The serious logical structure of the climate moment.

# 3006

The world this week is filled with proposals that make no sense, implying that with action climate will be “solved.”

The logic  of possible futures  is tightening.  I highly recommend that you try to put your own points of view into a tight logical structure and see what happens. 

Temperature rise cannot be stopped because we can't stop co2 production. Every new project or green imitative adds to the industrial system and uses energy (in the US 17% of electrical energy goes to computing).

Moreover even if we stopped all co2 production the amount in the atmosphere will continue to heat. It is not de;decreasing except in 120year half life. Providing there is no additional co2.

The cost of green energy is usually taken "at the pump" but the costs of building and installing usually are not added in. We look at the cost of running a Tesla but not the cost of building it (including the cost of building the factory, nor the cost of the energy lines to deliver from the uti;ity company. Worse the electrify produced requires energy to  produce and that is usually done with coal.)

World wind and solar production is three percent of total current energy. This is a Slippery platform on which the build successful scenarios of technological solutions at or near 100%.

Even if we could cut all new emissions enough co2 is now in the air to keep temperature rising in the absence of sequestering technologies, which do not yet exist at scale. 

Nor do we take into account the loss of species necessary for food production, nor the impact on the oceans.

We do not take into account the weakness of governance.

There is a growing sense that capitalism creates socially destructive inequality  and that the society which divides people between owners and non-owners, between labor and capital is part of the problem, but we do not yet have an alternative. Capitalism is set to extract wealth from land and people by buying cheap - trees - and selling higher - lumber - without full replenishment,

Attempts to replace the current fossil fuel energy system will fail because either there is not enough material for the project or increasing costs as extraction  occurs and competition increases.

Quality of the mineable  material is decreasing and it's deeper and more expensive to mine.

The attempt to get these materials in sufficient quantities requires  much abuse of the land 

And sets up competition with others for those materials.(20 lbs. of lithium requires processing 20 tons of earth.)

There is not enough of some needed metals in the ground to meet the needs of one generation of EVs, much less meet the replacement cycle that will begin soon.

Recycling requires energy, it is not a frictionless system. Recycling requires pushing material through the system

Moreover, there are many competing uses of electrification, all of which are seeking the same materials.

Competition for scarce materials between nations and corporations will be taking place in the context of increasing major climate events.

The war in the Ukraine is a war not within cultures but between them. Both Russia and the US/Eu want their culture to dominate. the US  holds out for a market based world. Russia for a czarist world. 

There seems to be nothing to stop the war, which will continue with increasing use of materials. 

We seem to be making a society that is ever more complex and interwoven and difficult to change. Under pressure of climate symptoms people try to hold on and prevent change.

Climate  breakdown is inevitable but it is not  a single event.  It is a process with many emergent possibilities, not just market and commercial opportunities but deep cultural shifts in values and the way we spend our time.

The current senior population, age 50 up, maybe even 40 up, is mostly  too set in its  ways to be able to adapt to these changes. For example, they will look at emergent opportunities as private property and profit opportunities, and miss participating in the difficult tasks of adapting to new social and physical climate changes. Most people would rather hold onto what they have than risk change.

The emergent, already starting, is going to be characterized by chaos, confusion, and probably violence, from mafias to conventional war.

The possible wild cards start with new uses of the Internet, new energy technologies, new spiritual movements. 

Global problems probably require global solutions and the central authority to be able to impose regulations. The American New Deal is an example of strong ideas from Roosevelt with very weak implementation of those ideas.

This is our world and our species. Our responsibility is to read widely, converse widely and organize.

"We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." — Richard Feynman

Evidence

Michaux, Simon minerals (check youtube)

_Mark Mills: The energy transition delusion: inescapable mineral realities

Discussions

Nate Hagens

https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/

Daniel Schmachtenberger

https://civilizationemerging.com/

Martin Wolf the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism

Sent from my iPhone doug@dougcarmichael.com