Many of my readers know that I have been suspicious of a consumption reduction strategy for solving climate change in my writings, but I have to admit, most of that suspicion has been based on intuition. It has just never seemed reasonable to me that we could reduce our way out of climate change. Rather, we would need to change the way we produce as the primary strategy. But people keep challenging that notion, so I thought it would be good to consider it further, look for data, and see what you all have to say about the one burning question I can’t get an answer to — how much consumption reduction will solve the problem?

Your input requested

To pursue this, I am pursuing two angles. First, I found some data published by the UN, which I will share and discuss in a minute. But second, and more importantly, I would like to hear from readers about what you mean by “reducing consumption.” It occurs to me that I may completely misunderstand what you have meant. It is easy to criticize something you don’t fully understand, and I fear I may have made that mistake. I also want to understand because I am about to undertake a research study about people’s attitudes toward climate change and the various solutions using in-depth qualitative interviews (something I used to do as a consultant) and hopefully come to a better understanding of what is viable. I don’t want to approach that study with a faulty set of assumptions. Hence, if readers will provide comments below on what reducing consumption means, especially at the individual level, I would appreciate it.

To be clear, I am very interested to know your answers to these questions:

* How much must total consumption be reduced to meet the primary climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050?

* How much should each individual reduce consumption from their current level as a contribution?

I look forward to seeing your answers in the comments.

Now for the UN’s data

I assume that the first primary objective every climate activist shares is to get to a net zero state of emissions. Certainly, that is the main goal articulated in the Paris accords. A UN page says this: “To keep global warming to no more than 1.5°C — as called for in the Paris Agreement — emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.” The same report goes on to say: “More than 70 countries, including the biggest polluters — China, the United States, and the European Union — have set a net-zero target, covering about 76% of global emissions.” This suggests that a 76% reduction in emissions will get us to net zero.

Another question…

So, here is the third question: Does that number, a 76% reduction in emissions, equate to a 76% reduction in consumption if consumption reduction is the primary strategy? If not, how much of that emissions reduction will come from consumption reduction, and where will the other reduction come from? As I see it, the primary alternative to consumption reduction is the shift to renewable energy production, but if there are other strategies, what are those? The final answer, in other words, is in the form of these four examples:

* 76% from consumption reduction, 0% from other sources

* 52% from consumption reduction, 24% from other sources

* 33% from consumption reduction, 43% from other sources

* 0% from consumption reduction, 76% from other sources

What’s your ratio? Mathematically speaking, all of these add up to the necessary 76% reduction articulated by the UN, so if they can be reached, the solution will work — according to the science.

In answering, I would invite you to avoid platitudes like, “If we don’t reduce consumption, we’re doomed.” I get it. I’ve read that a hundred times. I am asking for specifics so that I can see if my assumptions have been incorrect, and then assess the viability of people adopting the strategies we are recommending. That’s where my research is going, but first, we need to know what numbers we are shooting for, and I would prefer that to reflect the general notions of the climate writer’s community.

Thank you in advance for your input.

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Intertwine readers: Here is an installment of good news toward a positive future.

Finally! There is an answer to storing the electricity generated by wind and solar installations at scale. People always claim that solar and wind cannot provide our energy because they are not consistent. This is true, but Denmark has an answer, and it makes a lot of sense.

Before we get to that, however, a little background is needed. The debate over solar and wind production of electricity always runs into a limit: both are intermittent sources of energy. The grid needs a steady supply of energy to remain stable, and society needs the grid to provide energy at a relatively stable pace — all day, all night, 365 days a year.

These two renewable sources have been limited in overall deployment by our inability to store the energy. They tend to overproduce when the sun shines or the wind blows, but at night or on breezeless days, nothing. If we could store the energy in batteries and take it out when we want it, the problem could be solved. The result has been a race to improve battery technology to make it more capable of storing and deploying energy to meet our needs. Many promising technologies are out there, but only the lithium-ion batteries we are all familiar with have become standardized so far.

There Is Another Way

In this TED talk podcast, Denmark’s climate minister, Dan Jorgenson, describes how Denmark is going to end the country’s oil industry altogether by 2050. This is a big deal since Denmark is the EU’s biggest oil producer. But what I appreciate is how Jorgenson’s plan focuses the minds of millions of people toward a societal level goal. That’s the leadership we need. Here’s how they plan to do it.

First, build as much off-shore wind power as they can — about 10 gigawatts, which is far more than they need. Denmark was the birthplace of wind-to-electric power generation, and it will continue to lead the way with applications of wind power.

Second, use the excess electricity in a process called electrolysis to create hydrogen, which can be stored and used in fuel cells. Electricity is used to split hydrogen and oxygen from water. Since the electricity is all excess wind-generated electricity, hydrogen essentially stores the energy.

Third, replace internal combustion engines of all kinds with hydrogen fuel cells — including airplanes, trucks, and industrial machinery. Although automobiles can operate by storing electricity in onboard batteries, today’s technology isn’t feasible to use batteries or electricity for everything. The batteries would be too heavy for the airplanes to lift, for example, and you may not be able to concentrate the electric energy enough for some industrial applications. Hydrogen fuel cells bridge that gap. This step allows the use of hydrogen to power these machines.

Fourth, use hydrogen fuel cells to power these machines that electricity cannot power. In effect, using the hydrogen in the fuel cells releases the wind-generated stored energy. No emissions from wind-sourced energy, and no emissions from the hydrogen fuel cell. Water and heat are the only byproducts of the chemical reaction that releases the energy.

In essence, the excess electricity generated by wind power will be stored as hydrogen to be used at a later time. It is brilliant.

Jorgenson’s plan acknowledges that for some applications, a fuel-based system will better meet our needs than an electric-battery-based system. Hydrogen allows us to use fuel without burning anything. Rather, it is just a chemical reaction that releases energy.

The Challenge — A New Hydrogen Ecosystem

The challenge, of course, is the creation of the total energy ecosystem that is required. Today, we have such a system for fossil fuels, and many countries are beginning to build an ecosystem for EV car charging. In the US, there seems to be far less discussion of hydrogen fuel cells, although Europe, and Denmark in particular, seem to be leading the way.

The outline Jorgenson is presenting is the basic production infrastructure. Hydrogen production only makes sense when the electric energy is coming from a renewable source like wind or solar. By using that electricity to power electrolysis, you get hydrogen. In some cases, the hydrogen can be used to go into the machinery Jorgenson is talking about, but it can also be used to store the electricity and potentially re-deliver it when the wind dies down. Hydrogen-producing facilities are likely, therefore, to become a regular feature of solar and wind installations.

To run properly, the hydrogen ecosystem must be far more robust, however. Hydrogen fueling stations must come online. Distribution for getting hydrogen where it needs to go is essential. Water sources are required — and remember, we have a growing severe drought in many places in the world right now. The need for water will require that we adopt a process that can use seawater, and technologists are working on this now. (When you use saltwater in the electrolysis, another byproduct, chlorine, is produced, as a revised system is required). Hydrogen production will need to be integrated with wind and solar installations. Cars and machinery that use hydrogen must be as inexpensive and easy to use as our current machinery.

Although we have a long way to go, Jorgenson’s vision is laudable. It is the kind of forward-thinking we need in the world — something well beyond next quarter’s profit numbers or last week’s poll numbers.

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A few days ago, Ray Katz published What If Our Climate Revolution is Playful and Full of Joy? on Medium at the very same time as I have been reading Poetry on the Side of Nature by Wisconsin poet Thomas R. Smith. (I will be commenting more completely on Smith’s book in my newsletter Arguments with Books.) Both writers are trying to point us in a new direction — beyond despair, beyond passivity, beyond hopelessness, and beyond the dour frustrations of watching the natural world implode. Many have characterized our current experience as watching a slow-motion disaster without being able to act. These two voices call us beyond that.

For my part, I have been focusing on taking action through a re-dedicated career. For me, it is this writing, and I have suggested that everyone take whatever their skill and get involved in creating solutions in their jobs. We spend most of our time in our jobs, so if the job is also dedicated to solving climate change, you make a vast increase in the energy going into such solutions. Anyone who does not do this is, in effect, putting their energy toward a climate catastrophe on Earth.

Katz and Smith, however, are onto something else. A media that always highlights the devastation of climate change is having its effect. The news is so overwhelming that people are discouraged, depressed, and despondent. More and more, I hear people saying, “We are doomed.” This experience of life is closing in on us. The climate that is really changing is the climate within our individual and collective psyches. Joy, playfulness, creativity, and imagination are being pushed out. Among those who understand climate challenges, these parts of the psyche are being replaced with political solemnity, hopelessness, and even despair. Others are living in denial, a kind of blissful stupidity, refusing to acknowledge what is right before their eyes. Joy and playfulness are being ceded to those in denial, while those with knowledge enough to take action are being disempowered by their own despair.

Friends, this is not a recipe for success!

Katz and Smith are calling us to something greater. Where is art? Where is our creativity? Where is the joy? How else do we expect to sustain ourselves through these difficulties? How do we expect to inspire ourselves to keep working at what must be done? It cannot just be a long-term slog. You or I may have the strength to soldier on, but most will not. And the reality is, we need almost everyone to succeed at this.

Katz points to the joys of playing the role of the fool in society, by which I mean the Shakespearian fool who always sees the other side. The fool brings wisdom, insight, and the deep questions necessary, while playfully skewering all the old assumptions, all the old ideas, and all the conventions that define a society. God knows the old ideas need to be skewered, so Katz offers fresh air in this regard.

Smith, for his part, points to the role of art and its unique ability to enrich and repair. While art can also protest, and much political poetry and art has protested, Smith calls us to something greater. There are enormous ruptures between individuals and nature, small groups and nature, and society as a whole and nature. These ruptures need repair, and poetry in particular can help with that repair as it creates a more filial relationship between us and nature itself. Poets and artists often see what others do not, and once having seen through those eyes, it is often hard to go back. You can’t unhear words; you can’t unsee images. And if those words and images open new appreciation or guide us to new feelings toward nature, we can indeed achieve restoration and repair.

Enrichment comes through imagination. Far too much of the climate debate is utilitarian. The underlying motivation usually develops from an appreciation for nature, but most of the debate is not like that. It is dry, scientific, and technical. Don’t get me wrong… we need that discussion. But too much of that diet begins to kill the soul, and people who work at it all that time begin to see their hopes fading, the lights going out in their eyes, and this deep despondence creeps in. The antidote is imagination. It is beauty. It is creativity.

You see, we could imagine what the world is trying to tell us today. Go, sit in nature. Listen. Write it down. Paint what you hear. Dance to the music of the Earth. Bring back the beauty the earth is always sending our way, but also, be honest and see the violence of life feeding on life that goes on every day. Celebrate it. Go in with your eyes wide open. Look. See. Smell. Touch. Hear the silence or the noise, and let it transform you. Provide your vision and your experience to others, to change their perceptions as well.

Or join with others, make and play games, laugh, ridicule leaders, and sabotage their plans. Dance like fools in the streets! Drive your car in reverse only! Sing in the boardrooms! Love the men with guns and Trump flags!

With these approaches, we will have one huge advantage over all others… We will be happy! And, that, my friends, is the start of a real revolution.

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The more I read about climate change, the more I read about solutions that will not and cannot work. Some of the favorites include degrowth, carbon taxes, reduced consumption, veganism, cessation of burning stuff, transition, simplicity, population reduction, and more. Typically, they sound like this: “We need to…” fill in the blank… end our gluttonous ways, stop eating meat, tax carbon, get over the consumerist mentality.

I’m sorry, but it is time to call b******t.

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The problem with all of them is that they require people to choose against their desires and they require leaders to rise above the system to make changes that are good for the planet. When was the last time you saw a political leader do that? And when was the last time you saw people choose against their perception of what is good for them?

Let's get real. All these voices are selecting a philosophy and solution that works for them and then insisting everyone else should be like them. Advocating veganism as a solution? Good chance you are a vegan and you like it. Advocating population reduction? You probably chose not to have kids. Promoting degrowth? Good chance that, unlike most others, you are set up to thrive in a degrowing economy.

“We need to end consumerism,” someone said. Yeah? Who is this “we?" And what would that "we" actually do? Would we burn down the stores where consumerism occurs? End advertising as we know it? Stop producing food, clothing, shoes, and cars? Do "we" want to build a drab society of sameness—like Henry Ford's "you can have any color you want so long as it is black?"

You see, these are empty, vacuous calls for change. They are utterly meaningless. Everyone thinks they are “speaking truth to power” or “calling for change” but it is meaningless. There are no specifics. Nothing changes. There is no prescription, and no responsibility to actually change.

So, what do you do if you want to affect climate change?

GET A NEW JOB!

Get a job focused on the things that matter—new sources of energy and new tools and products that run on them. New sources of energy include solar, wind, geothermal, battery research, electric grid management, and more. New tools and products are everything electric—heat pumps, electric vehicles, electric water heaters, electric trucks, and more. Bring your engineering, marketing, business, HR, and other skills to those efforts because that's what is needed and that's what will make a difference.

Not in business? Teach kids the solutions to climate change. Preach to your congregation the solutions to climate change. Advocate policies that will enhance the real solutions.

Look, the only way to unleash the creativity and power of the human spirit in the service of climate solutions is to make the solutions the focus of our employment. All of us put our best energy into our jobs, and we put most of our energy into our jobs. If your job isn’t part of making the necessary changes in technology happen, then you, my friend, are part of the problem. If your job isn’t part of making the necessary changes in the world happen, then you, again, are part of the problem. The world needs your genius, your ability, and your unique abilities to solve this problem. Why do you hold them back? Sitting back and dictating to others that they have to live like you just isn’t going to cut it.

If you want to make a real commitment to climate change, get a new job so that you can commit forty, fifty, or sixty hours a week to it. But focus on real solutions, not unrealistic campaigns to get everyone to live differently. Those are doomed to failure.

What Henry Ford had right was this: If the system produces only one thing, then that is the thing people will buy. That is, you change things by changing the choices the system offers, not by getting people to adopt different lifestyles. When all our electricity comes from wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear sources, people's lifestyles won't matter—they will only be able to buy renewable energy.  When the only cars out there are EVs, just as for the last 100 years they were only internal combustion engine cars, that’s what people will buy. When heat pumps can heat any home in any place, and gas-burning furnaces are no longer available, people will be warm with heat pumps and they will not burn stuff to stay warm.

Friends, this is not rocket science. It is far easier to make a solutions-based technology ubiquitous than it is to take society back to caves. It is easier to give people better solutions and eliminate the stupid ones than it is to dictate their diets. But to do so, the world needs your best work, your best energy, and your best commitment. Make climate change solutions your job, and you will change the world.

Anthony Signorelli

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Intertwine’s First Podcast!

Here is the text of the podcast above. Please let me know if you like the audio version.

Whether it is media-induced or not, people have a general sense that the world is going to hell. All the old things are there—hunger, poverty, war, pestilence, crime, inequality and unfairness throughout society. We’ve seen all that before, and whether it is worse or not is always a matter of debate. One thing cannot be debated—the climate is changing. It is changing more quickly and abruptly than anyone thought. And  no one knows what to do about it.

This climate doom is settling on people. Major droughts and heat waves are surging around the world—Europe, China, the US, Africa… no continent is spared the impacts. There is a growing sense of crisis, even though it is not a sudden emergency. Huge population areas are or will be without water. Everyone says that the problem will be really serious decades down the road, but the problems we are seeing today were supposed to be decades down the road too. They are not. They are here.

When the world is going to hell and there is nothing you can do about it, desperation sets in, but so does depression. And anxiety. Many people lash out in outrage at the world, looking for enemies. Is it any wonder that nationalism and populism have risen around the world? Human nature seems to want a scapegoat. We want to blame someone; someone unlike ourselves. Hate fills the air. Racism. Civil War. Reaching for a strong man who says he can fix it. All this is part of climate doom.

We are being pushed into a forced simplicity. Survival is on the minds of many. How do you survive a heat wave? If you think you are okay because you have air conditioning, what will you do when the power goes out because the grid can’t handle it? If you think you are safe on a remote homestead and if the power goes out for the same reason, how do you pump your water in the heat? Or, how will you defend yourself from wildfire? What will you do as the quarter-mile-wide tornado approaches? Many are not thinking of these things, but they are in the backs of the mind, part of the collective unconscious, as it were. Our societal zeitgeist, the cultural milieu.

Scarcity and fear may be the most dangerous results of the looming climate disaster. It is palpable in the culture, and there seems to be no way to address it. A spiritual practice such as Buddhism can help one find a center, and perhaps there is no time like now for that. But these practices have a weird inner conflict—they involve radical acceptance at the very time it seems we should accept nothing. Climate change is not acceptable! The status quo is not okay! We need to take action… NOW!

I think, however, that this is a mirage. Acceptance is critical to enabling action, especially meaningful action. One of the biggest blocks to this action is the refusal to accept that the climate is actually changing. People also refuse to accept the needed changes. Outwardly, they are bold and outspoken in their denial. But inwardly, they know. We all know. Things are changing, and they are going to get worse.

Some people do find the equanimity to accept and act. Those who don’t turn the crisis inward on themselves. Depression and anxiety manifest, and in so doing, their inner life suffers. Men lose touch with their femininity and allow moods to overtake them—deep, dark, broody moods. Women lose touch with the masculine in themselves and become angry gnats. Many men and women enter the public scene and carry this lost self into the public eye. Congresspeople Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are good examples. And Trump, of course. As public figures, these folks then become the psychological projection screens for millions of people. Their depression and their anxiety manifest as anger and bullying. They brood through their social media followings and infusing their minds with hate-filled radio. The inner landscape becomes a reflection of the drought out there in the world. It is dry, the soil cracked, nothing growing, and the river has disappeared.

How are people to live such dried-up lives? Human beings cannot do that. It is obvious from our actual physical well being—three days without water, and you are dead. It is the same in our inner lives—without water, we dry up. We crack. We die. Or, more accurately, our humanity dies. We lose connection to source. We become angry brooding bullies and we lash out at others. We lash out at people who had nothing to do with it, and who can do nothing about it. We lash out because we are lashing out at ourselves.

Let us beware, however, that we do not project all of this onto opponents. The right-wing does not have a monopoly on this particular unconsciousness. Climate activists often condemn the deniers in their own brand of hate-filled rhetoric, and it comes from the same source—unprocessed depression and anxiety that has morphed into outrage and anger. They aim it at people… those people. The right-wing, low information voters, as they are called. Or at the rich, the wealthy, those at the top… the one percent, as they are called. The blame is palpable, the anger unbridled. If you want to see one of these people boil inside, bring them to a Trump flag display. The inner turmoil is extreme.

The third side of climate doom is fueled by denial of a different sort. “There’s still plenty of time to address this,” you hear over and over again. But there isn’t. Not for Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Not for the Rhine River. Not for the Yangtze River. Not for the several thousand people who have died in the heat waves. Not for the millions facing migration to find water in Somalia. Not for Nelson Mandela Bay and the surrounding townships. There isn’t plenty of time. There is only plenty of time if you are not in a place directly affected. If you are one of those, count your fortunes, but don’t tell those suffering there is plenty of time. Their time has run out. As a global community, we are already in it, and much faster than most people predicted.

The climate crisis has created a deep inner crisis in our consciousness. Nothing in our DNA is ready to handle this, and nothing in our psyches is ready for it either. We cannot do anything about our brothers and sisters lost in their depression and anxiety other than coach them out of it, but we can help ourselves. It needs to be less political, however, and more introspective. We need to look at the crisis in ourselves and each other. We need to soothe one another rather than shout. We need to comfort one another rather than hit or scream. And most importantly, we need to understand each other’s suffering in this extremely unique time in history. Healing on the inside is critical to healing the world.

As this climate crisis unfolds, the suffering of humanity is going to be enormous. Grief will fill the world as if it is generated out of atmospheric carbon. We will live and breathe grief as a way of nourishing ourselves because there won’t be any choice in the matter. Each of us has a duty to live our lives fully anyway, but to do so requires that same deep insight and healing we need to bring to climate action. We need our full selves. That will make us more effective, and it will also heal our own inner humanity. God knows, we need that now.

—Anthony Signorelli