Let’s start with a simple experiment. I’ll tell you the equation that can get us to Net Zero. For free. I’m the savior of human civilization, 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 that I am nothing of the sort. Go read Part 1; 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 argument 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.
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 the truth here. Civilization and the world of capitalism aren’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 are 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, and 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 who 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 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 and read Part 1 again. 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 civilization-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 meager 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, increase food production, or find miraculous ways to generate free energy because if they 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.
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 civilization peaks when we finally figure out how to make shit from nothing. But it’s not going to happen; there are no brightly colored 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 neighbor 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 are 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.
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, but the poor will not.
Sound familiar? There is no utopian vision coming. No 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 civilization 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.
Also published here