Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?

Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium. Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a dangerous tipping point in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline, and that it could hit that tipping point again as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.

In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.

The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.

We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.

The ocean’s conveyor belt

Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides and water density differences.

In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.

This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt.

Too much fresh water from melting glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet can dilute the saltiness of the water, preventing it from sinking, and weaken this ocean conveyor belt. A weaker conveyor belt transports less heat northward and also enables less heavy water to reach Greenland, which further weakens the conveyor belt’s strength. Once it reaches the tipping point, it shuts down quickly.

What happens to the climate at the tipping point?

The existence of a tipping point was first noticed in an overly simplified model of the Atlantic Ocean circulation in the early 1960s. Today’s more detailed climate models indicate a continued slowing of the conveyor belt’s strength under climate change. However, an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation appeared to be absent in these climate models.

Ted-Ed Video: “How do ocean currents work? – Jennifer Verduin”

This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.

We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.

The result: Dangerous cold in the North

Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.

The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.

These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.

The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.

The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.

So, when will we see this tipping point?

The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.

Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.

The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.

It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.

This article was updated on Feb. 11, 2024, to fix a typo: The experiment found temperatures in parts of Europe changed by more than 5 F per decade.

René van Westen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Physics, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Professor of Physics, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Climate Model Specialist, Utrecht University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In 2022, the burning of fossil fuels provided 82% of the world’s energy. In 2000, it was 87%. Even as renewables have undergone tremendous growth, they’ve been offset by increased demand for energy.

That’s why the United Nations earlier this month released a global stocktake – an assessment on how the world is going in weaning itself off these energy-dense but dangerously polluting fuels. Short answer: progress, but nowhere near enough, soon enough.

If we consult history, we find that energy transitions are not new. To farm fields and build cities, we’ve gone from relying on human or animal muscle to wind and water to power sailboats and mill grain. Then we began switching to the energy dense hydrocarbons, coal, gas and oil. But this can’t last. We were first warned in 1859 that when burned, these fuels add to the Earth’s warming blanket of greenhouse gases and threatening our liveable climate.

It’s time for another energy transition. We’ve done it before. The problem is time – and resistance from the old energy regime, fossil fuel companies. Energy historian Vaclav Smil calculates past energy transitions have taken 50–75 years to ripple through societies. And we no longer have that kind of time, as climate change accelerates. This year is likely the hottest in 120,000 years.

So can we learn anything from past energy transitions? As it happens, we can.

Energy shifts happen in fits and starts

Until around 1880, the world ran on wood, charcoal, crop residue, manure, water and wind. In fact, some countries relied on wood and charcoal throughout the 20th century – even as others were shifting from coal to oil.

The English had used coal for domestic heating from the time of the Romans because it burned longer and had nearly double the energy intensity of wood.

So what drove the shift? Deforestation was a part. The reliance on wood worked while there were trees. In the pre-industrial era, cities of 500,000 or more needed huge areas of forests around them.

In some locales wood seemed boundless, free and expendable. The costs to biodiversity would become apparent only later.

England was once carpeted in forest. Endemic deforestation drove the change to coal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most English coal pits opened between 1540 and 1640.

When the English figured out how to use coal to make steam and push a piston, it made even more possible – pumping water from deepening mining pits, the invention of locomotives, and transporting produce, including the feed needed by working animals.

Yet for all this, coal had only reached 5% of the global market by 1840.

In North America, coal didn’t overtake wood until as late as 1884 – even as crude oil became more important.

Why did America first start exploiting oil reserves? In part to replace expensive oil from the heads of sperm whales. Before hydrocarbon oil was widely available, whaling was depended upon for lubricants and some lighting. In 1846, the US had 700 whaling vessels scouring the oceans for this source of oil.

Crude oil was struck first in Pennsylvania in 1859. To extract it required drilling down 21 metres. The drill was powered by a steam engine – which may have been fired by wood.

Steam and muscle

The 19th century energy transition took decades. It wasn’t a revolution so much as a steady shift. By the end of that century, global energy supply had doubled and half of it was from coal.

When they were first invented in 1712, steam engines converted just 2% of coal into useful energy. Almost 150 years later they were still highly inefficient at just 15%. (Petrol-powered cars still waste about 66% of the energy in their fuel).

Even so, steam sped up early proto-industries such as textiles, print production and traditional manufacturing.

But the engines did not free us from the yoke. In fact, early coal mining actually increased demand for human labour. Boys as young as six worked at lighter tasks. Conditions were generally horrific. Alongside human muscle was animal strength. Coal was often raised from pits by draft horses.

In 1850s New England, steam was three times more expensive than water flows powering textile mills. Vaclav Smil has shown industrial waterwheels and turbines “competed successfully with steam engines for decades”. The energy of flowing water was free. Digging up coal was labor-intensive.

Why did steam win? Human ecologist Andreas Malm argues what really drove the shift to steam-powered mills was capital. Locating steam engines in urban centres made it easier to concentrate and control workers, as well as overcoming worker walk-outs and machine breaking.

The question of who does the work is often overlooked. When energy historians refer vaguely to human muscle, we should ask: whose muscles? Was the work done by slaves or forced labourers?

Even in the current energy transition there can be gross disparities between employer and worker. As heat intensifies, some employers are giving ice vests to their migrant workers so they can keep working. That’s reminiscent of coal shovelers in the furnace-like stokeholes of steam ships being immersed in ice-baths on collapse, as historian On Barak has shown.

What does this mean for us?

As Vaclav Smil points out, “every transition to a new energy supply has to be powered by the intensive deployment of existing energies and prime movers”. In fact, Smil argues the idea of the “industrial revolution” is misleading. It was not sudden. Rather, it was “gradual, often uneven”.

History may seem like it unfolds neatly. But it doesn’t at all. In earlier transitions, we see overlaps. Hesitation. Sometimes, more intense use of earlier energy sources. They start as highly localised shifts, depending on available resources, before new technologies spreads along trade routes. Ultimately market forces have driven – or hindered – adoption.

Time is short. But on the plus side, there are market forces now driving the shift to clean energy. Once solar panels and wind turbines are built, sunlight and wind are free. It is the resistance of the old guard – fossil fuel corporations – that is holding us back.

Liz Conor, ARC Future Fellow, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reuters says 3 officials told it that there was also a proposal to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 60% by 2035, but that it was shot down by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and India. These are among the four dirtiest countries in the world with regard to carbon pollution, and two of them, Russia and Saudi Arabia, depend on hydrocarbons for much of their gross domestic product.

General goals such as cutting back on coal are useless without specifics.

China, the world’s largest user of coal, says it won’t even stop building new coal plants until 2030 and it isn’t trying to become carbon neutral until 2060. Some 55% of all the coal consumed in the world is consumed by China. The only good thing you can say is that coal use has somewhat leveled off since 2010, as gigawatts of solar and wind were added to the Chinese grid:

H/t Statista.

India’s coal use was up 4% in 2022 over 2021, and its use tripled from 1998 to 2022. That’s not really what you would call, like, cutting back. But if coal use grew more slowly in 2022 than some previous years, that would be enough to let India say it was cutting back.

So the summit statement is meaningless.

As for tripling renewables, that is a low bar for some of these countries. Saudi Arabia appears only to have about 2 gigawatts of renewable energy, though its goal was 25 gigs by 2023. It has done almost nothing compared to a poor country like Morocco, which now gets some 40% of its electricity from renewables. So having 6 gigawatts of renewables by 2030 would be relatively easy for the Kingdom to accomplish, though it isn’t clear that they will do even that.

Russia likewise has almost no renewable energy and only hopes that wind and solar make up 10% of its grid by 2040. So it is easy for Moscow to pledge to do more, since it has done so little, as with Riyadh.

In contrast, China seems on track to produce 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2025, a year and a half from now, and it will likely reach this milestone 5 years early, since that was the original goal for 2030. Already this year, renewable sources of energy are supplying 50.9% of the country’s electricity, i.e. more than half. It clearly doesn’t need to build any new coal plants at all, but seems dedicated to drawing out coal use as long as possible. It has been suggested to me that President Xi Jinping is afraid of the workers in the coal industry — some 3 million of them.

India is another coal disaster, with some 66 percent of its electricity now being generated that way. It could cut back to “only” 65% and still meet the terms of the vague summit communique. Still, India has increased its non-fossil fuel power capacity by 400% in the past 8 years (counting big hydro and nuclear) and in some recent years (not this one) they have provided over 40% of the country’s electricity. I suppose it isn’t impossible that India could triple its non-fossil fuel power by a factor of 3 in the rest of this decade, given what it did the past 8 years. I mean, if India has a lot of anything, it is sunshine and wind.

So this is why the G20 shouldn’t be a thing. What could be more arbitrary than for countries to claim global influence based merely on their gross domestic product? It should be the United Nations taking these decisions, not the countries in thrall to or identical with Big Oil and Big Coal.

The reduction in fossil fuel use was primarily owing to the abandonment of coal, which plummeted by almost a quarter (-23%) compared to the same period in the previous year. In May, 2023, the 27 nations of the European Union used coal to generate only 10% of their electricity, a record low unparalleled in recent years.

The use of fossil gas was also down, by 13%.

In some countries, the retrenchment from coal and gas was even more dramatic, with a 20% reduction in 11 EU countries, and in five the fall was by 30% year over year — those were Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland

One of the reasons for less resort to coal and fossil gas to generate electricity was that over-all demand for electricity in the 27-nation bloc fell 5% compared to the previous year. That fall idled coal plants in particular. There was less demand because people were conserving energy, especially last winter, when the Russian war on Ukraine had driven up energy prices substantially, so people cut back to avoid sky-high bills. There were also government directives for people to be more frugal with electricity use during the crisis.

Although many analysts had predicted that the Ukraine War’s impact on high energy prices would cause a spike in the use of coal and gas, no such spike materialized. People didn’t fire up coal plants to meet the challenge. Rather, they cut back their electricity use on the one hand and put up a lot of solar and wind plants on the other.

For instance, solar electricity generation in the first six months of this year increased by 13% compared to the same period in 2022.

Wind generation increased by 5%.

Some countries did especially well with renewables, with record amounts of power from these sources being generated in the first half of this year. Greece and Romania for the first time ever obtained over half of their electricity from renewables. Denmark and Portugal came in at 75% renewables-based electricity.

The Ember team remarks that these signs point to substantial progress in decarbonizing Europe’s grid. This progress needs to be accelerated substantially, however, if the world is to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees C. (2.7 degrees F.) above the pre-industrial norm. Climate scientists fear that if we heat up the earth more than that, there is a danger that some climate systems will go chaotic, with dire implications for civilization. For instance, imagine a string of really destructive hurricanes hitting the same areas over and over again, leveling everything. How would those areas come back from such a repeated pummeling. Puerto Rico has had trouble coming back from just two such hurricanes, but what if it had been five or six?

So everyone should hurry up and install as many solar panels and wind turbines as we possibly can as soon as we possibly can. As the European statistics show, these energy sources are anyway cheaper than coal or gas, even if the health and climate impact of the latter is not taken into account.

The WMO quotes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who pointed out that already in July we have seen the three hottest days on record, and the highest ocean temperatures ever recorded for this time of year.

The extreme heat is caused by human beings burning coal, fossil gas and gasoline, on top of which we have an El Nino phenomenon this year. Although some of the extremes we are seeing may not be as bad next year when the El Nino declines, the underlying heating of the planet will continue to intensify rapidly as long as we massively pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and methane.

The extreme heat has contributed to nearly 1,000 active forest fires in Canada, about 600 of which are considered to be out of control. Four times more acreage is on fire this year than is usual, consuming 3 percent of Canada’s territory.

Likewise, Greece experienced a heat wave made 50 times more likely by human-caused climate change, which in turn led to the outbreak of wildfires on the island of Rhodes, necessitating the evacuation of 17,000 tourists as the fires marched toward tourist hotels. Fires also broke out near the capital, Athens. Humans’ heat-trapping gases have raised the average temperature of the earth 1.2 degrees C. since the Industrial Revolution, raising the chances of such catastrophes astronomically.

On July 6, the mean surface temperature of the earth reached 17.08°C) (62.744°F).

Every single day in July after the 3rd has been hotter than the previous record set on August 13, 2016, of 16.80°C (62.24°F). WMO provides this chart:

Figure S1. Ranking of the top 30 warmest days in the ERA5 dataset based on globally averaged surface air temperature.

The first puny 9 little tabs are from 2016 and 2022, previous heat record-setters. All the rest are from this July, and since they only go up to the 23rd it is likely that when the chart is updated early next week, July 2023 will have crowded out all the other dates.

The mean temperature of the ocean surface has also rivaled the hottest temperature ever recorded for much of the month. Some of the heat in the Atlantic comes from fewer particles blowing over it from the Sahara than usual, and since the wind-borne sand and dust reflect sunlight, they usually cool the ocean a bit. In their absence, and given the El Nino effect from the South Pacific, temperatures have been high.

The water off Key Largo, Florida, hit 101.19 °F. last Monday, a record-breaker and just about the recommended temperature for a hot tub. Coral reefs, which play an important role in the undersea ecology, affording shelter to fish from predators and places to lay eggs, have been bleaching out, indicating that they are dying from the heat. Some have just dropped dead all of a sudden, rather than bleaching and then slowly dying.

If you prefer dry heat, Phoenix, AZ, has had thirty straight days of temperatures over 110 degrees F. This run breaks a record from 1974. Saturday saw the 6th day in a row with highs of at least 115 degrees F.

The dangers of this kind of heat, which will become more and more common in coming years, include heat stroke, which will kill ever more people.

Scientists have discovered that if we cease spewing carbon pollution, the rise in temperatures will cease immediately. In order to avoid a chaotic climate, we must reach zero carbon by 2050. We only have 27 years to completely redo the world’s electricity production and delivery systems, completely redo transportation, and completely redo urban building and rural agriculture. At least now more people understand the dangers of global boiling, though we need real urgency to make our politicians act. Only governments can respond to this crisis at the necessary scale. Still, we individuals can contribute, as Australians have shown by putting up solar panels on their roofs. And GM has just announced that it will keep the Bolt, the most affordable EV in the US market, in production.

In Turkey, when forests are not on fire, they are being destroyed by greedy men in suits

Protests to save Akbelen forest continue despite the violence

Written byArzu Geybullayeva

( Globalvoices.org) – Since 2019, the local residents of İkizköy village in Turkey’s southwestern province of Muğla have been trying to prevent deforestation in the Akbelen forest, which is situated near their village. But in Turkey, the preservation of green spaces has never been a priority for the ruling Justice and Development Party, which has no sound environmental policy.

The crackdown in 2013 against a group of environmentalists trying to prevent the destruction of Gezi Park was a defining moment for the ruling government, marking the AKP’s anti-environmental turn. Since then, scores of protests have erupted across Turkey, often staged and organized by local residents trying to protect the remaining green spaces and prevent the expansion of power plants. But with a ruling government that lacks any green vision, prioritizes the economy at the expense of the environment, and allows greedy companies to fill in their coffers at the expense of regular citizens, it is a struggle that is here to stay. The deforestation in the Akbelen forest that began on July 24 is a brazen example of this. Meanwhile, the companies behind the forest destruction have refused to comply with a court order that suspended the project in the first place.

Business interests

Out of 35 coal-fired power plants, there are three power plants operating in Muğla — Yatağan (in operation since 1982), Yeniköy (in operation since 1986), and Kemerköy (in operation since 1993). All three were privatized in 2014. Yeniköy and Kemerköy were purchased by YK Energy, a joint company set up by Limak Holding and İÇTAŞ Enerji. Both Limak and İÇTAŞ are known for their ties to the ruling government.

Since taking over plant management, the companies have done little to address the devastating health and environmental implications of the plants. Local residents have documented these effects extensively in local and international reports. These implications also did not stop the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources from launching a new regulation in March 2022 that open the natural olive groves in the area to development, and green-lights mining activities for the power plants.

The same month, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change made amendments, for a fourth time, to a regulation governing protected natural areas (national parks, nature parks, environmentally protected zones, and wetlands), opening these areas for mining and construction. These decisions were announced amid an ongoing court case filed by the local residents of İkizköy village. Dismissive of the protests by the local residents, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry handed over some 740 decares (740,000 square meters) of forest land to YK Energy to mine for lignite in April 2021.

Screenshot from a documentary film about the struggle of the local people to prevent destruction of the Akbelen forest.

According to reporting by a local online news platform Bianet, the companies moved into the forest area on July 24, having obtained the necessary permissions to open 740 decares of land for cutting. The companies claim the lignite underneath the forest area will fuel the power plants of Yeniköy and Kemerköy, which use coal to generate just one percent of the consumed electricity in the country.

The protesters are now calling on the relevant authorities to scratch that permission. In a statement signed by 16 environmental non-governmental organizations, the signatories said, “Deforestation should not be allowed for the continuity of thermal power plants, which cause premature deaths and are one of the main causes of the climate crisis. Fighting the climate crisis is possible by working with nature, not against it. We cannot sacrifice forests, which account for more than half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions we have caused in the last 10 years, for the sake of coal power plants that threaten natural areas, climate, and the lives of all living things.”

Consequences of environmental degradation

In recent years, Turkey has been hit by a series of natural disasters and environmental crises such as drought, wildfires, floods, and mudslides, and as recently as February 2023, a devastating earthquake. As summer heat reaches new highs, reports of forest fires hitting Turkey have been making the headlines. Experts say while climate change or excessive weather conditions may have had a role to play, these disasters and crises were also an outcome of poor planning and incorrect decisions made at the government level.

According to the Climate Transparency Turkey report, Turkey continues to generate more than 30 percent of its electricity through coal. The report also adds, “Despite the decrease in coal-powered generation in 2021–2022, Turkey has no intention to phase out coal and has approximately 20.4 GW of new coal capacity in the pipeline, placing it sixth globally. In June 2022, the first block of the China-financed 1.3 GW coal power plant opened in Hunutlu. While the coal capacity pipeline decreased by 63 percent in comparison to 2020, to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius or achieve Turkey’s goal of net zero emissions by 2053, no new coal power plants should be built.”

Turkey only ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius, in October 2021, five years after signing the agreement. At the time, Turkey also announced its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2053.

According to Climate Action Tracker, the country’s efforts to reach the Paris Accord’s goals are “critically insufficient.” And ratifying the Paris Agreement was not done with pure intentions. The decision came shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received guarantees of financial support from France, Germany, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, according to reports by Politico and Reuters. Previously, Ankara said the reason it had not signed the agreement was because of unfair classification. Turkey was ranked as an Annex I group country — a “developed” or “industrialized” country — which prevented it from seeking funding, unlike nations ranked as “developing.”

Back at the Akbelen forests, pleas for help from residents and demands to stop the destruction of the forest continued into their fourth day. One resident speaking to a Turkish newspaper Evrensel, pleaded, “If this place goes, everywhere will burn, Turkey will burn. Let’s not cut down our pines and forests.” Another resident said, “I came here from a village that was destroyed for coal before, and now they are kicking me out from here too. Aren’t we the people of this country? Soldiers are preventing us. Help us.” Reports and footage of local police using force, pepper spray, tear gas, and water canons have been circulating online, elevating the gravity of the situation in the area:

There is both slaughter and cruelty in Akbelen. The gendarmerie once again tear gassed the people of Ikizköy, who were trying to enter #AkbelenOrmanı together with the deputies from the Green Left Party and CHP. Three people were detained under torture.

YK Energy, set up by LİMAK and İÇTAŞ, started cutting in Akbelen Forest to supply coal for the thermal power plant. The gendarmerie intervened harshly against those who wanted to prevent the slaughter that had been going on for a few days.

Journalists covering the events were also targeted:

I got pepper sprayed directly into my eyes, as gendarmerie prevented me from filming.

At least two reporters were fined, while several residents were reportedly detained. There have also been reports of local police preventing people from accessing the area and setting up barricades.

Written byArzu Geybullayeva

Via Globalvoices.org

Depending on how cold the winters are, the IEA expects renewable sources of energy to outstrip coal in 2024, and forever thereafter. It calls this change “structural.” That is, it isn’t a blip or something that could easily be reversed. We are entering a world where people will routinely get more electricity from wind, solar, water and battery than from dirty coal. While Asia is still somewhat wedded to coal and China is even still building new coal-fired power plants, this slight increase in use will be more than offset by the rapidly dwindling numbers of coal-fired plants in the US and Europe. So IEA expects coal use to decline over the next couple of years, and that renewables will go on growing from strength to strength.

China and India account for 80% of all planned coal plants, and as renewables fall in price and the true cost of coal in the form of global boiling becomes ever more apparent, both may scale back coal projects. In fact, India is considering halting all new coal plant planning except for those facilities already committed to. Right now, coal accounts for about a third of global power generation, but it is on a steep path to decline.

Global electricity demand growth is muted in 2023, but may take off again next year. IEA expects all extra electricity demand to be met by renewables this year and next.

And next year, for the very first time fully 33% of global power will be generated by renewables. And coal generation will fall below that benchmark, heading toward zero by 2050 (if we know what is good for us).

The world has made incredible progress on the renewables front in the past decade, as this IEA chart demonstrates:

IEA, Renewable electricity generation by technology, 2010-2025, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/renewable-electricity-generation-by-technology-2010-2025, IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Carbon dioxide pollution from burning coal and fossil gas are expected to fall this year and next. If this expectation is met, it could signal that our CO2 emissions are leveling off in preparation for declining. If you look at the period 2019-2024, the report says, fossil fuel use will have fallen in 4 out of the 6 years. The authors expect coal and gas will just go on declining from here on in, even in years when demand for electricity increases. The extra demand will be met by renewables.

There are some paradoxes in the current situation to which they attend.

Because of extensive use by Australians of roof-top solar along with utility-scale solar, the price of electricity fell below zero 20% of the time in 2022, compared to 1% of the time in the Netherlands and Germany. For the price to fall below zero means that there is not enough storage capacity to smooth out the ups and downs of production, and states need to up their megabattery game substantially.

Another problem is that global heating is causing people to run air conditioners more. But if they run their ACs off coal and fossil gas, they are putting more heat-trapping CO2 into the atmosphere, which will heat up the earth more, so that they’ll have to turn up the AC more, and on and on in a vicious cycle. Obviously, everybody should be running their AC off renewable electricity, and probably this ideal can only be attained with government investment. Still, individuals can pitch in. In most parts of the US, e.g., if a homeowner is going to be in their house for 10 years or more, they will save money by putting up rooftop solar panels. If they drive an EV and fuel it from the panels that will speed the pay-back time even more. The panels can pay for themselves in as little as 6 years.

Finally, global heating causes drought as well as faster evaporation from bodies of water, so one of the three biggest sources of renewable power, hydro, is actually in danger of declining. Globally, hydropower has dropped from 38% to 36% since 1990. Governments should plan on continued decreases in hydropower, ensuring that it is replaced by wind and solar, not by fossil fuels.

This step is a huge about-face for India, and it matters. Some 73% of Indian energy still comes from coal, and it is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. It doesn’t hope to reach zero carbon until 2070, too late to save the earth from the worst consequences of climate change. Lots of coal plants were already in the pipeline before this freeze, and they will likely be built.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a goal of installing 365 gigawatts of solar by 2031-32. He also wants Indians to manufacture their own panels, and slapped a 40% import tax on Chinese solar panels last year. The Indian panel manufacturers, however, have not actually been able to keep up with demand, so the government has decided to cut the tariff in half to 20%, in good news for the industry. India can annually manufacture panels able to generate 32 gigawatts of power, but Indian industry is demanding 52 GW each year.

The government would like to install that 52 GW a year of renewable energy, but recently has only been able to put in about 17 GW a year. If India is to reach its climate goals, it will have to get closer to 50 gigs per annum.

Still, India’s solar PV capacity by 2027 is projected to be higher than that of coal, and indeed to be the highest in the world, involving the installation of 1500 new gigawatts.

India, a country of 1.4 billion people, is now the world’s most populous, having edged out China. It has a Gross National Product of around $3.3 billion, making it the world’s fifth-largest economy, just behind Germany. Of course a lot of people are desperately poor and its per capita GDP is low. There is, however, a large middle class of some 100 million people in India who essentially have a European standard of living in purchasing power parity.

Up until the last decade, 300 million Indians still lived in a medieval world without electricity. The Hindu nationalist government of Modi is popular in part because it has brought services like electricity to the entire country. Electrifying the whole country, however, creates enormous demand for power plants, and India is rich in inexpensive coal and is tempted to use it.

What India’s government may slowly be discovering, however, is that coal is expensive. It is objectively expensive compared to solar power in India, and it causes global heating, which is hitting India particularly hard, with unbearable heat waves this spring.

The decision to concentrate on expanding battery power over the next five years suggests that India is generating a lot of energy from sources such as solar that is being lost because of lack of storage. New Delhi has decided to pick this low-hanging fruit, and it is very good news.

Hint: rationing is a better approach than markets.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The burning of fossil fuels—oil, coal, natural gas—is responsible for nearly 90 percent of global carbon emissions. Despite almost-universal recognition of the need to reduce the use of those fossil fuels, the industrialized world is having the hardest time breaking its addiction. The economic rebound from the COVID-19 shutdowns generated the largest ever increase in global emissions from fossil fuels in 2021—around 2 billion tons. The increase in 2022 was considerably more modest—thanks to a surge in renewable energy investments—but it was an increase nonetheless. Meanwhile, subsidies for fossil fuel consumption rose to a record $1 trillion last year.

The prevailing approach to reducing dependency on fossil fuels has been price-based—either by way of a carbon tax or some form of emissions trading scheme. Around two dozen countries levy carbon taxes: establishing a price for carbon and making emitters pay that price per unit of carbon consumed. Meanwhile, under the various “cap-and-trade” systems in place in the European Union and other places, a “cap” on emissions is established through the issuance of permits. But industries can exceed their “cap” by simply paying a penalty, while those that don’t use the full value of their permit can effectively sell their allowance to others.

One problem with the carbon tax is that the price of carbon has traditionally been set too low, so that producers and consumers do not feel the economic push to abandon fossil fuels. The problem with the cap-and-trade mechanism is that it has generally moved carbon emissions around rather than substantially reduce them.

“As I’ve explored with colleagues in peer-reviewed work in the past, ‘cap-and-trade’ almost invariably contains no meaningful cap,” explains Shaun Chamberlin, an author and activist who has advised the UK government on carbon rationing and was involved with the Transition Towns and Extinction Rebellion movements from the outset. “It always has some form of safety valve mechanism, which basically means that if the price gets out of hand, the cap is ignored.”

Accordingly, the market has failed to guide the global economy to a fossil-fuel-free future in the time frame necessitated by rising temperatures and other effects of climate change. Scientists now estimate that the world will pass the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels in the first half of the 2030s. Market-based approaches tend to reinforce the status quo rather than transform the structures that have created the problem in the first place.

By contrast, in crises characterized by scarcity, one common solution has been to ration valuable resources. During wartime, for instance, many commodities have been rationed, from food to energy. During natural disasters, water might be rationed. Such systems introduce a measure of equity to prevent the rich and the powerful from simply buying up the scarce items and the unscrupulous from engaging in price-gouging to make quick profits. In such circumstances the cap on consumption is obvious since more food, energy, or water is simply not available.

With fossil fuels, the urgency is not around scarcity—there’s still a lot of oil, natural gas, and coal under the ground and ocean (though it’s not limitless). Rather, the international community must act quickly because of the collective harm that fossil fuels produce. As such, the various plans put forward to ration fossil fuel use are not temporary measures that elapse when surpluses return. Rather, “the cap-and-ration” approach establishes a cap that declines over time to eliminate dependency “in a way that ensures sufficiency, equity, and justice for all,” observes Stan Cox, a research fellow in ecosphere studies at the Land Institute. “These policies would include, at a minimum, careful allocation of energy among economic sectors and fair-share rationing for consumers.”

Using rationing to reduce fossil fuel use—especially in the Global North—has already come close to political reality. The UK government commissioned a feasibility study of such a rationing system, Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), which reported positive findings in 2008, and a significant number of MPs supported the implementation of a TEQs system in 2011. The idea also attracted interest from the European Commission in 2018, because it offered the means to actually implement and achieve the carbon capping targets set by the politicians.

Since these caps are designed at a national level—based on internationally agreed-upon carbon reduction targets like those of the Paris agreement—they are subject to democratic decision-making. But they don’t necessarily reflect global justice.

“It doesn’t take into account the existing climate debt,” points out Ivonne Yanez, an Ecuadorian environmentalist and founder member of Acción Ecológica and Oilwatch international. “The richer countries have historically ‘occupied’ the atmosphere with their emissions. So, these carbon budgets are calculated without regard to this historic injustice.”

Via Pixabay.

In a March 21 session sponsored by Global Just Transition, Chamberlin, Cox, and Yanez discussed the value of rationing fossil fuels as a method to address the worsening climate crisis.

Beyond Carbon Pricing

The United Kingdom has a carbon budget that is legally binding—at least theoretically— and that restricts the amount of carbon emissions the country as a whole can emit over each five-year period. It was the first country to enact such a measure.

“As our government never tires of telling us, here in the UK we’ve been ‘leading the world in carbon budgets since 2010,’” Shaun Chamberlin notes. “Our Climate Change Act said we would reduce emissions in the UK by 80 percent by 2050. What we don’t have—and don’t look to have anytime soon—is any reasonable plan for actually delivering on these targets. Instead, we have a Climate Change Committee that regularly puts out reports saying, ‘Actually, we’re nowhere near delivering on what the government promised in its legally binding targets.’”

According to its targets, the UK is supposed to cut its carbon emissions by 68 per cent by 2030 (relative to 1990 levels) in order to reach net zero by 2050. But the government has admitted that even in the best of circumstances—should all projected cuts be made and the latest carbon-capture technology actually work—the UK will still only hit 92 percent of its 2030 goal. In other words, their strategy based on carbon pricing continues to fail.

“There’s been such a focus, and rightly so, on agreeing to globally appropriate carbon budgets that are sufficiently steep to address the problem of climate change, but also not so demanding that that they destroy economies and lives,” Chamberlin explains. “But there’s been so little focus on the parallel question of how we actually reduce Global North emissions by 90 percent in 20 years, or whatever we consider to be radical emissions reductions.”

The plan the UK almost adopted more than a decade ago—Tradable Energy Quotas or TEQs—would have taken a very different approach. “TEQs emerged from a different paradigm to the whole carbon pricing approach,” Chamberlin explains. “There’s this impossible tension built into carbon pricing. We need to make carbon sufficiently expensive that it gets driven out of the economy. But at the same time, we need to keep energy affordable.”

According to the International Energy Agency, however, about 80 percent of global energy still comes from fossil fuels, a level that has remained consistent for decades. “So, if our energy is so highly carbonized, it becomes—unsurprisingly—impossibly difficult to raise the carbon price without raising the energy price,” Chamberlin points out. The carbon pricing approach has not been able to square this circle.

“What TEQs would do is turn that on its head,” he continues. “By removing any need to raise carbon prices, it would unify everybody in common purpose around genuinely shared and actually compatible goals—minimizing the destabilization of our climate while striving to keep energy services available and affordable. And it would make the economy exist within a carbon budget, rather than the other way around.”

TEQs Explained

The TEQs system, established by economist and cultural historian David Fleming in 1996, is a national-level system for capping and then reducing the fossil fuel-based energy consumption of all energy users—individual, institutional, and corporate.

“It’s a national system for implementing national carbon commitments agreed by the government of that country,” Chamberlin explains. “All individuals within that country receive an unconditional, equal, and free entitlement of what are called TEQs units, which you might think of as electronic ration coupons. To purchase any fuel or energy anywhere in the economy, these units have to be surrendered alongside the usual payment of money. So, you go to the gas station, you pay in cash or by credit card, and you also surrender some of these TEQs units.”

He continues, “Your entitlement will be an equal proportion of the national carbon budget. If you use less than that, if you are a below-average energy user, then you’ll have some spare left from your entitlement which you receive each week, and you can sell that spare back to the issuer. So, those who are energy-thrifty get a financial benefit from using less. Those who want to use more than their entitlement can buy those spare units, but of course they’re then effectively paying the more energy-thrifty people for the benefit of doing so.”

The system is administered by a registrar that issues the quotas. “In the UK, around 40 percent of emissions come from individuals and households, and around 60 percent of emissions come from industry and companies and non-household energy users,” Chamberlin says. “In line with those proportions, 40 percent of the budget goes to individuals while 60 percent goes via an auction to all other users. Only individuals and households get the free TEQ units; all other energy users need to purchase the units they need, which sets a single national price. The only place that anybody can get their TEQ units is from the registrar. There’s no trading between you and your neighbor directly. If you want to sell some units, you sell them to the registrar. If they want to buy some units, they buy them from the registrar.”

Since TEQs units are necessary for all energy use, and are only issued in line with the national carbon cap, the national carbon cap can’t be exceeded. “As such, carbon pricing is unnecessary—and without that artificial need to raise the price of energy, everyone’s focus can turn to keeping energy as affordable as possible and life as good as possible under the cap,” he continues.

The other key part of the system is a rating system. “The government will assess each energy retailer in the country for the carbon intensity of its fuel,” Chamberlin explains. “For example, if one oil company has a more carbon-efficient refining process than another, their petrol will require fewer TEQs units from the consumer at the point of purchase. This creates an incentive all the way through the economy for lower carbon processes. And of course, relative to any oil producer, renewable energy is going to require vastly fewer TEQs units. Not none, because there is still fossil fuel used in the production of wind turbines or solar panels, but vastly fewer.”

And because the carbon-intensity of energy/fuels is assessed and rated where they enter the economy, there is no need for impossibly complex lifecycle analysis of products. “We don’t need to figure out how much carbon went into every bag of crisps,” Chamberlin continues. “There’s no need to measure the emissions that come out of every chimney or every car exhaust pipe. Instead, the rating system applies upstream, and people engage with it downstream.”

Equity is also built into the system. “At any point, people can go to the registrar to purchase more TEQs units if they feel that they need them, and at any point people can sell,” Chamberlin adds.  “Because the number of units issued into the economy is fixed by the carbon budget, the price at any given time is determined by the demand. If lots of people are really struggling to live under the carbon budget, there are going to be lots of people trying to buy TEQs units, which will drive the price up. This creates a very clear message to the whole society that it’s not adapting very well to the budget, which creates a common purpose and real political momentum behind decarbonizing the economy and bringing that price down for everyone. Equally, if the price is dropping, just about everybody’s going to welcome that. Everybody has access to units at the same price at any time. The national price fluctuates in line with national demand. And buying and selling is very straightforward, like topping up a mobile phone.”

“The system we have today is essentially rationing by wealth,” he notes. “There’s only so much energy available and the richest get it. TEQs would move us from this system in which you burn what you can afford, to a system which fairly shares out what we can collectively afford to burn, while facilitating the radical reductions that an understanding of climate science demands.”

TEQs would also generate money through the auctioning of the units to non-household energy users such as industries, which is then used to subsidize consumers who are hardest hit by the price of fuel or to invest in difficult-to-fund infrastructure projects like public transportation.

Gas stations and electricity generators would surrender their TEQs when they purchase from wholesalers. “When they buy their fuel from suppliers or from the drillers or the extractors or the importers, they have to surrender units,” Chamberlin continues. “No matter whether that’s all integrated into one company or whether it’s 20 companies along the line, eventually those units end up with the people who are bringing the energy into the economy, whether they’re extracting it within the national borders or importing it. In order to have their license to operate, they have to surrender those units back to the registrar. So, you have a circular system.”

Chamberlin enumerates the benefits of the system. “It doesn’t take money from people in the way taxation does, so it’s actually improving their situation,” he says. “It benefits the poorer in society, because they tend to use less energy, but also provides assured entitlements to energy for all. It addresses fuel scarcity as well as guaranteeing emissions reductions. It’s not cumbersome or difficult for ordinary people to deal with, but does actively integrate into our daily lives the importance of reducing energy usage. And it provides a new paradigm of leadership for the nation that allows us to actually achieve our climate change targets, by making the economy exist under a carbon cap rather than the other way around.”

Approaching Implementation

The UK first funded research into the TEQs system in 2006. Two years later, the government enacted the Climate Change Act, and the government launched a full feasibility study into TEQs. The conclusion, however, was that the TEQs system was “ahead of its time.”

“The government decided instead to focus on what it called international abatement,” Chamberlin laments. “In other words, rather than actually reducing UK emissions, the government intended to pay other countries to reduce them on its behalf, because that was more economically efficient. That same year, 2008, the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, which is the official body that reviews Parliament’s proceedings, was incredibly critical of this position, saying that the government should be looking at this much more urgently and pushing forward toward implementation.”

Three years later, an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change published a report on TEQs that garnered international media coverage, received the endorsements of a number of prominent people, “and again was essentially ignored by the government,” Chamberlin recalls. In 2015, Chamberlin teamed up with two academics to publish a peer-reviewed paper on TEQs in the journal Carbon Management. That year, and again in 2018, the European Commission took up the issue but failed to implement the system.

His experience of the details behind these headlines has made Chamberlin somewhat wary. “If we do again get TEQs anywhere close to political implementation, we’re going to again face a determination to undermine it,” he says. “Let’s imagine a global campaign for TEQs over the next five years that creates irresistible political momentum. There would come a point at which the people within some government department or corporate think tank would say, ‘Yeah, that’s fine but we just need to put in this little safety valve to make sure that prices don’t get too high.’ And the significance of that—essentially changing it back into yet another carbon-pricing policy—will be something that only us policy-wonks will understand. The danger here is that something implemented under the name of TEQs or rationing will not actually be either, and they’ll be able to channel all of that political momentum into something that just maintains the status quo. So, for me that’s a central challenge—how can we defend the core facets of the system as it gets closer to political reality?”

Who Makes the Decisions?

Despite many discussions of clean transitions and dramatic cuts in carbon emissions, the Global North remains a heavy consumer of fossil fuels. The United States, for instance, is the leading consumer of oil and natural gas in the world. (China and India, however, are the leading consumers of coal.)

These consumption rates have not only kept carbon emissions high but have shaped the conversation to focus on carbon budgets—how much is still feasible to emit—rather than simply slashing extraction and consumption as quickly as is feasible. TEQs could be put to work in support of either aim but, as Chamberlin points out, “TEQs offers no help with political agreement on how rapidly nations should cut fossil fuel use—rather it offers the means to make it possible to achieve more radical and rapid energy use reductions in the Global North, when or if that aim is deemed politically acceptable.”

Ivonne Yanez works for Acción Ecológica in Ecuador, which has “worked on climate change for more than 20 years,” she points out. “Also, for more than 20 years, we have supported the idea of leaving fossil fuels in the ground. This is the most important premise that we have to take into account in defining any policy regarding carbon dioxide reductions, regarding energy, or any energy transition or transformation.”

Chamberlin agrees: “Absolutely the priority should be to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Then, the question becomes, how do we get that to happen? One of the things we need to do is for people in the Global North to learn to live without using as much energy as they do, which is where TEQs comes in.”

Yanez points out that carbon budgets are established by national governments. The budgets that count, in terms of having an impact on oil and gas production and consumption, are those of Global North countries. These are the same countries that are responsible for fully half of global emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution. “So, when a commission establishes the UK carbon budget, is it taking into account the current consumption of energy in the country or the 50 less percent energy that the UK should be consuming according to a fair calculation of climate justice?” she asks.

“I agree that the idea of a carbon budget is itself problematic,” Chamberlin replies. “To my point of view, there is no acceptable carbon budget left to burn. We’re already at a point where the climate has been destabilized and is having profoundly undesirable effects. We’re torn between the physical reality and the political reality: if I could click my fingers and transform both of those, I would. But the reason why countries aren’t willing to say, ‘Yes, we’ll just stop emitting carbon tomorrow’ is because their whole economy is dependent on the fuel that contains that carbon. And hence we’ve got this huge and very dysfunctional UN process of countries trying to negotiate among themselves over what would be an appropriate carbon budget.”

Ensuring Equity

Fossil fuels are quite cheap to use—because governments use subsidies to keep prices low for consumers and because the environmental costs of extraction and use are not factored into the price tag. This means that an increase in fuel prices disproportionately affects the consumers who can least afford to buy solar panels or switch to an electric vehicle. It also means that increasing the price of gas is politically unpopular.

“TEQs and other cap-and-ration systems have solid potential to gain broad political acceptance,” Stan Cox says. “As long as it’s clear that the majority in society under these systems would have guaranteed access to affordable energy to meet their needs and with greater economic security than they may even have today.”

Cox and his colleague Larry Edwards, an engineer and environmental consultant, have developed a system similar to TEQs that they call “Cap and Adapt.” The difference is that the caps and the rations are measured in terms of barrels of oil, cubic meters of gas, and tons of coal, rather than carbon units.

The rationing in these systems, Cox explains, doesn’t put the burden of emission reductions on individuals in households by limiting their consumption. Rather, it’s the declining cap that ensures the reductions in total emissions. “Such a straight-ahead rationing program is meant to ensure that everyone has enough and that access is equitable,” he says. “In these systems, rationing is not the bully, rationing is your friend. It’s something to make society fairer and ensure sufficiency.”

Such systems would ideally dovetail with “a comprehensive industrial policy that directs energy and other resources toward the production of essential goods and services and away from wasteful and unnecessary production,” he adds. “Such policies, for example, could divert resources away from military production and toward development of green infrastructure and retrofitting buildings. Or away from aircraft and private vehicles and toward public transportation. Or away from the construction of McMansions toward affordable, energy-efficient, durable housing. Or from the production of feed grain for cattle and toward grains and legumes for food. Or, overall, away from luxury goods and towards basic necessities.”

Cox also proposes a more comprehensive approach that goes beyond price controls and rationing: “a system of universal basic services that guarantees every household sufficient access to essential goods and services, including such things as public water and energy supplies, medical services, public education, and transportation, good quality food, affordable housing, green space, clean air, and public safety without repression.” He is quick to clarify. “I don’t mean that everything would be free. But there would be some guarantee that people, no matter what their income, would have access. Could all of this be feasible? Yes, by focusing energy supplies on essential goods and services rather than on wasteful, solely-for-profit production. It would also mean the sacrificing of growth for growth’s sake.”

Movements in the Global South have also been addressing the problem of unrestrained growth. Yanez points out that the term “degrowth” has little resonance “because how can we ask the indigenous people to degrow? I’d rather talk about post-growth or this idea of living well: buen vivir in Spanish or sumac kawsay in Quechua.”

“The degrowth movement is centered mainly in Europe,” Cox concedes, “but it has been very valuable in envisioning what a degrowth or postgrowth society would look like, and pointing out the differences between economic growth and the growth of human well-being. The movement purposely has not gotten into mechanisms to achieve degrowth. But I think it’s important for society to see that we have to choose between growth or survival, and that if we do what’s necessary for survival, we won’t have growth. We in the affluent societies would be better off with less, and in the meantime, there are going to be other solutions in non-affluent societies.”

Actions Together

Although a rationing system for fossil fuels has yet to be implemented by any national governments, several states have joined together to end their dependency on oil and gas. Led by Denmark and Costa Rica, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance members have pledged to end new exploration for oil and gas. Under the new leadership of Gustavo Petro, Colombia too wants to join their ranks, which is significant given the country’s economic dependency fossil fuel exports. In 2018, Ireland became the world’s first country to divest from fossil fuel funds.

The Pacific island nations of Tuvalu and Vanuatu, meanwhile, are leading an initiative at the UN level to pass a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty that would end the expansion of fossil fuel production, phase out existing fossil fuel infrastructure, and accelerate a just transition to clean energy.

There have also been many initiatives from below to reduce fossil fuel use. One path has been to stop extraction. “For decades, movements of indigenous peoples, campesinos, and fisherfolk have been fighting against climate change,” Ivonne Yanez points out. “And how? They do not talk about carbon emissions or reductions. They just want to stop oil, gas, and coal extraction. Here in Ecuador, for example, there are so many communities resisting oil extraction and being criminalized because of this.”

Yanez also notes that acting together means not only solidarity among peoples but establishing stronger links with the rest of nature. “It would be good to incorporate in the TEQs proposals and debate the point of view of non-humans, including the stones and the spirits,” she proposes.

Chamberlin strongly agrees on both points. “I myself have been arrested in trying to shut down fossil fuel extraction sites, and I was one of the first arrestees with Extinction Rebellion,” he relates. “TEQs is an attempt to translate some of the wisdom of restraint and absolute limits into the language of a sick empire. This is an attempt from within an omnicidal culture to limit some of the damage that it’s doing.”

He continues, “Ultimately, it’s not about the growth or degrowth of the market economy. It’s about getting ready for the moment when the system collapses under the weight of its own unsustainability. We have inherited a system that depends on growth; that growth will end by accident or by design, and soon. After this system fades into history, future systems will again be based on informal relationships between beings on the planet just like they always have been in the past before these few centuries of madness. The older cultures on our planet know how to live in that world and we should absolutely be listening to them more.”

“In the meantime, we would doubtless be wise to slash emissions as drastically as we can,” he concludes. “And it is surely beyond time to move from the endless debates over ‘fair’ carbon budgets to the actual work of reducing fossil fuel consumption in the Global North, in solidarity with the indigenous-led resistance in the Global South working to stop fossil fuel extraction. For this, cap-and-ration—whether TEQs or other closely-related proposals—appears the only policy paradigm suited to cut the paralyzing Gordian knot that carbon pricing has tied us into.”

Via Foreign Policy in Focus