Hey all, a slightly different (and longer!) version of the newsletter this week. Still three links and summaries of interesting articles/videos/podcasts etc., only this time all of them on the same theme: climate change. How do the different mindsets of control vs connection play out when it comes to the goal of achieving a net-zero carbon world?
According to the latest IPCC report (headline statements here), humanity needs to reach net-zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gasses, by at least 2050. For many countries - like the US and UK - that requires reducing carbon by 50% by 2030, with clear end dates for coal-powered energy, combustion engine cars, and other major sources of carbon emissions.
The good news is that climate change is now firmly on the political agenda. In 2019, the UK became the first country in the world to set a net-zero emissions target. Three years later, over 70% of world emissions are now covered by net-zero legislation.
The bad news, however, is that these targets have yet to be followed by affirmative action. The UK is already lagging behind its net-zero emission targets. In the face of this gap between aspiration and action, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s also easy to catastrophize - to renounce all hope, to see no way out of the situation.
I think this would be a mistake. In the linked TED talk, Nigel Topping outlines 3 principles for the kind of radical collaboration needed to achieve net-zero. The second of his rules highlights the importance of exponential change. What might look like small steps now, and perhaps over the remainder of this decade, may in fact be the beginning, and gradual ramping up, of an unimaginably rapid transformation.
We can be hopeful of exponential change happening over the next few decades because it’s already happened, only in the opposite direction. A number of carbon-emitting technologies have grown at an exponential rate since 1950, as the graphs below illustrate. We can expect similar exponential growth for the scaling up of renewable power and EVs and other carbon-neutral innovations.
But here’s the thing: putting our hope in the power of exponential change is risky. It requires a huge amount of trust - having faith in highly collaborative, complex, long-term innovation projects and the emergence of new structures and technologies. Exponential change does not happen as a result of top-down control and linear thinking. It is, to a large extent, out of our hands. And it’s the best hope we’ve got.
The latest edition of the Future Crunch newsletter (previously linked to in discussing the story of humanity) shows how exponential change in the right direction is already starting to happen. They point out that:
“In the six years since the Paris Agreement was signed, the global pipeline of new coal plants has shrunk dramatically. More than three-quarters of planned projects have been shelved, 44 governments have committed to ending coal, and a further 33 have canceled their pipelines. The remaining pipeline is now spread across just 37 countries, 16 of which have only one project.”
In addition, they note that new coal plants under construction are destined to be stranded assets. They simply no longer make long-term economic sense.
Major industries are starting to respond to the net-zero targets set by national governments, which in turn emboldens governments to take the required action to reach net-zero by 2050. This is what Nigel Topping refers to as “ambition loops.”
These feedback loops - between governmental policies and long-term innovation projects - illustrate that there’s still a need for top-down control. We must, ultimately, put our faith in the exponential change that emerges from complex, interconnected systems and collaborative processes. But, we also need to kick-start those processes.
This year (in 5 weeks from now), the COP26 conference is a key opportunity to kick-start the exponential changes needed for humanity to achieve net-zero by 2050. It’s an opportunity the world’s leaders would be foolish to miss.
Even if COP26 is a success, there will still be some who argue that it isn’t enough. In the linked video, Naomi Klein - author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs Climate, argues that the problem of climate change cannot really be solved by carbon-neutral technologies and infrastructures. The issue runs deeper than that. Climate change is the result of an ideology of extraction, domination, and control of the natural world - namely, global capitalism. The same ideology is responsible for lineages of social injustice, extreme inequalities, and the 6th mass extinction.
For what it’s worth, I agree with Klein, and argued something similar in my book on happiness and the ideology of control. But, I’ve come round to thinking that climate change is just not that issue. Yes, it highlights a fundamental problem with the socio-economic system that dominates the world. But that doesn’t mean we should solve climate change by changing the system. Dismantling global capitalism is much less likely than attempts within the system to reach a net-zero carbon world.
In saying this, Klein might accuse me of “magical thinking” - relying on technofixes that either currently don’t exist or are terribly risky, such as geo-engineering. In response, I think that when it comes to major global problems like climate change - perhaps the biggest problem humanity has ever faced - all potential solutions require some form of radical hope. It’s about choosing which kind.
Klein - and many others, such as the de-growth movement - put their hope in radical political change. For me, it seems much more reasonable to put hope in the processes of exponential change that continuously shape our world. It’s exponential processes that have placed the Internet in the pockets of half the global population in just a few decades. And, more importantly, it’s exponential processes that have reduced extreme poverty by an average of 128,000 people every day for the past 25 years.
It’s tempting to solve major social problems by trying to control their causes through sheer political will. In the case of climate change and global inequality, it’s tempting to simply stop economic growth and redistribute the vast amounts of material wealth humanity has already accumulated. But, as well as being unrealistic, this strategy fails to harness the power of the socioeconomic systems we already have for making rapid change - complex, interconnected systems that are often invisible, confusing, and unpredictable. In my view, we need to let go of our temptation to control all our problems and instead connect with the intangible forces that can change our world for the better. That still requires a lot of political reform, to get those exponential processes going. But we cannot - and should not - control every step of the way.
I think I’ll just end it there then :-) As always, would love to hear your thoughts - either comment below or send me a direct message. Until next time, I hope you enjoy this beautiful planet we live on.