The techno-optimists would say that we can replace all of those “oil slaves” with “green energy slaves” (probably a combination of renewables and nuclear, fusion or otherwise). The optimists would say that the full transition to zero emissions energy is inevitable. I’m skeptical, myself. I think those optimists are oversimplifying at best and outright delusional at worst.

Renewable technology has come down in price significantly and more and more renewable electricity is being generated every year, but we’re still quite a ways away from green energy beginning to replace fossil fuels. Currently, zero emissions energy is just being added on top of fossil fuels, and it’s probably going to stay that way as long as we are operating within an infinite growth paradigm. Infinite growth requires infinite energy, so no energy source can go unutilized.

But I agree that we will likely hit some hard, physical limit to growth at some point, and when that happens the global economic system will experience an unprecedented crash. I don’t know when that will be, but when it does it will be a major inflection point for our species.

People, on average, are wealthier than they’ve ever been. Technology and living standards have improved so much for so many people. Those people are not going to do anything that would jeopardize their current living standard, nor their pursuit of even more wealth. They don’t hate billionaires, most of them wish they were billionaires themselves. If there’s anything they would get angry at billionaires for it would be the affordability crisis. Climate change is way down on the list of grievances, if it’s on the list at all. Climate change is an existential threat to their living standards, so they should care, but it’s a difficult threat for people to conceptualize.

No major kernel decisions were made,” jokes Russinovich in a post on LinkedIn.

Man, wouldn’t that be wild, though?

You know that meme that came out of the pandemic? “We are the virus.” I’ve thought about it and I don’t agree. We’re not a virus, we’re more like a large asteroid impact.

Periods of rapid climate change are often associated with mass extinction events. Earth could experience a mass extinction event like the one that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, as a result of this period of extremely rapid climate change that we’ve created.

No, we’re not a virus, we’re a natural disaster on par with some of the worst to ever befall this planet.

It really depends on how you define “successful.” If your measure of success is based on how closely these societies resemble Western, liberal, capitalist societies, then, yeah, you’re probably not going to see a whole lot of “success,” but that’s not what these revolutionary movements were trying to achieve. I would say that first and foremost what essentially every communist movement was striving for was just autonomy and independence, and many have been successful in that regard. Vietnam is an independent nation, instead of a French colony. China, similarly, is no longer under the thumb of the British. You may not like what these nations do with their autonomy, but that is what they were striving for and they have achieved it.

…a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”.

Maybe, but the world has to reduce global carbon emissions by half, within a relatively short amount of time, to have any chance of limiting warming to a level that gives us the best possible chance of not passing critical climate tipping points, and the only way to do that is to significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels. Carbon capture will likely also be necessary, and maybe so will be geoengineering (god help us), but there is no possible strategy for limiting warming and hopefully avoiding passing critical tipping points that doesn’t involve rapid and dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use. So, if that’s doomed to fail, then the world not passing critical climate tipping points is also doomed to fail. I think a lot of people just figure that’s a foregone conclusion at this point, and maybe it is, but if that’s the case then let’s just be honest and say that what we’re facing in the latter half of the 21st century, and possibly sooner, is significant catastrophe.

To be replaced with a new kind of feudalism. Company towns will come back, only they’ll be whole cities. Our nations will be carved up by ultra wealthy lords, each will take ownership and control of their own company city. The Lord will be both our employer and the sovereign of the city. We will essentially be their property. We will work for them, buy from them, and follow all of their rules. They will demand a cult-like religious devotion. That’s our future.

the missed deadline adds to concerns that climate action has fallen down government agendas

I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. It’s just not a priority in most countries.

I don’t agree. I think these people are acting out of what they believe to be self interest, even if it is an unenlightened self interest. Why else would they desire to be at the “top of the collective?” What do they hope to gain if not special, INDIVIDUAL, privileges, opportunities, liberties, etc?

The centralized monopolies are built to serve the interests of, and to consolidate the powers and control of, a relatively small number of individuals. There’s nothing more freeing for an individual than total power and control over others.

Nvidia doesn’t give a shit about gamers anymore…Their bread and butter now is AI, and large scale machine learning. Where businesses are buying thousands of cards at a time.

I’m just quoting this for emphasis.

Welcome to the polycrisis.

Despite much investment in and expansion of renewable energy, humanity has continued burning fossil fuels at a furious pace.

Infinite growth requires infinite energy. I’m certain renewable energy production will continue to grow, but it won’t replace fossil fuels, renewable energy will just be added on top of fossil fuels.

How many of those 200 nations actually need to radically transform?

Many, if not most.

But I suppose that depends on where the threshold is, at which radical transformation becomes necessary. How poor and small does a nation have to be for it to be exempt from radical transformation?

At the end of the day, we have to radically transform society, and we have to do it fast

No, we don’t need to radically transform one, single society, we need to transform hundreds of separate, distinct societies. Yes, we live in a highly globalized world, but there is not one, global society, with one culture, language, nationality, government, legal framework, etc. There are nearly 200 independent nations on the planet, each with their own culture, needs, ambitions, goals, ideology, and beliefs, and many of these nations are in direct competition with one another. There are several nations directly competing, in a zero sum contest for global supremacy.

I suppose many people see US (or more broadly “Western”) global hegemony as essentially the same as a single global society, but that hegemony was not chosen by the world, it was imposed on them, and there are several nations aggressively trying to challenge and ultimately destabilize said hegemony.

proactively develop governance frameworks, coordinate globally, and prepare our societies for unprecedented change

Get in line behind climate change.

Multinational corporations are…destroying Earth for profit. If we want real change, we have to be willing to threaten those profits – and to learn from the people who have. Here in Co Mayo, activists with the organisation Shell to Sea worked for more than a decade to oppose the construction of a local gas pipeline and refinery by the fossil-fuel giant Shell. Starting in 2005, the campaign picketed the construction sites, prevented workers from entering, and even sabotaged infrastructure…By 2012 it was estimated that the delays caused by community action had tripled the cost of the project overall. Yes, the pipeline was ultimately built.

Protests and picket signs aren’t going to work. Even in this very example given by the author, it didn’t work! The damn pipeline still got built.

People have been trying to abolish capitalism for well over a century now. Most have failed, and even the few who didn’t outright fail have succeeded only in controlling or managing capitalism, through a powerful, central state. There’s a reason why it’s so much easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Capitalism is an unstoppable force, and nature is an immovable object. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?..

I am absolutely convinced that geoengineering is coming.

In theory, geoengineering should slow down the rate of warming while we transition away from fossil fuels. Since the transition to a zero GHG emission global civilization will inherently take more time than we have, to prevent warming beyond 2.0C, we could use geoengineering to buy us some time. In theory, it makes perfect sense, but I am leery. I’m concerned about potential unintended consequences and side effects, but I’m even more concerned that geoengineering will make people complacent, slowing down the transition. Even theoretically, geoengineering only works if we are rapidly transitioning at the same time, otherwise it’s just like throwing more and more dynamite onto a pile, and all it would take is for us to stop geoengineering, for whatever reason, for the dynamite to explode.

An AMOC collapse “is a really big danger that we should do everything we can to avoid,”

Hmm, that seems quite alarmist to me. It’s probably a hoax, but even if it isn’t, the effects are likely being over blown. An AMOC collapse would only cause a slight drop in GDP, a couple percentage points only, and it’s probably already priced in on stock markets. I also believe in the power of entrepreneurship to find solutions. I’ve got it! We dump a whole heck of a lot of salt into the ocean. Boom! I’ll head the start-up. We’ll just get our capital from investors like Black Rock and Bill Gates. Oh, and governments, of course. We’ll get governments to pay us to drive massive, diesel powered cargo ships, loaded with salt, out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. See, market solutions. Oh man, ecological collapse is going to generate so much profit and shareholder value. Take that, doomers. /s