The Climate Catastrophe and the Future of Work

Over the last several months, I've been on a learning binge about the climate crisis. I have read at least seven books (see below), reviewed the dense and devastating reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), interviewed various professors and subject matter experts (thank you to Paul Adler of USC Marshall, Jane Paul of Antioch College, Will McConnell of Woodbury University, Conchita Galdon of IE Business School, Nurit Katz of UCLA, Mick Dalyrmple of USC, and Carrie Norton of Green Business Base Camp. I am beyond concerned about the future -- I hope you are, too.

Books that I have read that have informed my thinking include Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (I actually wrote a review of it here), How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, Speed and Scale by John Doerr, Regeneration by Paul Hawken, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, How to Prepare for Climate Change by David Pogue, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, Falter by Bill McKibben.  

A Devastating Future Is Upon Us

While there are many important stories in the news today, every other issue pales in importance when compared with the climate catastrophe. We have already exceeded emissions that will limit the Earth to the 1.5 degree Centigrade that scientists have said where ecosystems and human systems can adjust and are careening towards truly devastating scenarios where billions of people are displaced (perhaps a third of humanity by 2070) because vast parts of the world become uninhabitable due to heat and rising sea levels. Vicious cycles of ecosystem collapse will become inevitable. And, yet, we keep burning greenhouse gases and adding more carbon to the atmosphere. I feel like the Netflix dark comedy Don't Look Up got it right -- we care more about celebrities and our inane political system than we do about saving our home.

Time to Mobilize?

I bought Al Gore's book Earth in the Balance in 1993 as I graduated from college. If we had listened then and begun to address the climate crisis then, or even in 2006 after he published An Inconvenient Truth, we could have created a much better future than the one that faces us today.

Today, we have doomed ourselves to a future which will have significant pain as ecosystems collapse and poor human societies who live near the equator are unable to adapt. However, if we choose to mobilize and restructure our societies to dramatically lower our carbon footprint (by about 5x our current level), then we can avoid the worst case scenarios where much of the planet becomes inhabitable over the next century.

This Isn't Optional

Although much of American and global leadership response to climate change has been to say nice words about sustainability and do little, we don't have a choice. The pain of inaction is already apparent in the form of wildfires, cyclones, hurricanes, extreme heat, and rising sea levels. Things will only get worse over time. Even though we have just experienced the warmest decade in recorded human history, we will never experience an earth as cool as the one we are now experiencing. Tragically, the ones who will experience the most pain will be those who live in the earth's tropical zones who have contributed very little to all of the greenhouse gas emissions that are currently in the atmosphere.

I am not so optimistic to think that democracies and societies (not to mention autocratic petro-states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela) will simply begin to heed scientists' advice after they have ignored the science for decades. But, the heating, disruption, and horrible consequences of climate change will continue to get worse every year. Business, finance, and some government leaders have begun to move in the right direction but we are still in the early part of a transition. What we really need is a simultaneous mobilization of every economic sector a la World War II in every country of the world to ratchet down our greenhouse gas emissions and implement mitigation strategies. Instead, we are more concerned about the loss of Russian oil and increasing gas prices. Just this week, the Biden Administration announced plans to lease public land for oil drilling.

Business Opportunities

As we enter a period of unprecedented environmental disruption and mass migrations from ecologically devastated regions of the world, such as Central and South America, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, this disruption will also create market opportunities. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock (the largest asset holder in the world), has said that the next 1,000 unicorns will be in GreenTech. John Doerr's book includes a roadmap for all of the sectors that need to change: energy, transportation, food and agriculture, industry, natural resource conservation, and politics. It is breathtaking in its scope.

When Will We Restructure Our Businesses, Lifestyles, and Political Economy?

The future is now obvious for anyone who dares to pick up a book on this subject. Despite the wide differences in perspectives from the authors I read, there is much unanimity on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the strategies to accomplish that. Yet, we are in a collective state of minimal action. Congress is deadlocked (captive to a senator from a coal state and a Republican party in denial of science). Most Democratic plans are incredibly modest and unlikely to have much impact. All of the global agreements to date have yet to lower greenhouse gas emissions from the previous year. Yet, again, we have no choice -- we will eventually do this sooner or later.

The real question to me is how much pain we will incur before we choose to change. Say goodbye to Florida, Louisiana, and much of the American South. LA may become more like Phoenix and the Sierra Nevada may lose much of its forest. Portland, Seattle, and British Columbia will have even more extreme heat waves. Time to build huge cement walls around Manhattan and Washington, DC. When will we choose to stop our madness?

We need to move to businesses that are carbon neutral, to societies that consume and travel far less, and to restore natural lands. We need to ride bicycles much more, make our communities smaller, and build supply chains that are far more local. Yet, none of this implies that we have to be poor or unhappy. But, we definitely need to start thinking differently.

This is the challenge of our time. Far too few people are engaged in the really meaningful work that we need to do if we are to maintain a civilization beyond 2100.

Hello? Am I the only one thinking this way?