Painting By Numbers?

There went our carbon budget!

Image from CMAP - Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées de l'Ecole polytechnique - Creative Commons

50% by 2030

In a somewhat recent Guardian article on the the topic of rapid oil pipeline expansion worldwide, it was reported that “Global carbon emissions must drop by 50% by 2030 to keep on track with internationally agreed targets for limiting global heating.” This article was published in September of last year, and the evidence shows there hasn’t been any slowing down of oil pipeline construction in the world. Nor has there been any downturn in the burning of fossil fuels or the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere. While so-called “renewable energy” infrastructure has increased, none of this increase has resulted in a lowering of global greenhouse gas emissions—, partly because those emissions are increasing more rapidly than “renewable” energy is. In fact, mining for, smelting for, manufacturing, distributing and installing of “renewable energy” devices and infrastructure have been adding to, rather than reducing, greenhouse gas emissions. And the only plausible, voluntary and deliberate way this trend could change would be if the world adopted rapid and dramatic voluntary energy descent¹ — whether as government policies or some kind of non-governmental rebellion from a fossil fuel dependent economy.²

What stood out for me in that particular Guardian article wasn’t what it said about pipeline expansion, but the words I directly quoted above. The words were like cold water splashed on the face of the reader, and so they became the title of an article I published then: Global emissions must drop by 50% by 2030

According to economists like Nate Hagens, and thousand of others like him, energy and GDP / GWP (measures of economic growth or decline³), when plotted together on graphs, follow the same graph curves pretty precisely. We use more energy when the economy is growing. We use less energy when the economy is shrinking. When energy supplies enter into “shortages” the rate of the movements of currency drops off (the economy gets smaller). The same is true with materials, which is no surprise, since producing and moving materials requires energy. And my point here must be obvious. If we were to cut fossil fuels as dramatically as 50% by 2030, we’d almost certainly be shrinking “the economy” by at least that much. And it’s worth pointing out that nothing like this has ever happened before — not even during the Great Depression.

There is no way that our current mode of globalized capitalist-industrial technological economy could shrink its gross world product (GWP) by 50% in such a time frame without resulting in a what most of us would understand as a worldwide “great depression”. For comparison’s sake, at the most severe point of the USA’s Great Depression, around 1933, the U.S. GDP had declined by approximately 30% in real terms. This sent economic shock waves throughout the global economy of that day, a time in which the current wave of economic globalization hadn’t even begun to set in.

During the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the United States experienced a significant economic downturn. The exact percentage by which the U.S. economy shrank can vary depending on the measurement and time frame used. However, at the most severe point of the crisis, which was in the fourth quarter of 2008, the U.S. real GDP contracted by approximately 8.4%.

For the global economy, the financial crisis had a widespread impact, leading to a global recession. The percentage by which the world economy shrank during this period also varies based on measurement and data sources, but it's estimated that global GDP contracted by around 0.5% to 1.1% in 2009, which was the year when the global recession was most pronounced.

84%

Eighty-four percent of the technological energy⁴ (a.k.a, techno-energy) we use in the word today is fossil fuel sourced energy. And, if reason and history are our guides, this can’t be dramatically altered — in the very near term, as a percentage of world energy usage — by simply replacing fossil fuels with so-called “renewables” (that is, with energy from sun, wind, tides, geothermal and hydro).

But let’s say we can replace a great deal of techno-energy with “renewables”. If 84% of the energy we use today is fossil energy, replacing fossil tech with “renewable” tech will have an energy cost coming from mostly fossil energy-tech sources. That is, it will require energy to mine for, smelt for, manufacture, distribute and emplace all of this new infrastructure and devices.

That is, a rapid increase in “renewable” energy production can only occur at the cost of a what Richard Heinberg has called a “pulse”⁵ of increased fossil fuel use in the near term. Some have argued that a temporary increase — a ‘pulse’ — of greenhouse gases now is a reasonable price to pay for “clean energy” a decade or two from now. But there is a rather enormous problem with this premise. The problem is that we’ve already used up our carbon budget.

0% (zero)

By what percentage can we safely raise greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere. Recent events in the world clearly indicate that this number is zero. And this means, of course, that the amount of energy we can afford (“safely”) to use in building “renewable” devices and infrastructure, so long as the energy used in doing so is fossil energy, is also zero.

Let me explain. The notion of a “carbon budget” was first developed in order to assess the question of how much we can “safely” increase atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. At that time, it was as yet pretty unclear how much GHG concentrations would push the climate system from a “safe” level to a “dangerous” one … and beyond merely dangerous to “catastrophic.” What we’ve been learning recently is that we’re well past the safe zone and well into the dangerous-to-catastrophic zone already. So it no longer makes sense to speak in such a way as to suggest we’re still in the safe zone. But the world does go on pretending that we’ve not already spent our “carbon budget”. What gradually happened over the decades is that the notion of “carbon budget” got transformed from its original emphasis on safety / danger / catastrophe, to be redefined in such a way that it came more to speak in terms of “limiting global warming to a given level with a given probability”.⁶ Somehow we just stopped talking about “carbon budgets” in such a way as to indicate where safety ends and danger (and catastrophe) begin. And I suspect this is because we had crossed that line already, but collectively we’ve decided not to acknowledge this crossing.

One way of understanding that we’re no longer in a “safe” climate, and thus have no more carbon budget to spend, is to look at what’s happening already with regard to climate tipping points.

A recent article in Nature Communications warns of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), with a transition most likely to occur between 2025-2095. Other scientists, though, say it is questionable whether a collapse could occur this century. However, if a collapse were to happen to the AMOC, there could be global ramifications, including abrupt cooling across large parts of the northern hemisphere, changes in tropical rainfall, and non-linear changes in sea-level rise in the North Atlantic Ocean. - from What’s happening with AMOC?

A careful look at what is known about climate tipping point risks (and facts) makes it plain that we’ve already crossed some of these, and/or we’re about to cross them. That means we’re well past safe and fully into a dangerous and potentially catastrophic climate situation.

[As an aside, I do not believe that greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations are the only cause of anthropogenic climate disruption. I simply believe these are among the most potent of multiple causes, among which are factors of causation described and explained by Charles Eisenstein in his book, Climate: A New Story.]

Zero - zilch, nada …

No one (zip) responded to my call for collaborators in the project of putting numbers to “the energy cost of energy transition” in my recent article titled 2023 – 2033, The Decisive Decade.

In the back of my mind, while writing the above, was a paragraph from Chris Smaje in the comments (dialogue) following one of his blog posts.

Regarding the energy demands of ruralization, I daresay this would present genuine problems in some or many places – but it will unquestionably be less than the energy demands of ongoing urbanism. Putting figures to it is nigh on impossible, and I haven’t seen anyone try. I’d be interested if anyone could point me to any studies that have tried. But only moderately interested – it’s one of those areas where the obsession with quantification easily turns pathological.⁷

We were discussing re-ruralization of much of our population, as a sensible response to an inevitably shrinking future economy, in which access to land will mean access to livelihood in a low energy economy. And my ears perked up when Smaje said that an obsession with quantification can easily turn pathological. I wondered whether my near obsession with putting a figure on “the energy costs of energy transition” was bordering on pathology. It’s a good thing to wonder about, for sure. But I think it’s quantification we’re going to require if we’re to persuade enough of the right people to take seriously the fact (okay, it’s not yet an established fact, is it?) that renewable energy won’t — can’t possibly — enable a smooth passage to livelihood in a low carbon future.

Access to land will be necessary — for people who cannot presently afford to buy land. But there is also the need for time … time to learn how to grow food, and teach these skills to others. Time to build the minimal infrastructure of ecovillages in support of homesteads of various sorts. Time to nurture the soil back to life. And labor. There’s work to be done to build a bridge to a low carbon future rooted in the knowledge that only energy descent can enable a truly viable energy transition.

And there is the social, educational, cultural and political work ahead … leading to the renewal which Dougald Hine (and, if I remember right, Ivan Illich) have called “regrowing a living culture.” A living culture, I’m sure Dougald would insist, isn’t one grounded in quantification so much as in careful attention to the real world right before our eyes, ears, nose… and heart. A living culture wouldn’t — doesn’t — refuse abstractions. It simply provides abstractions, like numbers, with a proper and limited focus and scope.

Request

I’m asking now, yet again. Please. Let’s collaborate to provide some quantification of the energy costs of energy transition — if only to help close off the disastrous pathway too many of us are following … a path away from a living culture and into a deathly realm without access to livelihood or a thriving biosphere. So many of us understand that the story of “energy transition” which would simply replace current energy use with “renewables” is a dead end. Let’s show those who doubt us why it is so.

1. Energy Descent, Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_descent

2. I mention the non-governmental angle on this possibility mainly because governments have never chosen to deliberately curtail or reverse the expansion of their economies, whatever the non-monetary costs may be to continued economic expansion. Indeed, one could make a strong argument that the principle function of any modern government has always been economic expansion at any “externalized” costs. This is why I conceive of governments (“the state”) as having a Siamese twin relationship to business corporations.

3. … albeit rather problematic ones, since they measure all expenditures or movements of money, even when these movements of currency actually result in net losses to ecosystem heath, social well-being, etc.

4. I’m using the phrase “technological energy” to refer to the energy we use to power our machines, heat our houses, manufacture things, etc. I’m distinguishing “technological energy” from the energy we get from our food … and even the energy we get from the sun in heating out homes in a passive solar approach — even though passive solar energy is only possible with plate glass, which is technically a form of “technology”. It’s basically impossible to draw a sharp distinction between “technological energy” and other kinds of energy which we make use of. Go ahead, try it! Is firewood “technological energy” — partly yes, since you likely cut the wood using some kind of technology. But, by “technological energy” in this context, I am referring mainly to what powers our machinery, devices, etc.—, and which heats our buildings.

5. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-05/the-heinberg-pulse/

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_budget#Definition

7. See “comments” at - https://chrissmaje.com/2023/09/the-wholeness-of-the-word-regenesis-as-myth-part-i/#comments