we must prepare reverse it once it's truly arrived.
All major power centres have failed to prevent a worse climate crisis.
We have until 2030 to reduce carbon emissions by 45% relative to 2010 levels to prevent an increase in global average temperature by more than 1.5℃ [1]. 2010 levels are lower than today's [2], so in reality this 45% represents a much larger chunk of carbon than back in 2010.
We have just 8 years left to prevent an even more chaotic and unstable future.
There are three major power centres that have the means to combat climate change:
Government - can wield huge economic power when they want to. Look at the UK's furlough scheme during the first COVID-19 lockdown [3], the USA's 1933 New Deal [4], or China's Belt and Road Initiative [5]. A huge economic programme, implemented correctly with tangible action could've shifted us from the chaos of climate change.
People power - revolutions always install a new regime with a new agenda by overthrowing an old one. Look at revolutionary France shifting to a nation with a meritocratic agenda [6] or the tsarist Russia's transition to the communist USSR. [7] . A series of environment-focused revolutions could've installed a new regime that would've taken strong action against climate change.
Industry - has a remarkable ability to invent and rapidly deploy new technologies. For example, the electrification of the USA [8] or the roll-out of the Internet [9]. Industry is currently investing and building new companies in the climate technology space to tackle climate change.
All three major power centres are failing:
Government - just look at the disgrace that is COP26 and the Glasgow Climate Pact. Despite what the media misleads with, there was no clause that required signing countries to "phase-down" coal or fossil-fuel subsidies [10, 11]. That's why the UK is still building new oil production plants [12]. I wrote a piece on this here.
People power - climate campaigners are a disgrace. They simply waste time and energy against a system that is resistant to change through protest. They could instead choose to build new technologies and utilise our current capitalist system to force change, but they do not. They instead try to spread the idea that people must vote for lower living standards to save the planet [13]. Not exactly a vote winner for those political parties advocating this, is it? And without votes their version of political change will not happen in the West. Revolution is not an option for them as they are largely peaceful [14].
Industry - largely bets on technologies that will take decades to scale up, such as lab grown meat [15]. This is because industry is motivated by profit, and in the modern startup world that usually means over-hyping products so that they are incredibly valuable and cashing out by exiting the company. Investors win and founders get rich but their tech only has to hold the promise of scaling. It doesn't actually have to scale or even work [16, 17]. In the context of the climate tech industry, that is exactly what is happening [15, 28].
We have no time left.
Even if these power centres were working, we have just 8 years left to lower emissions by 45% relative to 2010 levels [1]. Low-carbon infrastructure projects take decades to build - just look at nuclear power plants for example [18]. We have just 8 years left. We’re cannot prevent a worse climate crisis.
Climate change has been the only or a major factor in a plethora of civilisations' destruction (for example, the Roman Empire, the Greenland Vikings and ancient Mesopotamia [19]). It is perhaps no surprise then, that MIT scientists in the 1970s predicted (using the World3 model they developed) a decay of our modern civilisation around the year 2040, leading to a rapid decline in population to 2 billion people by 2100, mass-famine in developing nations (and barely enough food in developed nations) and a return to living standards similar to those of 1900 [20].
If you plot real-time data against the data generated from that World3 model, ever since the original predictions, we have been strikingly on track for most the above outcomes [20], and we can see early examples of this today: Water riots are bubbling up in Iran, thanks to a dried river and a government diverting it quench the thirst of agriculture instead of people [21]. And whilst the food shortages prediction has (thankfully) not been accurate for this our current point in time [20], there’s every chance it could over the next two decades. Rice farmers in Maharashtra are quitting due to unpredictable seasons ruining crops, making business inviable [22]. Many Nigerians are also leaving farming behind because of drought [23].
It is only at that point, in the 2040s, when individuals in developed nations really start to feel the pain, when they have less food, worse living standards and more dead friends, that they will truly begin to vote first and foremost over any other political desire to resolve the climate crisis. At that point it is too late to prevent the climate crisis - we must instead reverse it. But how? What hope is there?
Directly engineering our climate is our only hope.
There is one sliver of hope in the form climate engineering, which is now seriously being discussed [24]. There are two main methods of climate engineering (Fig 1):
Direct CO2 Removal (DCR) commonly uses machines to suck in CO2-containing air, and catch the CO2 molecules on a filter. The machine is then heated to temperatures 80-100℃ to collect the CO2 and transport it into the ground below where it then hardens [27].
Solar Radiation Management (SRM) uses a variety of different methods that reflect thermal radiation from the sun back into outer space [25]. The most commonly proposed methods inject aerosols of reflective SO2 particles into atmosphere (these are the same particles that are produced by volcanoes, which create dramatic cooling events [25]).
There are major deployment issues with these technologies:
CDR technologies are too expensive: ~$91.27 trillion to mitigate all our CO2 emissions [2, 26].
CDR does not include removal of other warming gases such as methane or NO2 [27]). Methane for example, is 86 times more warming than CO2 up to 20 years after it was emitted into the atmosphere [29].
SRM technologies that use SO2 particles may cause damage to the ozone [30].
SRM technologies that use particles are uncontrollable - you can’t just switch them off whilst they’re in atmosphere. This is a really important part to make, because we're talking about engineering the climate here and we simply don’t know all the effects on said climate that these technologies could cause. Not having an “off-switch” prevents us from rapidly reacting to any unwanted side effects of climate engineering.
These technologies face stubborn resistance by “climate-activists” who are generally anti-technology (e.g. anti-GMO) [31]. This inhibits testing [25], which is important for us to determine which technologies are safe to use and which aren’t. Although, it is reasonable to expect that as the climate worsens, this issue will be outweighed by popular vote.
However, almost all of these issues are reasonably solvable before the 2040s, and is certainly a much more likely - and therefore effective - plan than completely decarbonising and rewiring the entire economy (which we should still pursue to become a truly sustainable economy, but not at the expense of climate engineering).
We therefore need to start building novel, more effective climate engineering technologies and supply chains, so that we are prepared and can rapidly implement them once the crisis starts hurting developed nations.
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