"Tim Garrett, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Utah, has argued that “Only complete economic collapse will prevent runaway global climate change.” "
He's got it!! Check out his material.
Abstract. In a prior study (Garrett, 2011), I introduced a simple economic growth model designed to be consistent with general thermodynamic laws. Unlike traditional economic models, civilization is viewed only as a well-mixed global whole with no distinction made between individual nations, economic sectors, labor, or capital investments. At the model core is a hypothesis that the global economy’s current rate of primary energy consumption is tied through a constant to a very general representation of its historically accumulated wealth. Observations support this hypothesis, and indicate that the constant’s value is λ = 9.7 ± 0.3 milliwatts per 1990 US dollar. It is this link that allows for treatment of seemingly complex economic systems as simple physical systems. Here, this growth model is coupled to a linear formulation for the evolution of globally well-mixed atmospheric CO2 concentrations. While very simple, the coupled model provides faithful multi-decadal hindcasts of trajectories in gross world product (GWP) and CO2. Extending the model to the future, the model suggests that the well-known IPCC SRES scenarios substantially underestimate how much CO2 levels will rise for a given level of future economic prosperity. For one, global CO2 emission rates cannot be decoupled from wealth through efficiency gains. For another, like a long-term natural disaster, future greenhouse warming can be expected to act as an inflationary drag on the real growth of global wealth. For atmospheric CO2 concentrations to remain below a “dangerous” level of 450 ppmv (Hansen et al., 2007), model forecasts suggest that there will have to be some combination of an unrealistically rapid rate of energy decarbonization and nearly immediate reductions in global civilization wealth. Effectively, it appears that civilization may be in a double-bind. If civilization does not collapse quickly this century, then CO2 levels will likely end up exceeding 1000 ppmv [emphasis added]; but, if CO2 levels rise by this much, then the risk is that civilization will gradually tend towards collapse.
Originally published as Garrett, T. J.: No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change, Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 1-17, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-3-1-2012, 2012.
This says it all: “Societies based on conquest cannot be sustained.” Whether it’s drawdown or collapse, or some combination of both, the shift is underway. Small and local community is the way.
Max, maybe the best thing for what remains of the biosphere would be to have the Strait of Hormuz closed for the remainder of the year and see how on a global scale we can adjust to 20% less extraction and consumption of hydrocarbons.
Yeah, I'm hoping for the same, Max, despite the severe hardships it will impose on me & mine (I've planted a LOT but am still a few years (at least) away from even a modicum of calories coming from my land.
But....all through history, good people have had to make tremendous sacrifices to keep psychotic evil from completely destroying....well, you name it. Now it's the entire planet. And we're at that point.
On the news we hear the word oil over and over again as if the USA must have it so GDP will not plunge. I am sick of hearing this from both major parties.
Also they blame each other for the TSA troubles. The USA news and the folks interviewed take one side or the other. I wish they would interview me. I would ask, why do you need to fly in the first place? Sping break is not a good answer. I would say, shut it all down Americans and get off this thinking that you are entitled to what most of the world cannot afford.
Thank you for this. It was inspiring to read. I suspect there are many such Iranian women (and probably some men) who are carrying on the work despite the odds.
I should say though that the unintentional climate action in my opinion will be short-lived and offset by other places on the earth being raped to feed the greed.
Thank you, Nilesh. You may be right. But my take is that oil which is delayed now may never be burned in the future, if the circumstances change. Those who skip a car trip today because of high gas prices are unlikely to take two to make up for it when prices go down. There's no direct way right now to permanently stop oil from being burned, given the existing infrastructure, demand, societal structure, politics, and so on. There's only ways to interdict, dismantle, sabotage, delay, etc. I think all these approaches are valuable if they reduce the amount of carbon released over a given time frame, like a year.
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first-class traveling set
And I think I need a Learjet
Money, it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away
Away, away, away
Away, away, away
Away, ooh
"Ha-ha! I was in the right!"
"Yes, absolutely in the right!"
"I certainly was in the right!"
"Yeah, I was definitely in the right. That geezer was cruising for a bruising!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"Yeah!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time!"
"I was just telling him it was in; he could get it in number two. He was asking why it wasn't coming up on fader eleven. After, I was yelling and screaming and telling him why it wasn't coming up on fader eleven. It came to a heavy blow, which sorted the matter out."
+--+
But . . . It's data, data
you won't get a good job . . .
Fourth Industrial Revolution
Blues . . .
+--+
The only way to get the air, soil, water, oceans, and mountains clean?
Well, war is just a machine, proving grounds on display, and covertly working to gin the system for money, water, data, food, and pre-crime digital gulag.
Yeah, social control impact financing, and the beat goes on.
Nah, clean air at the expense of babies bursting in air?
There are so many angles to the Wrong Kind of Green. The Hormuz blockage is one of them.
"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen..." - Hunter S Thompson (1979)
... that includes almost EVERYTHING in AmeriKKKa. Pure grift, scam, poison.
+--+
Tough one Max, to hear about your son bleeding out, just a tiny Tomahawk piece of shrouding, on his jugular, and then, no ambulance, or the drones of the Talmudists and Crusaders loitering above, waiting for a second or third tap. Drones all running on solar power. Bullets from recycled schoolyard jungle gym metal, all quiet and even painted by a bunch of art students in their last year of Jewish high school.
He's doing a lot of awful things, but I hear you. Some people make the case that if he crashes globalization and the American empire, he'll have down more good than harm ecologically. I think it's far too early to tell that. People will only be able to make informed speculation about these things in retrospect. For now, I'm far too worried about him directing a quadrupling of logging in my area to waste any time thinking about him as a positive development.
Re: “As a person living in an industrialized nation and born into a capitalist society, I get most of my food from the grocery store and my water from an electric well pump. Collapse is not something that I personally look forward to. I have a young son. Already we struggle to make ends meet. But ecologically, collapse is likely the best path forward”
Considering all of that, if you hypothetically had access to a button you could press that would initiate a global EMP pulse and fry every machine with an electrical circuit and micro chip globally, would you do it Max?
This would of course fry all modern petroleum powered machines, factories, mines, military operations as well as centralized food infrastructure, financial institutions and residential utilities.
Even hypothetically, that's not something to consider lightly. But let's just say a major Carrington event would probably over the long term be the best possible thing for both humans and non-humans.
One of the things that came up was the fact that those idiotic timebombs called nuclear power plants would likely go critical if an EMP fried their control systems, so it would result in potentially hundreds of Chernobyl/Fukushima type events.
Even so, I would say given those nuclear reactors are typically in places that are already ecologically decimated (near cities) and the fallout might only impact 50 miles radius around each one, that would still be less than 1% of the landmass on Earth effected and most wilderness places would be fine, so it would still be a win for life on Earth as a whole (ecology and biodiversity wise, not necessarily for human life).
"Typical [civilized] human activity is more devastating to biodiversity and abundance of local flora and fauna than the worst nuclear power plant disaster." - radioecologist Robert Baker, Texas Tech University
"Tim Garrett, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Utah, has argued that “Only complete economic collapse will prevent runaway global climate change.” "
He's got it!! Check out his material.
Abstract. In a prior study (Garrett, 2011), I introduced a simple economic growth model designed to be consistent with general thermodynamic laws. Unlike traditional economic models, civilization is viewed only as a well-mixed global whole with no distinction made between individual nations, economic sectors, labor, or capital investments. At the model core is a hypothesis that the global economy’s current rate of primary energy consumption is tied through a constant to a very general representation of its historically accumulated wealth. Observations support this hypothesis, and indicate that the constant’s value is λ = 9.7 ± 0.3 milliwatts per 1990 US dollar. It is this link that allows for treatment of seemingly complex economic systems as simple physical systems. Here, this growth model is coupled to a linear formulation for the evolution of globally well-mixed atmospheric CO2 concentrations. While very simple, the coupled model provides faithful multi-decadal hindcasts of trajectories in gross world product (GWP) and CO2. Extending the model to the future, the model suggests that the well-known IPCC SRES scenarios substantially underestimate how much CO2 levels will rise for a given level of future economic prosperity. For one, global CO2 emission rates cannot be decoupled from wealth through efficiency gains. For another, like a long-term natural disaster, future greenhouse warming can be expected to act as an inflationary drag on the real growth of global wealth. For atmospheric CO2 concentrations to remain below a “dangerous” level of 450 ppmv (Hansen et al., 2007), model forecasts suggest that there will have to be some combination of an unrealistically rapid rate of energy decarbonization and nearly immediate reductions in global civilization wealth. Effectively, it appears that civilization may be in a double-bind. If civilization does not collapse quickly this century, then CO2 levels will likely end up exceeding 1000 ppmv [emphasis added]; but, if CO2 levels rise by this much, then the risk is that civilization will gradually tend towards collapse.
Originally published as Garrett, T. J.: No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change, Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 1-17, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-3-1-2012, 2012.
https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.html
Tim Garrett's work is incredibly important, but for some reason very few people are aware of it.
Thanks for spreading awareness of it.
This says it all: “Societies based on conquest cannot be sustained.” Whether it’s drawdown or collapse, or some combination of both, the shift is underway. Small and local community is the way.
Absolutely, Julie. That's it right there.
Excellent article. The story of Malagha Mallah was entirely new to me!
(And thanks for the shout out.)
Thank you for writing such excellent pieces! And yes, her story is fascinating and well worth exploring.
Max, maybe the best thing for what remains of the biosphere would be to have the Strait of Hormuz closed for the remainder of the year and see how on a global scale we can adjust to 20% less extraction and consumption of hydrocarbons.
It seems that way. Certainly governments and corporations haven't made a dent in fossil fuel consumption.
Great essay 👏🐝🐝🐝
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I'm hoping for the same, Max, despite the severe hardships it will impose on me & mine (I've planted a LOT but am still a few years (at least) away from even a modicum of calories coming from my land.
But....all through history, good people have had to make tremendous sacrifices to keep psychotic evil from completely destroying....well, you name it. Now it's the entire planet. And we're at that point.
Absolutely, Janet.
I'd like to hear more about the vibrant environmental movement in Iran. Please write a part two!
Hi Didi!
Didn't realize you'd found your way here as well! :-)
(- Your fellow Thetford resident, since my last name isn't listed....)
I'll see what I can do, Didi. Thanks for the kind words.
Here’s hoping.
Yes.
On the news we hear the word oil over and over again as if the USA must have it so GDP will not plunge. I am sick of hearing this from both major parties.
Also they blame each other for the TSA troubles. The USA news and the folks interviewed take one side or the other. I wish they would interview me. I would ask, why do you need to fly in the first place? Sping break is not a good answer. I would say, shut it all down Americans and get off this thinking that you are entitled to what most of the world cannot afford.
We badly need a true ecological party in the United States, in my view - one that embraces a socialist degrowth orientation.
Thank you for this. It was inspiring to read. I suspect there are many such Iranian women (and probably some men) who are carrying on the work despite the odds.
I should say though that the unintentional climate action in my opinion will be short-lived and offset by other places on the earth being raped to feed the greed.
Thank you, Nilesh. You may be right. But my take is that oil which is delayed now may never be burned in the future, if the circumstances change. Those who skip a car trip today because of high gas prices are unlikely to take two to make up for it when prices go down. There's no direct way right now to permanently stop oil from being burned, given the existing infrastructure, demand, societal structure, politics, and so on. There's only ways to interdict, dismantle, sabotage, delay, etc. I think all these approaches are valuable if they reduce the amount of carbon released over a given time frame, like a year.
Wonderful! Thank you
You're most welcome, Erica.
You can hear the music, no? Money?
"Money"
Money, get away
You get a good job with more pay and you're OK
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four-star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team
Money, get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first-class traveling set
And I think I need a Learjet
Money, it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away
Away, away, away
Away, away, away
Away, ooh
"Ha-ha! I was in the right!"
"Yes, absolutely in the right!"
"I certainly was in the right!"
"Yeah, I was definitely in the right. That geezer was cruising for a bruising!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"Yeah!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time!"
"I was just telling him it was in; he could get it in number two. He was asking why it wasn't coming up on fader eleven. After, I was yelling and screaming and telling him why it wasn't coming up on fader eleven. It came to a heavy blow, which sorted the matter out."
+--+
But . . . It's data, data
you won't get a good job . . .
Fourth Industrial Revolution
Blues . . .
+--+
The only way to get the air, soil, water, oceans, and mountains clean?
Well, war is just a machine, proving grounds on display, and covertly working to gin the system for money, water, data, food, and pre-crime digital gulag.
Yeah, social control impact financing, and the beat goes on.
Nah, clean air at the expense of babies bursting in air?
There are so many angles to the Wrong Kind of Green. The Hormuz blockage is one of them.
+--+
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/america-just-a-nation-of-two-hundred
"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen..." - Hunter S Thompson (1979)
... that includes almost EVERYTHING in AmeriKKKa. Pure grift, scam, poison.
+--+
Tough one Max, to hear about your son bleeding out, just a tiny Tomahawk piece of shrouding, on his jugular, and then, no ambulance, or the drones of the Talmudists and Crusaders loitering above, waiting for a second or third tap. Drones all running on solar power. Bullets from recycled schoolyard jungle gym metal, all quiet and even painted by a bunch of art students in their last year of Jewish high school.
Nah, keep those dire straits to yourself.
Interesting, you might find this piece converging
https://ehadnameh.substack.com/p/69-alt-the-war-that-fixes-everything
Thank you for sharing, Ali.
T may turn out to be the most pro-environment president in any of our lifetimes! Degrowth - here we come!
He's doing a lot of awful things, but I hear you. Some people make the case that if he crashes globalization and the American empire, he'll have down more good than harm ecologically. I think it's far too early to tell that. People will only be able to make informed speculation about these things in retrospect. For now, I'm far too worried about him directing a quadrupling of logging in my area to waste any time thinking about him as a positive development.
Re: “As a person living in an industrialized nation and born into a capitalist society, I get most of my food from the grocery store and my water from an electric well pump. Collapse is not something that I personally look forward to. I have a young son. Already we struggle to make ends meet. But ecologically, collapse is likely the best path forward”
Considering all of that, if you hypothetically had access to a button you could press that would initiate a global EMP pulse and fry every machine with an electrical circuit and micro chip globally, would you do it Max?
This would of course fry all modern petroleum powered machines, factories, mines, military operations as well as centralized food infrastructure, financial institutions and residential utilities.
Even hypothetically, that's not something to consider lightly. But let's just say a major Carrington event would probably over the long term be the best possible thing for both humans and non-humans.
Well, I agree, and I would value your answer when you have time to properly and fully consider the hypothetical.
Thanks for your thoughts on the natural Sol initiated EMP potential.
I just published a poll on a hypothetical surrounding this topic of EMPs ( Here: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/poll-of-the-month-march2026-would-you-emp-the-planet ) which is getting some interesting results and discussion going.
One of the things that came up was the fact that those idiotic timebombs called nuclear power plants would likely go critical if an EMP fried their control systems, so it would result in potentially hundreds of Chernobyl/Fukushima type events.
Even so, I would say given those nuclear reactors are typically in places that are already ecologically decimated (near cities) and the fallout might only impact 50 miles radius around each one, that would still be less than 1% of the landmass on Earth effected and most wilderness places would be fine, so it would still be a win for life on Earth as a whole (ecology and biodiversity wise, not necessarily for human life).
Thank for responding.
"Typical [civilized] human activity is more devastating to biodiversity and abundance of local flora and fauna than the worst nuclear power plant disaster." - radioecologist Robert Baker, Texas Tech University