That new IPCC report – i.e. our impending doom and the chances of avoiding it
There’s a simple reason why we're still speeding toward ecological catastrophe: our survival depends on redistributing power.
By Peter Beattie
Here’s a “too long; didn’t read” summary of the latest IPCC report: we’re in deep shit.
That’s not so much a metaphor as a literal description of our situation. And it’s not unprecedented. Some 250 million years ago, a plucky little microbe called Methanosarcina evolved that could turn carbon in ocean water into its energy source. This way of using carbon for energy was quite successful, and little Methan’s population grew exponentially. Only problem was, turning carbon into energy produced a nasty waste byproduct, methane. Life on earth at the time was literally in (Methan’s) deep shit: an estimated 90% of planetary life died, poisoned by Methan’s waste.
Today, humans are flirting with breaking Methanosarcina’s impressive 90%-dead record. We have been using concentrated forms of carbon-based energy to create a civilization (so to speak) that is highly industrialized. And that, in itself, is pretty great – show me an opponent of industrial civilization who doesn’t live in the forest, wearing leaf-based clothes, and surviving by hunting and gathering, and I’ll show you a hypocrite.
However, the waste byproducts of this energy use are radically changing the planet we rely on for survival. The best-case scenario is that we limit warming to 1.5° above pre-industrial temperatures, the next few decades see ever worse droughts, floods, fires, and storms – plus famines, mass migrations, and very likely wars caused by these massive social disruptions – and then begin to calm down in the second half of the century. The worst-case scenario is that we set off an uncontrollable process that turns Earth into Venus, eliminating life on our planet. (On the bright side, that would mean beating Methanosarcina’s record!)
However, to get the best-case scenario, we must immediately begin a fundamental transformation of the global economic system. In short, this means shifting to renewable (and possibly some nuclear) energy for all transportation, production, heating, and cooling; reducing wasteful consumption, eliminating planned obsolescence, and designing products instead for a long lifespan, repairing rather than replacing; shrinking industrial agriculture and relying on smaller-scale farming; and transforming global supply chains and distribution networks to minimize transportation and energy use, prioritizing resilience and real-world, physical efficiency over financial efficiency.
That’s a big lift, and it won’t happen by coaxing Mr. Market to grow a soul. It won’t happen thanks to our own virtuous individual consumption choices, or moral hectoring to get other individuals to use cloth shopping bags and paper straws. Greta, you’ve done well (infinitely better than me at your age), but it’s time to learn some political economy.
Underneath all the obfuscation, there’s a simple reason why we're still speeding toward the ecological-catastrophe cliff. The fundamental transformation of the global economic system we need to survive will reduce the relative power of those currently at the top of that system. To go from a billionaire to a mere centi-millionaire feels like oppression. To go from having complete control over your property and employees to having to follow government directives feels like oppression. I doubt that most of the global 0.1% think in these terms. But it’s the reality nonetheless, even if they think of their opposition as resistance to a Chinese hoax, protecting God’s favorite economic system, or any other rationalization the wondrous human mind can come up with.
There are only three political entities with the power to start to change the global economy. In rank order: the US, EU, and China.
The problem in the US is a political economy in which economic power can readily be converted into political power through lobbying, campaign contributions, and propaganda. Let’s say you’re an owner of a significant chunk of the US economy, and you have a sociopathic desire to retain your relative power over others at the expense of all life on earth. (Or, in your mind, you want to prevent filthy communists from destroying the goose that lays golden eggs: capitalism. OK, that's the crude Republican mind; the savvy Democrat mind would want to “preserve market mechanisms to retain their efficiency gains” or some such twaddle.) What can you do? Find morally agile politicians to support financially, and convince them that what’s good for you is good for the country. But maybe you’re a bit too stupid to pull that off yourself. No problem – hire an army of smarter people at lobbying firms to come up with convincing rationalizations for you, and have them swarm elected representatives. And if you’re worried about the rabble getting dangerous ideas about the continuation of human life being more important than your power, well, now you really have to open your wallet. Politicians and lobbyists come cheap, but to propagandize an entire country requires shaping school and university curricula, ensuring that editors and producers (even lowly journalists themselves) in the media share your worldview and prevent contrary ideas from spreading, and plenty of advertising. That can get expensive, but who wouldn’t spend half their fortune (power) to protect the other half? Plus, it might be a thrill to know that you’ve turned a significant part of the population into your meat puppets – all the while, adorably, fancying themselves independent thinkers.
The problem in the EU is similar, though converting economic power into political power is a little harder there. But the prevalent economic ideology is even worse, and it is institutionalized in the eurozone to limit public investment to an even greater degree than the US. In essence, eurozone rules take the power of money creation away from governments, largely entrusting it to private banks. (Because they’re so responsible, as we all know from e̶x̶p̶e̶r̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ economics textbooks.) What could go wrong? Well, besides hiccups like the Great Financial Crisis, this can be a problem when what society needs is a massive increase in public investment, building renewable energy infrastructure at the scale required to replace fossil fuels. European media systems have long been less bad than in the US, but if you can judge a tree by its fruits over the past decade and a half, European media systems are looking a bit rotten too. Plus, Germans and other northern Europeans still have a weird fetish for something called a schwarze Null – again, keeping the power of money creation in the hands of private banks. I’m not one to kink-shame, but this one has to go. The EU is looking a bit less hopeless than the US, but it’s not enough on which to base a major investment. Like, say, having children.
Which brings us to the least hopeless, but also the least powerful, of the three: China. China's tougher to analyze since it’s more opaque, but it seems like one of its biggest problem is that it's currently in the US government's crosshairs. That would make any government extra risk-averse, but it’s also still a developing country with a per capita GDP less than a fifth of the US. So to be the first country in the world to fundamentally transform its economic system to run on renewable energy, as a developing country, is a tough ask. Plus, like every other country, there are constituencies in China currently benefiting from business-as-usual. Says a Chinese coal magnate: “Sure, central government, you could shut down the coal industry and mothball coal-fired power plants to trailblaze your way into leading the world in a systemic transformation. You could do that. But do you really want to risk mass unrest led by former coal miners, give up energy security when we’ve got plenty of domestic coal that can’t be interdicted by the US Navy, and try to beat much richer and more powerful hostile countries in a technological competition when even our cell phone companies are at the mercy of US-controlled supplies of high-tech components? Are you sure?”
On the bright side, in China power conversion seems to go in the opposite direction as in the West, with political power being turned into economic power. The opposite route doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as easy as in the US or EU. (Ask Jack Ma. Or the several Chinese billionaires over the past couple of decades whom the government has, er, “bailed out” of their mortal coils.) Nor is China ruled half of the time by religious fanatics who believe in a Cosmic Maid who will clean up our messes (at least until He decides it’s time for an apocalypse). There’s also the fact that the Chinese government has invested more in renewable energy than any other government, the major reason why solar power has become so affordable.
Personally, I wouldn’t call China a great source of hope; it’s only the least hopeless of the three major polities. There was a chance at the beginning of 2020 that the US government might have an executive who could get the US and China to cooperate on the systemic transformation of the global economy we need to survive as a species. That didn’t happen – thanks, meat puppets and your puppeteers! – throwing many among the small minority of informed people around the world into despair. But as a recent immigrant, I don’t know China anywhere near as well as former ambassador Chas Freeman. And he thinks that even without a US-EU-China alliance, China itself is capable of the mass mobilization required to transform an entire economic system.
Let’s hope he’s right. And as older generations in the US die off, their minds filled with liberal or conservative flavors of idiocy from a lifetime of exposure to the information ecosystem produced by the US’ political economy, maybe even the US will follow the EU’s lead in following China’s lead. It’s a long shot, but it seems to be the best we’ve got.