My view has long been that if the world economy does not have enough energy resources, it will have to contract. The situation is analogous to a baker without enough ingredients to bake the size of cake he wants to make, or a chemist not being able to set up a full-scale model of a reaction. Perhaps, if a plan is made to make a smaller, differently arranged economy, it could still work.

The types of energy with inadequate supplies are both oil (particularly diesel and jet fuel) and coal. Diesel and jet fuel are especially used in long-distance transportation and in food production. Coal is particularly used in industrial activities. Without enough of these fuels, the world economy is forced to make fewer goods and services, and to make them closer to the end user. Somehow the economy needs to change.

My analysis indicates that our expectation of what goes wrong with inadequate energy supplies is wrong. Strangely enough, it is the finances of governments that start to fail, early on. They add too much debt to support investments that do not pay back well. They add too many programs that they cannot be supported for the long term. They become more willing to quarrel with other countries. Of course, no one will tell us what is really happening, partly because politicians themselves don’t understand.

In this post, I will try to explain some of the changes taking place as the economy begins to reorganize and deal with this inadequate energy supply situation.

[1] One energy limit we are hitting is with respect to “middle distillates.” This is the fraction of the oil supply that provides diesel and jet fuel.

Figure 1. Three different oil-related supply estimates, relative to world population. The top line shows oil production from the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute. The second line shows international crude oil production, as reported by the US EIA, with data through October 2024. The bottom line shows middle distillates (diesel and jet fuel) relative to world population, using data from the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute.

Each type of energy supply seems to be most suitable for particular uses. Middle distillates are the ones the economy uses for long distance transport of both humans and goods. Diesel is also heavily used in farming. If the world is short of middle distillates, we will have to figure out a way to make goods in a way that is closer to the end user. We may also need to use less modern farm equipment.

The top line on Figure 1 indicates that the world economy has gradually been learning how to use less total oil supply, relative to population. Before oil prices began to soar in 1973, oil with little refining was burned to produce electricity. This oil use could be eliminated by building nuclear power plants, or by building coal or natural gas electricity generation. Home heating was often accomplished by deliveries of diesel to individual households. Factories sometimes used diesel as fuel for processes done by machines. Many of these tasks could easily be transitioned to electricity.

After the spike in oil prices in oil prices in 1973, manufacturers started making cars smaller and more fuel efficient. In more recent years, young people have begun deferring buying an automobile because their cost is unaffordable. Another factor holding down oil usage is the trend toward working from home. Electric vehicles may also be having an impact.

On Figure 1, data for crude oil (second line) is available through October 2024. This data suggests that crude oil production has been encountering production problems recently. Note the oval labeled “Crude oil problem,” relating to recent production for this second line. The other two lines on Figure 1 are only through 2023.

The problem causing the cutback in oil production (relative to population) is the opposite of what most people have expected: Prices are not high enough for producers to ramp up production. OPEC, and its affiliates, have decided to hold production down because prices are not high enough. The underlying problem is that oil prices are disproportionately affected by what users can afford.

Food prices around the world are critically dependent upon oil prices. The vast majority of buyers of food, worldwide, are poor people. If budgets are stretched, poor people will tend to eat less meat. Producing meat is inefficient; it requires that animals eat a disproportionate number of calories, relative to the food energy they produce. This is especially the case for beef. A trend toward less meat eating, or even eating less beef, will tend to hold down the demand for oil.

Another approach to holding down food costs is to buy less imported food. If consumers choose to eat less high-priced imported food, this will tend to use less oil, especially diesel and jet fuel. Another thing customers can do to hold down food costs is to visit restaurants less. This also tends to reduce oil consumption.

On Figure 1, the third line is the one I am especially concerned about. This is the one that shows middle distillate (diesel and jet fuel) consumption. This is the one that was greatly squeezed down in 2020 by the restrictions related to Covid. Diesel is the fuel of heavy industry (construction and road building), as well as long distance transport and agriculture. Electricity is rarely a good substitute for diesel; it cannot give the bursts of power that diesel provides.

Close examination of the third line on Figure 1 shows that between about 1993 or 1994 and 2007, the consumption of middle distillates was rising relative to world population. This makes sense because international trade being ramped up, starting about this time. There was a dip in this line in 2009 because of the Great Recession, after which middle distillates per capita consumption noticeably leveled off. This flattening could be an early pointer to inadequacy in the middle distillate oil supply.

In 2019, middle distillate consumption per capita first started to stumble, falling 1.4% from its previous level. The restrictions in 2020 brought middle distillate consumption per capita down by 18% from the 2019 level. This was a far greater decrease than for total oil (top line on Figure 1) or crude oil (middle line). By 2023 (the latest point), per capita consumption had only partially recovered; the level was still below the low point in 2009 after the Great Recession.

Middle distillates can be found in almost any kind of oil, but the best supply is in very heavy oil. Examples of providers of such heavy oil are Russia (Urals), Canada (oil sands), and Venezuela (oil sands in Orinoco belt). The price for such heavy oil tends to lag behind the price for lighter crude oil because of the high cost of transporting and processing such oil.

Strangely enough, countries that are not getting enough funds for their exported fossil fuels tend to start wars. My analysis suggests that at the time World War I started, the UK was not getting a high enough price for the coal they were trying to extract. The coal was getting more expensive to extract because of depletion. Germany had a similar problem at the time World War II started. The financial stresses of exporters who feel they are getting an inadequate price for their exported fossil fuels seems to push them toward wars.

We can speculate that the financial pressures of low oil prices have been somewhat behind Russia’s decision to be at war with Ukraine. The recent problems of Venezuela and Canada may also be related to the low prices of the heavy oil they are trying to extract and export.

Extracting a greater quantity of heavy oil would likely require higher prices for food around the world because of the use of diesel in growing and transporting food. Publications showing oil reserves indicate that there is a huge amount of heavy oil in the ground around the world; the problem is that it is impossible to get the price up high enough to extract this oil.

The existence of these heavy oil “reserves” is one of the things that makes many modelers think that our biggest problem in the future might be climate change. The catch is that we need to get the oil out at a price that consumers of food and other goods can afford.

[2] Another energy limit we are hitting is coal.

Coal energy is the foundation of the world’s industry. It is especially used in producing steel and concrete. Coal started the world industrial revolution. The primary advantage it has historically had, is that it has been inexpensive to extract. It is also fairly easy to store and transport. Coal can be utilized without a huge amount of specialized or complex infrastructure.

China produces and consumes more than half of the world’s coal. In recent years, it has been far above other countries in industrialization.

Figure 2. Chart by the International Energy Agency showing total fuel consumed by industry, for the top five fuel consuming nations of the world. TFC = Total Fuel Consumed. Chart from 2019.

World coal consumption per capita has been falling since about 2011. Arguably, world coal consumption was on a bumpy plateau until 2013, with world coal consumption per capita truly falling only during 2014 and thereafter.

Figure 3. World coal consumption per capita, based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute, showing data through 2023.

This pattern of coal usage means that world industrialization has been constricted, especially since 2014. In fact, the restriction started as early as 2012. It became impossible for China to build as many new condominium apartment buildings as inexpensively as promised; this eventually led to defaults by builders. World steel output started to become restricted. The model of world economic growth, led by China and other emerging markets, began to disappear.

The problem coal seems to have is the same as the problem diesel has. There is a huge quantity of coal resources available, but the price never seems to rise high enough for long enough for producers to truly ramp up production, especially relative to the ever-growing world population. Coal is especially needed now, with intermittent wind and solar leaving large gaps in electricity generation that need to be filled by burning some fossil fuel. Coal is much easier to ship and store than natural gas. Oil is convenient for electricity balancing, but it tends to be high-priced.

[3] Political leaders created new narratives that hid the problems of inadequate middle-distillate and coal supplies.

The last thing we can expect a politician to tell his constituents is, “We have a shortage problem here. There are more resources available, but they are too expensive to extract and ship to provide affordable food, electricity, and housing.”

Instead, political leaders everywhere created new narratives and started to encourage investments following those new narratives. To encourage investment, they lowered interest rates (Figure 4), made debt very available, and offered subsidies. Governments even added to their own debt to support their would-be solutions to energy problems.

Figure 4. Returns on 3-month and 10-year US Treasury investments. Chart by Federal Reserve of St. Louis. Data through February 21, 2025.

Political leaders developed very believable narratives. These narratives were similar to Aesop’s Fable’s “Sour Grapes” story, claiming that the grapes were really sour, so the wolf didn’t really want the grapes he initially sought.

The popular narrative has been, “We don’t really want coal or heavy types of oil anyhow. They are terribly polluting. Besides, burning fossil fuels will lead to climate change. There are new cleaner forms of energy. We can also stimulate the economy by adding more programs, including more subsidies to help poor people.”

This narrative was supported by politicians in most energy-deficient countries. The increase in debt following this narrative seemed to keep the world economy away from another major recession after 2008. People began to believe that it was debt-based programs, especially those enabled by more US government spending, that pulled the economy forward.

They did not understand adding debt adds more “demand” for goods and services in general, and the energy products needed to make them. However, it doesn’t achieve the desired result if inexpensively available energy resources are not available to meet this demand. Instead, the pull of this demand will partly lead to inflation. This is the issue the economy has been up against.

[4] What could possibly go wrong?

There are a lot of things that have started to go wrong.

(a) US governmental debt is skyrocketing to an unheard-of level. Relative to GDP, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that US debt will soon be higher than it was at the time of World War II.

Figure 5. Chart by the CBO showing US Federal Debt, as ratio to GDP, from 1900 to 2035. Source.

Notice that the latest surge in US government debt started in 2008, when the Federal Reserve decided to bail out the economy with ultra-low interest rates (Figure 4). A second surge took place in 2020, when the US government began more give-away programs to support the economy as Covid restrictions took place. The CBO forecasts that this surge in debt will continue in the future.

(b) Interest on US government debt has become a huge burden. We seem to need to increase government debt, simply to pay the ever-higher interest payments. This is part of what is driving the increased debt projected in the 2025 to 2035 period.

Figure 6 shows a breakdown of actual Fiscal Year 2024 US Federal Government spending by major categories.

Figure 6. Figure by Gail Tverberg, based on CBO breakdown of US government spending for FY 2024 given at this link.

Note that US government spending on interest payments ($881 billion) is now larger than defense payments ($855 billion). Part of the problem is that the ultra-low interest rates of the 2008 to 2022 period have turned out to be unsustainable. (See Figure 4.) As older debt at lower interest rates is gradually replaced by more recent debt at higher rates, it seems likely that these interest payments will continue to grow in the future.

(c) Continued deficit spending appears likely to be needed in the future.

Figure 7. Chart by CBO showing annual deficit in two pieces–(a) the amount simply from spending more than available income, and (b) interest on outstanding debt. Source.

The CBO estimates in Figure 5 seem likely to be optimistic. In January 2025, the CBO expected that inflation would immediately decrease to 2% and stay at that level. The CBO also expects the primary deficit to fall.

(d) The shortfall in tax dollars cannot easily be fixed.

Today, tax dollars mostly come from American taxpayers, either as income taxes or as payroll taxes.

Figure 8. Past and Expected Sources of US Federal Government Funding, according to the CBO.

A person can deduce that to stop adding to the deficit, additional taxes of at least 5% or 6% of GDP (which is equivalent to 12% to 14% of wages) would be needed. Doubling payroll taxes might provide enough, but that cannot happen.

Corporate income taxes collected in recent years have been very low. US companies are either not very profitable, or they are using international tax laws to provide low tax payments.

(e) The incredibly low interest rates have encouraged all kinds of investment in projects that may make people happy, but that do not actually result in more goods and services, or more taxable income.

Figure 8 shows that US corporate income taxes have been falling over time. The reason is not entirely clear, but it may be that companies set their sights lower when the return that is required to pay back debt with interest is low. All the subsidies for wind, solar, electric vehicles, and semiconductor chips have focused the interest of businesses on devices that may or may not be generating a huge amount of taxable income in the future.

I have written articles and given talks such as, Green Energy Must Generate Adequate Taxable Income to Be Sustainable. Green energy can look like it would work if a person uses a model with an interest rate near zero, and policies that give renewable electricity artificially high prices when it is available. The problem is that, one way or another, the system as a whole still needs to generate adequate taxable income to keep the government operating.

Of course, many of the investments with the additional debt have been in non-energy projects. There have been do-good projects around the world. Young people have been encouraged to go to college using debt repayable to the government. Government funding has supported healthcare and pensions for the elderly. But do these many programs truly lead to higher tax dollars to support the US government? If the economy truly were very rich (lots of inexpensive surplus energy), it could afford all these programs. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that the US has more programs than it can afford.

(f) The ultra-low interest rates have encouraged asset price bubbles and wealth disparities.

With ultra-low interest rates and readily available debt, property prices tend to rise. Investors decide to buy homes and “flip” them. Or they buy them, and plan to rent them out, hopefully making money on price appreciation.

Stock market prices are also buoyed by the readily available debt and low interest rate. The US S&P 500 stock market has provided an annualized return of 10.7% per year since 2008, while International Markets (as measured by the MSCI EAFE index) have shown a 3.3% annual return for the same period, according to Morningstar. The huge increase in US government debt no doubt contributed to the favorable S&P 500 return during this period.

Wealth disparities tend to rise in an ultra-low interest period because the rich disproportionately tend to be asset owners. They are the ones who use “leverage” to get even more wealth from rising asset prices.

(g) Tensions have risen around the world, both between countries and among individual citizens.

The underlying problem is that the system as a whole is under great strain. Some parts of the system must get “shorted” if there is not enough coal and certain types of oil to go around. Politicians sense that China and the US cannot both succeed at industrialization. There is too little coal, for one thing. China is struggling; quite often it seems to be trying to try to “dump” goods on the world market using subsidized prices. This makes it even more difficult for the US to compete.

Individual US citizens are often unhappy. With the bubble in home prices and today’s interest rates, citizens who are not now homeowners feel like they are locked out of home ownership. Inflation in the cost of rent, automobiles, and insurance has become a huge problem. People who work at unskilled hourly jobs find that their standard of living is often not much (or any) higher than people who choose to live on government benefits rather than work. Fairly radical leaders are voted into power.

[5] The major underlying problem is that it really takes a growing supply of low-priced energy products to propel the economy forward.

When plenty of cheap-to-extract oil and coal are available, growing government debt can help to encourage their development by adding to “demand” and raising the prices consumers can afford to pay. High prices of oil and coal become less of a problem for consumers.

Figure 9. Average annual Brent equivalent oil prices, based on data of the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute.

But when energy supply of the required types is constrained, the additional buying power made available by added debt tends to lead to inflation rather than more finished goods and services. This inflationary tendency is the problem the US has been contending with recently.

Strangely enough, I think that growing inexpensive coal supply supported the world economy, as oil prices rose to a peak in 2011. As China industrialized its economy using coal, its demand for oil rose higher. The higher world demand coming from this industrialization helped to raise oil prices. But as coal supply (relative to world population) began to fall, oil prices also began to fall. By 2014, the decline in industrial production caused by the lower coal supply (Figure 3) likely contributed to the fall in oil prices shown on Figure 9.

It is the fact that oil prices have not been able to rise higher and higher, even with added government debt, which is inhibiting oil production. World coal production is inhibited by a similar difficulty.

[6] The world economy seems to be headed for a major reorganization.

The world economy seems to be headed in the direction that many, many economies have encountered in the past: Collapse. Collapse seems to take place over a period of years. The existing economy is likely to lose complexity over time. For example, with inadequate middle distillates, long-distance shipping and travel will need to be scaled way back. Trading patterns will need to change.

Governments are among the most vulnerable parts of economies because they operate on available energy surpluses. The collapse of the Central Government of the Soviet Union took place in 1991, leaving in place more local governments. Something like this could happen again, elsewhere.

I expect that complex energy products will gradually fail. Gathering biomass to burn is, in some sense, the least complex form of supplemental energy. Oil and coal, at least historically, have not been too far behind, in terms of low complexity. Other forms of today’s human-produced energy supply, including electricity transmitted over transmission lines, are more complex. I would not be surprised if the more complex forms of energy start to fail, at least in some parts of the world, fairly soon.

Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency seem to be part of the (unfortunately) necessary downshift in the size of the economy. As awful as may be, something of this sort seems to be necessary, if the US government (and governments elsewhere) have greatly overpromised on what goods and services they can provide in the future.

The self-organizing economy seems to make changes on its own based on resource availability and other factors. The situation is very similar to the evolution of plants and animals and the survival of the best adapted. I believe that there is a God behind whatever changes take place, but I know that many others will disagree with me. In any event, these changes cannot take place simply because of the ideas of a particular leader, or group of leaders. There is a physics problem underlying the changes we are experiencing.

There is a great deal more that can be written on this subject, but I will leave these thoughts for another post.

Substack is great in connecting like-minded people, but I’ve been finding that this close connectivity, while emotionally fulfilling, tends to create isolated bubbles of thought that then begin to evolve separately. Such bubbles risk clashing and canceling each other out when they ultimately collide through a shared reality. I am thinking in particular about the many people concerned about climate change. Even within this community of concerned Earth’s citizens the views on what should be done to help us out of the crisis differ vastly and often radically.

Today I will share a few ideas on how to shape a discourse that recognizes a major role of biospheric and water cycle disturbances in recent climate disruptions but at the same time respects a major role of added carbon dioxide in the observed global warming. In the proposed framework, more people may hopefully get a chance to listen to and hear each other.

Let us first take a look at the familiar narrative.

The familiar, straightforward message is that all our climate problems can be traced to carbon emissions, so to solve them, we must stop emitting. Biodiversity conservation is the poor cousin in the family of dominant narratives about global change. Attempts have been made to link ecosystem preservation to carbon storage, but these have not worked well—either on practical or even logical grounds. If we view ecosystems not as a complex climate-regulating process but merely as a stock or source/sink of carbon, then natural ecosystems are rendered unnecessary and can be replaced with ever-growing carbon sticks to be harvested and buried.

While the biodiversity crisis is often formally attached to climate concerns—for example, as Rob Lewis noted, the tragic story of the mother whale carrying her dead calf, which had starved due to fish shortages caused by dam construction, was reported in the paper’s climate section—our concern for other living beings is readily sidelined when other climate-related interests take precedence. The problem is not just about cutting trees to make place for wind turbines or solar panels but about large-scale resource extraction, including for renewable energy infrastructure and electric-powered devices. These projects require road construction and often lead to widespread decimation of wild nature.

An alternative narrative, which can be characterized as embracing nature’s complexity, can be formulated as follows.

In this more sophisticated framework, it is acknowledged that rising atmospheric CO₂ contributes to planetary warming. It is also recognized that natural ecosystems act as buffers against unfavorable climate fluctuations. While the biosphere cannot prevent an asteroid from striking Earth, it can maintain planetary homeostasis—provided the biosphere itself remains free from structural disruptions, whether internal or external.

This homeostasis can be quantified in various ways, for example by analyzing how temperature fluctuations evolve over time. Without a climate stabilizer, these fluctuations would follow a random walk model, increasing in proportion to the square root of time.

Another way to formulate the idea of natural ecosystems buffering climate disruptions is through the concept of climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity describes how much our planet warms in response to a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, e.g., its doubling.

For the same amount of added CO₂ we may observer a smaller or larger temperature change, i.e., a lower or higher sensitivity, respectively. The climate sensitivity of the past climates is not very well-known because temperature changes are irregular, and observations are not perfect. For modern climate change, global climate models provide a wide range of climate sensitivities that range by several times, from about two to nearly six kelvins per CO₂ doubling.

If you were a storyteller, how would you visualize and communicate the climate sensitivity concept ? I tried hard and here’s what I came up with.

Imagine the guy in the picture is CO₂, pushing the Earth to the right—toward warming. However, this path is also an uphill climb, which makes it more difficult. The familiar narrative is simple: more CO₂ means more warming.

How do natural ecosystems alter this scheme? The low sensitivity situation means that it is very difficult for the guy to push the planet toward warming, because the slope is very steep. This steep slope is the buffer that natural ecosystems provide.

When we destroy the buffer, climate sensitivity increases. Now, even a small amount of CO₂ is able to push the planet significantly toward dangerous warming. With less natural biota, the same amount of CO₂ leads to more warming. This doesn’t mean that accumulating atmospheric CO₂ is unimportant—I share the concerns of Professor Ugo Bardi, who argues that higher CO₂ levels may even impair our already limited thinking capacity. But by shifting from the left to the right picture, we are quite literally undermining our own existence.

Now, to put some empirical flesh on the bones of our new concepts, we need to address three key questions. First, are there physical mechanisms through which natural ecosystems influence climate sensitivity to CO₂ accumulation? Second, are natural ecosystems in decline? (They are.) And third, is climate sensitivity increasing? (It is.)

We do know that natural ecosystems are powerful regulators of clouds. Clouds are the most complicated element of the climate system because clouds can both warm and cool the planet. They cool by reflecting sunlight, so less solar energy is ultimately converted to heat. They warm because clouds, like CO₂, interact with thermal radiation from the surface and partially redirect it back to the surface, so they are part of the greenhouse effect. As a simple rule of thumb, thick low clouds cool, while thin high clouds warm.

By using these climate levers, it is possible for the biota to regulate surface temperature. Extensive research shows that forests, and not just trees but the whole community of species including fungi and bacteria, emit certain particles that can facilitate cloud formation.

The left graph shows the frequency of shallow convective clouds (those that cool the surface) over different land cover types. These clouds form more often over forests, a pattern observed across all regions of the world. Whether in the Amazon, Eurasia, or North America, forests respond to warmth by producing white cloud shields that help maintain a habitable environment.

The second graph shows that not everything green works right. The blue symbols indicate that cloud cover increases with forest productivity. However, highly productive non-forest ecosystems, such as agricultural lands, generate significantly less low cloud cover, as shown by the purple symbols. The more we extract from an ecosystem—whether through timber harvesting or food production—the fewer resources it has to stabilize itself, the surrounding environment, and climate.

It’s almost hilarious that, in the global change discourse, we still tend to view life merely as a physical-chemical system, even though we know that information governs everything. We’ve embraced artificial intelligence and supercomputers, yet when faced with the ultra-super-hyper computer of life itself, we reduce it to simple chemical reactions—CO₂, carbohydrate production—little more. This perspective is not only flawed but also dangerous.

This outdated view—treating life as a simple physical-chemical process—is also embedded in climate models through oversimplified parameterizations. It comes as an intellectual atavism, a relic of our failure to fully appreciate the complexity of the world.

Returning to the link between natural ecosystem decline and increasing climate sensitivity: The rather dull-looking graph below may not seem engaging, but it encapsulates the drama unfolding on our planet. Over the past century, we have been rapidly losing primary ecosystems—both forests and non-forest landscapes—while simultaneously polluting the atmosphere with CO₂.

The two green curves illustrate a critical reality: we have been dismantling the very system that could have helped mitigate much of the undesired effects of global change. In parallel, the warming has been accelerating. The warming rate has almost doubled in 2010-2023, from 0.18 °C/decade in 1970-2010.

Global surface temperature relative to 1880-1920 is the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) analysis through October 2024. I am absolutely fascinated by the vast wealth of information that, for the first time in human history, we have about our planet. It’s up to us to ensure this knowledge doesn’t go waste but instead catalizes a phase shift in how we appreciate our living planet._

This increasing climate sensitivity remains unexplained. Moreover, those global climate models that began predicting more warming were downgraded in reliability, as they could not accurately explain the past climate change. We noted as follows:

Global climate models with an improved representation of clouds display a higher sensitivity of the Earth's climate to CO2 doubling than models with a poorer representation of clouds. This implies more dire projections for future climate change, but also poses the problem of how to account for the past temperature changes that are not affected by the model improvements and have been satisfactorily explained assuming a lower climate sensitivity. The concept of the environmental homeostasis and the biotic regulation of the environment provide a possible solution: the climate sensitivity may have been increasing with time—reflecting the decline of natural ecosystems and their global stabilizing impact.

There is another important issue:

Any control system increases its feedback as the perturbation grows. Therefore, as the climate destabilization deepens, the remaining natural ecosystems should be exerting an ever increasing compensatory impact per unit area. In other words, the global climate price of losing a hectare of natural forest grows as the climate situation worsens. We call for an urgent global moratorium on the exploitation of the remaining natural ecosystems and a broad application of the proforestation strategy to allow them to restore to their full ecological and climate-regulating potential.

To stop the destruction of natural ecosystems, we need to cooperate globally. This global cooperation does not have to take the form of a rigid, hierarchical correlation—like the relationship between organs in an animal body. Rather, it can be a loose, interconnected network, like the leaves of a great tree. Each leaf functions independently, consuming light on its own, yet all are sustained by nutrients and water flowing through the shared stem. A shared global understanding of the importance of natural ecosystems could guide us toward realistic local solutions for their preservation. If we just halt their destruction right now, we can prevent further deterioration, which, in itself, would be a significant achievement. And this would buy us time.

Linked literature

Arnscheidt, C. W., & Rothman, D. H. (2022). Presence or absence of stabilizing Earth system feedbacks on different time scales. Science Advances, 8(46), eadc9241. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adc9241

Dror, T., Koren, I., Altaratz, O., & Heiblum, R. H. (2020). On the abundance and common properties of continental, organized shallow (green) clouds. IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing, 59(6), 4570-4578. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.3023085

Hansen, J. E., Kharecha, P., Sato, M., Tselioudis, G., Kelly, J., Bauer, S. E., ... & Pokela, A. (2025). Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 67(1), 6-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494

Heiblum, R. H., Koren, I., & Feingold, G. (2014). On the link between Amazonian forest properties and shallow cumulus cloud fields. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 14(12), 6063-6074. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-6063-2014

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Rammig, A., & Nobre, A. D. (2023). Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, 1150191. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191

Moomaw, W. R., Masino, S. A., & Faison, E. K. (2019). Intact forests in the United States: Proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 2, 449206. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027

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How much wild nature do we need and do we really understand how it functions?

As the New Year 2025 opens its horizons, please allow me to offer a few thoughts for discussion. The concept of biotic regulation provides a distinct perspective on why we need wilderness. There is the carbon-centric view: we believe that we need trees to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Strictly speaking, this view is not about wilderness or nature at all, because its logical extension is to cut down trees (understood as “carbon sticks”) and bury or burn them to make room for new sticks.

Another view is that we need wilderness to maintain biodiversity, the number of species on Earth. This view has its own controversies. If you take boreal and temperate forests, for example, they don’t have as many species as tropical forests. We can safely conserve all of their species locally, say, in Scandinavia. Does that mean that the remaining wilderness in the boreal forests doesn’t need to be protected?

The proposition stemming from the biotic regulation concept is that we need to protect natural self-sustaining ecosystems in an area sufficient for them to perform their climate-regulating function on a regional and global scale. That is to say, we should not protect wild nature as an ecological museum. We should protect wild nature as a working mechanism for climate stabilization. It is important to note that since we do not quite understand how the climate system works, we must assume that natural ecosystems will work most efficiently when left without our intervention. We can in no way improve their functioning.

To visualize this idea, imagine that the Earth can have several climate states, not all of which are equally favorable to modern life. With environmental regulation by natural ecosystems, the Earth sits comfortably around 15 degrees Celsius as a global average surface temperature. There is a safe potential pit in this temperature range.

As we disrupt natural ecosystems and impair their climate regulation function, the pit becomes shallower and eventually disappears. If we also add CO2, which pushes the Earth toward a warmer state, we could see a sharp and unfavorable increase in global average surface temperature.

The scenario shown in the above two graphs is certainly radical*, but it conveys the concept of why we need wilderness, and how much of it. We need enough wilderness to provide sufficient stability for all the environmental parameters we care about. In simple words, to ensure that the potential pit of our existence is comfortably deep and favorably situated in the parameter space. (E.g., precipitation in a desert can be stably near zero, but this is not the type of stability that we would appreciate.)

Of course, it is not just about temperature and precipitation. It is, in the words of Chuck Pezeshki, an ultra complex multidimensional optimization problem. Natural ecosystems simultaneously optimize biological productivity, temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, continental moisture transport, soil moisture, nitrogen, phosphorus and other critically important biogens, and they also stabilize themselves against internal disruptions (like deadly insect outbreaks).

This last aspect provides clues to the priorities of protection. All ecosystems that are still capable of self-regeneration must be protected from our exploitation as much as possible. Stop taking from them. They are our gold standard, our ultimate treasure. Efforts to define this important concept of ecosystem self-sustainability, for which we do not even have a suitable expression, are ongoing. We hear about stable forests and high-integrity forests, and in terms of strategies, the outstanding concept of proforestation has recently been formulated. To this intellectual quest, the biotic regulation concept adds the perspective of scale: we need natural ecosystems to do their job of regulating the climate massively around the globe.

So why is protecting natural ecosystems not a major focus of climate negotiations? One reason for our archaically primitive views on ecosystem functioning is that our ecological knowledge is heavily biased toward systems that are severely disturbed by human activity. Such systems are inherently unstable themselves and obviously do not stabilize the environment and climate.

Let us have a look. The graph below depicts the extant intact forests that show no sign of human interference during the satellite era. For what they are worth, these are our proxies for natural self-sustainable forests.

The second graph shows the distribution of flux towers that measure important atmospheric processes and parameters including evaporation, transpiration and transport of tracers like CO2 or biogenic aerosols.

We can see that the vast majority of measurements (translated into the vast majority of publications and the vast majority of students doing their Phd theses about) are made outside the regions occupied by natural forests in areas profoundly transformed (degraded) by anthropogenic activities. I would like to highlight one of the very few points in Siberia (Zotino, the red dot), which Andrei Nefiodov and I visited in 2020. This flux tower is situated in an area surrounded by secondary forests disturbed by clearcuts and legacy fires (see this paper about legacy fires and this one about fire-related landscape traps). Here is a typical view of forests surrounding the tower:

Compare this to an undisturbed boreal forest:

(Photo courtesy of Alexei Aleinikov, the forest did not burn for several hundred (!) years).

The third map below is from a recent global study of ecosystem resilience. It speaks for itself. We do not study natural, self-sustainable, resilient ecosystems. We have excluded them from consideration.

It is like if some aliens were studying human health, and the very capacity of humans as living beings, from inside a big hospital. After studying the patients suffering from various serious diseases, the aliens would conclude that humans are fragile creatures totally dependent on the external supply of medicine and intellectually quite uneventful. They would hardly figure out that humans are able to discover the laws of nature and perform ambitious environmental transformations on their basis. They could deduce very little about the human capacity to create art and would not believe that the best of classical music could have been composed by those strangely morbid apes. Indeed, when we are ill or humiliated, we are far from our best.

Unfortunately, our knowledge about natural ecosystems is similarly heavily distorted. We greatly underappreciate them. Historically, our misconceptions about how natural ecosystems work are so deeply ingrained that we don’t even recognize, let alone understand the importance of, the counter-evidence when by any chance we do stumble upon it. I’ll discuss some conspicuous examples on another occasion. (In passing, I note that seeing the truth in this chaos requires a viewpoint from outside this chaos. Lovelock had such a viewpoint of a space scientist. Gorshkov had such a viewpoint of an outstanding theoretical physicist who additionally spent years in untouched wilderness.)

Here I would like to conclude by listing three goals that I consider worthy of discussion and implementation:

1. Elevate protection of the remaining self-sustainable natural ecosystems, on land and in the ocean, to a top priority in the international climate change mitigation agenda.

   If we lose their climate-regulating potential, we are doomed to a global environmental collapse even under the “zero emissions” scenario.

2. Restore biological productivity on degraded lands, to lessen the anthropogenic pressure on the remaining self-sustainable natural ecosystems.

   The climate-regulating potential of the ecosystem cannot be maximized simultaneously with its economic potential. The ecosystem resources expropriated by humans are diverted from the regulatory processes that become less and less effective.

3. Launch a focused global effort to study the climate-regulating potential of natural ecosystems including

   • soil carbon dynamics
   • ecosystem impact on, and control of, cloud cover
   • ecosystem impact on, and control of, local temperature regime
     *ecosystem mediation of the atmospheric moisture transport as dependent on the degree of ecosystem disturbance.
4. Recognize ecosystem disturbance as a key dimension in the studies of biota-environment interactions. Quantify salient differences in environmental responses of intact versus managed (disturbed, exploited) ecosystems.

To summarize, natural ecosystems are powerful mechanisms of climate stabilization. If we exploit them more, their regulatory function is impaired adding to climate destabilization, including water cycle calamities. Curbing the on-going exploitation of natural ecosystems is feasible and represents a vital part of strategies to mitigate global change.

Words make sense only within the framework of their language. If a language dies, words lose their meaning. In the four-billion-year journey of Life, our civilization is a new word, and wild nature is the primordial language. If we lose our ground base — the wild nature, our civilization will become a chimera, a sand castle that will not last long.

* For interested readers, I discussed how these stability graphs relate to the planetary boundaries in my recent talk at the EcoSummit “Eco-Civilization for Sustainable and Desirable Future” in China (slides here).

What to ask your climate scientist friend about the water cycle and global temperature

In a recent post, “Why It Is Important to Read Scientific Papers Beyond Their Abstracts“, I noted that as the human brain has a limited information processing speed, if most of the incoming information is about carbon dioxide, other important problems of the human predicament, water in particular, will remain dangerously understudied. In my post today, I will add specificity to that statement.

I will discuss two peer-reviewed studies published in the same mainstream journal (Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society, AMS) in 2010 and 2021. Both studies use global climate models to address one and the same problem. While they come to opposite conclusions, the later study does not look into the discrepancy with the earlier one. Furthermore, the results of the earlier study, without discussing its discrepancy with the later one, are then used in a 2023 report by the World Resources Institute that aims at a broad audience, including policymakers. None of the studies attempt to approach the problem from first principles, but confine themselves to discussing the outputs of numerical models, for which, therefore, there are no independent constraints.

But first, what’s the problem?

Let us take a look at how we’ve recently changed the face of the Earth.

This graph describes the replacement of primary ecosystems by anthropogenically modified systems (data from Hurtt et al. 2011). Since 1800, the area occupied by primary ecosystems has halved. They no longer dominate over land.

Where natural forests have been replaced by agricultural fields, it looks like this:

One can notice that, deprived of vegetation, the Earth’s surface becomes brighter. Solar energy no longer cascades via complicated biochemical channels to energize the biotic maintenance of environmental homeostasis. Instead, unclaimed by life, it is reflected back into space. Yes, other things being equal, this cools the planet. But what are those other things, and are they equal?

During photosynthesis, green leaves release a lot of water vapor. When a leaf opens to catch a CO2 molecule, water vapor flows out from the leaf’s humid interior into the atmosphere. This process is called transpiration. When forests are replaced by bare fields, transpiration is greatly reduced.

Since our atmosphere can only hold a limited amount of water vapor (which condenses back to liquid when its concentration goes over the limit), precipitation and total evaporation (which includes transpiration) are closely matched on the timescale of a few days. When transpiration is reduced, precipitation is reduced as well.

Our question is as follows. What will happen to the Earth’s mean global surface temperature if we diminish the intensity of the global water cycle by disturbing primary vegetation and reducing transpiration over land? As I discussed in the opening post on this blog, “Global cooling from plant transpiration” (see also the corresponding peer-reviewed study), there is plausible evidence that the effect can be significant. Indeed, given that global evaporation corresponds to a global mean energy flux of 80 W/m2, by decreasing evaporation by 20% over half of the land, we could perturb this flux by about 3%, or by 2.4 W/m2, which is comparable to the current radiative forcing from CO2. In my view, this question is so fundamental to understanding our climate system that one would expect it to be in textbooks. That is not the case.

Let us look at what the scientific literature has to say and how it approaches this question. The study of Davin and Noblet-Ducoudré (2010) uses a state-of-the-art global climate model (the one used in IPCC scenarios) to compare two hypothetical states of the Earth. In one simulation (FOREST) all land except modern deserts is covered with forests. In another simulation (EVA) all land has the same albedo and roughness as in FOREST, but has a much lower transpiration efficiency corresponding to a grassland.

This suppression of transpiration results in widespread warming on land, see the left panel (EVA-FOREST). Besides, it produces a global warming of 0.24 K.

Importantly, there is not practically any change of the outgoing long-wave radiation between the two states. This means that this global warming from suppressed transpiration cannot be attributed to changes in albedo (e.g., due to changing cloud cover).

The authors attribute this global warming to an "internal redistribution of energy in the climate system". Its nature is not specified — like for example we know that CO2 warms the Earth by trapping thermal radiation, but how does an internal redistribution of energy warm it? Nor any considerations are presented that could independently constrain the magnitude of the resulting warming and validate the model outcome.

Without a deeper understanding, even among the scientists themselves, of what the underlying mechanisms could be, messages based solely on numerical model outputs are circulated and communicated to the public and decision makers. One of the key figures in the 2023 report of the World Resources Institute “Not just carbon” ,

Fig. 2.5 “Modeled CO2, Biophysical, and Net Impacts by Latitude of Global Forest Loss”, is based on the results of Davin and Noblet-Ducoudré (2010). The yellow “ET” bars in the left panel represent the latitude-dependent warming due to reduced evaporation and transpiration as found in their model.

The second study, of Laguë et al. (2021), uses a simpler global climate model where one can freely configure the shape of the continents. Fully suppressing evaporation on a hypothetical land that covers 1/4 of the planetary surface, they also obtain warming on land but a global cooling of -0.4 K. Warming over land is more than compensated by cooling over the ocean.

The authors attribute this global cooling to there being less water vapor in the atmosphere, and hence a lower greenhouse effect, when evaporation is suppressed. While they mention the 2010 study in a row of studies addressing similar problems, they do not discuss the discrepancy between their own study and the earlier one. In the 2010 study, evaporation was also suppressed, but apparently this did not produce a lower greenhouse effect, since the planet warmed as a whole.

Imagine for a moment that one study in an AMS journal reported warming from increased CO2, and another reported cooling from increased CO2 without discussing the results of the former. Yes, it is unthinkable. The second study would not make it to publication in the first place. This is (partly) because, as far as CO2 is concerned, besides numerical models there have always been theoretical considerations based on well established physical principles that allow an independent check on model outputs. With respect to the impact of vegetation on the Earth’s global surface temperature such independent theoretical considerations do not exist nor are there any large-scale efforts to develop them.

This situation is unsatisfactory. If an "internal redistribution of energy in the climate system" can warm our planet, we absolutely need to know whether we understand its nature and get it quantitatively right.

I am positive. At a certain moment people will massively get tired of just trying to decipher the meaning of another simulation produced by an ever more sophisticated climate model and will again champion thinking. Another positive factor could be that, as the models become more and more sophisticated and computationally consuming, fewer and fewer researchers will be able to actually oversee and use them, let alone modify according to their research needs. For the remaining community, a re-prioritization of other research methods, including theory development, will become more attractive. As a recent Perspective puts it,

“State-of-the-art models, observational systems and machine learning are transforming our ability to simulate, monitor and emulate many aspects of land climate. Our scientific understanding, however, has not kept pace, and we now lack robust theories to comprehend the rich complexity being revealed by these advanced tools. Now is the time to change course and underpin models, observations and machine-learning techniques with new theories so that we maintain and advance the deep, mechanistic understanding of land climate needed to meet the challenges of an uncertain future.” (Byrne et al. 2024)

Cited references

Byrne, M.P., Hegerl, G.C., Scheff, J. et al. Theory and the future of land-climate science. Nat. Geosci. 17, 1079–1086 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01553-8

Davin, E. L., & de Noblet-Ducoudré, N. (2010). Climatic impact of global-scale deforestation: Radiative versus nonradiative processes. Journal of Climate, 23(1), 97-112. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009JCLI3102.1

Hurtt, G. C., Chini, L. P., Frolking, S., Betts, R. A., Feddema, J., Fischer, G., ... & Wang, Y. P. (2011). Harmonization of land-use scenarios for the period 1500–2100: 600 years of global gridded annual land-use transitions, wood harvest, and resulting secondary lands. Climatic change, 109, 117-161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0153-2

Laguë, M. M., Pietschnig, M., Ragen, S., Smith, T. A., & Battisti, D. S. (2021). Terrestrial evaporation and global climate: Lessons from Northland, a planet with a hemispheric continent. Journal of Climate, 34(6), 2253-2276. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0452.1

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Rammig, A., & Nobre, A. D. (2023). Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, 1150191. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191

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A short intro into biotic regulation

Much of what we know today about forests was already known to our ancestors in the distant past. Forests are sources of food and medicine; they provide wood for building and heating homes. Modern people understand these forest functions equally well – they are part of our economy and commerce. However, with the development of science, people received fundamentally new and extremely important information about the forest. This new information is now also gradually becoming common knowledge, but it still has a long way to go.

First, it turned out that forests and other natural ecosystems impose a huge impact on the global environment and climate in comparison with processes in inanimate nature. One of the first to pay close attention to this at the beginning of the last century was a Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky. According to Vernadsky, living organisms are a “huge geological force” (or indeed “the geological force”) that determines the conditions of their own existence in the biosphere (Vernadsky 1998).

Estimates of life’s huge environmental impact first outlined by Vernadsky were later confirmed by international scientific teams using modern methods of studying the Earth, including satellite data. For example, it was found that terrestrial ecosystems, mostly forests, are responsible for the major part of evaporation on land (Jasechko et al. 2013)[1]. Total solar power used by terrestrial vegetation for transpiration exceeds the power of modern civilization by more than a hundred times (Gorshkov 1995).

In the general case, a huge impact can be constructive or destructive, stabilizing or destabilizing. However it was found that natural ecosystems interact with their environment in a non-random way. A Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist Victor Gorshkov analyzed the available multidisciplinary evidence related to the life-environment interaction (from geochemistry to genetics and ecology) and concluded that they have only one non-controversial explanation: the biotic regulation of the environment. Natural ecosystems regulate the environment maintaining it in a state favorable for life (Gorshkov 1995).

The opposing processes of synthesis and decomposition of organic matter serve as the two levers of biotic regulation. Plants synthesize organic matter; all the other organisms (bacteria, fungi, animals) decompose it. Owing to the huge global power of these processes, even a small imbalance between the rates of biochemical synthesis and decomposition could have destroyed life-compatible conditions on Earth in a very short time. For example, the store of inorganic carbon (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere, which is of the order of 1000 Gigaton C (1 Gigaton is equal to one billion ton), could have been changed by the biota by 100% in just ten years, because the rate of global synthesis and decomposition are of the order of 100 Gigaton C per year.

However, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has retained its order of magnitude over tens and hundred million years! This means that natural ecosystems have the capacity to maintain this concentration in a suitable for life state compensating deviations from the optimum. In other words, to keep the atmospheric composition stable, the synthesis and decomposition of organic matter must be strictly controlled by the natural biota.

Gorshkov (1995) made a crucial inference that, if the biota is monitoring and synchronizing powerful biogeochemical fluxes on a short term, then it must be exerting a strong compensatory reaction on the modern anthropogenic disturbance of the global carbon cycle. This conclusion is distinct from the implications of the Gaia hypothesis, which implied that the stabilizing biotic impacts are pronounced on a geological timescale and could be “extremely slow compared with current human concerns” (Lovelock 1986). The Gaia hypothesis recognized that the destruction of (some) natural ecosystems could impair the planetary homeostasis. But it did not recognize that the remaining natural ecosystems exert a strong compensatory response to the anthropogenic environmental perturbations. Neglecting this response gives rise to a misleading conclusion that some ecosystems, like boreal forests, may not be indispensable for the planetary wellbeing.

The biotic regulation concept draws a fundamental distinction between ecosystems that retain their climate-regulating function and those that have been disturbed beyond their sustainability threshold and have lost the climate-regulating capacity. This distinction has enabled Gorshkov (1995) to solve the so-called “missing sink” enigma long before this solution was recognized in the mainstream literature (Popkin 2015). The conventional view in ecology had been that natural ecosystems function on the basis of closed biogeochemical cycles (Odum 1969) and can only increase their productivity if the concentration of a limiting nutrient increases. Since terrestrial ecosystems are known to be limited by nitrogen and phosphorus (this knowledge comes from agriculture), no one could have expected that undisturbed forests could increase their productivity and ensure a CO2 sink in response to the rising CO2 concentrations. Why should they? How could they, if there is no matching rise in nitrogen and phosphorus? Finally, even if there were an increase in synthesis, why would not there be a matching increase in the decomposition – especially as the soils are warming and metabolic rates of bacteria and fungi increase?

Therefore, when atmospheric measurements became sufficiently precise to enable an accurate assessment of the global carbon cycle, and it was found that the known sources and sinks do not match, and there is a large missing sink of an unknown nature, there has been a persistent resistance from the ecological and Earth Science communities to ultimately admitting that this sink is mostly ensured by natural forests (Popkin 2015; Makarieva et al. 2023a).

Within the biotic regulation this response was straightforwardly predictable. Natural ecosystems must react to the excessive atmospheric carbon by removing it from the atmosphere and storing it in an inactive organic form. As there is no comparable increase in nitrogen and phosphorus, the excessive carbon should be removed as carbohydrates that do not contain nitrogen and phosphorus (Gorshkov 1986). But only those ecosystems that remain sufficiently intact (least disturbed) should be able to perform such a stabilizing response. Other ecosystems like arable lands should be a source of carbon as their regulatory mechanism has been broken. This is exactly how the changes in the global carbon cycle look like: there is a sink ensured by relatively intact forests (and oceanic ecosystems) and a source from land use and net deforestation (Gorshkov 1995).

Therefore, one can view the anthropogenic disturbance of the global carbon cycle as a planetary-scale experiment that has confirmed the biotic regulation predictions. This has been a very costly experiment for our planet. Its results should be thought through very seriously and practical conclusions made. Carbon is a major life-important environmental constituent, but it is not the only one. Water is a key factor enabling life on land. Thus, as they have been able to regulate carbon, natural terrestrial ecosystems should also be able to regulate the water cycle. This regulation has two aspects: one is the regulation of the cloud cover and another is the regulation of the atmospheric moisture transport.

Recent research has revealed that natural forests possess a strong capacity to modify the cloud cover and moisture transport and stabilize the water cycle (e.g., O’Connor et al. 2021; Cerasoli et al. 2021; Duveiller et al. 2021; Makarieva et al. 2023b). We now know, as did Vernadsky in the beginning of the twentieth century that ecosystems do impose a huge impact on the Earth’s cloud cover and atmospheric circulation – i.e., those very factors that are recognized as the biggest source of uncertainty in current climate models (Zelinka et al. 2020). It will take more time until the stabilizing nature of these impacts will be demonstrated in precise quantitative terms as it has been demonstrated for the carbon cycle. We can wait until the corresponding publications reach a critical mass to apply for a paradigm shift, while natural forests will continue to be destroyed. Alternatively, we can use the results of the “global carbon experiment” and make the logical inference that the natural forests must have evolved a stabilizing impact on the water aspects of climate as they have evolved it for carbon – and then take urgent measures to preserve these efficient climate regulators. This will require, in the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007), “intellect, courage, vision and perseverance”.

As soon as we stand on the position that natural forest have evolved to regulate climate, we immediately recognize that this climate-regulating capacity cannot be maximized alongside commercial uses. Why? Maximum wood production is not compatible with complex natural selection criteria under which the life-supporting forest-climate homeostasis evolved. Beyond a critical disturbance, forests become unable to stabilize climate and bring water on land via the biotic pump. Plantations and forests disturbed by logging are more prone to fire and contribute to landscape drying, not wetting (Laurance & Useche 2009; Bradley et al. 2016; Oliveira et al. 2021; Lindenmayer et al. 2022; Wolf et al. 2023).

A specific and sufficient network of intact natural forests must be exempted from ongoing exploitation to prioritize their evolved climate-regulating function and bring water to land. There is irreplaceable value in forests that still possess their climate-regulating capacity (now, or in the relatively near future). Natural forests fully restore their climate-regulating function during ecological succession, which takes more than a century (i.e. several lifespans of tree species). In the current climate emergency, losing existing natural forests’ climate-regulation is irrevocable.

Self-grown forests with substantial time since the last large-scale disturbance (old and old-growth forests), are primary targets for climate-stabilizing conservation while protecting other key values (proforestation, Moomaw et al. 2019). Regional, national and international cooperation is required to preserve our wellbeing and common planetary legacy of existing climate-regulating forests. Clear and unbiased interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to identify resource-production areas vs. old-growth and climate-regulating networks (Makarieva, Nefiodov & Masino 2023).

While fundamental science is being advanced, the precautionary principle should be strictly applied. Any control system increases its feedback as the perturbation grows. Therefore, as the climate destabilization deepens, the remaining natural ecosystems should be exerting an ever increasing compensatory impact per unit area. In other words, the global climate price of losing a hectare of natural forest grows as the climate situation worsens. We call for an urgent global moratorium on the exploitation of the remaining natural ecosystems.

Cited literature

Bradley, C. M., Hanson, C. T., & DellaSala, D. A. (2016). Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent‐fire forests of the western United States?. Ecosphere, 7(10), e01492.

Cerasoli, S., Yin, J., and Porporato, A. (2021). Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2026241118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026241118

Duveiller, G., Filipponi, F., Ceglar, A., Bojanowski, J., Alkama, R., and Cescatti, A. (2021). Revealing the widespread potential of forests to increase low level cloud cover. Nat. Commun. 12, 4337. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24551-5

Gorshkov, V. G. (1986). Atmospheric disturbance of the carbon cycle: impact upon the biosphere. Nuov. Cim. C 9, 937–952. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02891905

Gorshkov, V. G. (1995). Physical and biological bases of life stability: man, biota, environment. Springer Science & Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85001-1

Jasechko, S., Sharp, Z. D., Gibson, J. J., Birks, S. J., Yi, Y., & Fawcett, P. J. (2013). Terrestrial water fluxes dominated by transpiration. Nature, 496(7445), 347-350.

Laurance, W. F., & Useche, D. C. (2009). Environmental synergisms and extinctions of tropical species. Conservation biology, 23(6), 1427-1437.

Lindenmayer, D. B., Bowd, E. J., Taylor, C., & Likens, G. E. (2022). The interactions among fire, logging, and climate change have sprung a landscape trap in Victoria’s montane ash forests. Plant Ecology, 223(7), 733-749.

Lovelock, J. E. (1986). Geophysiology: a new look at earth science. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 67(4), 392-397.

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Rammig, A., & Nobre, A. D. (2023a). Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Nobre, A. D., Baudena, M., Bardi, U., Sheil, D., et al. (2023b). The role of ecosystem transpiration in creating alternate moisture regimes by influencing atmospheric moisture convergence. Glob. Change Biol. 29, 2536–2556. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16644

Makarieva, A. M., Nefiodov, A. V., Masino S. A. (2023c) How to assess and preserve the climate-regulating function of forests for local and global wellbeing. The Eastern Old-Growth Conference, Geneva Point Center, NH USA, 21-23 September 2023.

Moomaw, W. R., Masino, S. A., and Faison, E. K. (2019). Intact forests in the United States: proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Front. For. Glob. Change 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027

O'Connor, J. C., Dekker, S. C., Staal, A., Tuinenburg, O. A., Rebel, K. T., and Santos, M. J. (2021). Forests buffer against variations in precipitation. Glob. Change Biol. 27, 4686–4696. doi: 10.1111/gcb.15763

Odum, E. P. (1969). The strategy of ecosystem development: an understanding of ecological succession provides a basis for resolving man's conflict with nature. Science 164, 262–270. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.164.3877.262

Oliveira, A., Sande Silva, J., Gaspar, J., Guiomar, N., & Fernandes, P. (2021). Is native forest an alternative to prevent wildfire in the WUI in Central Portugal?.

Popkin, G. (2015). The hunt for the world’s missing carbon. Nature, 523, 20-22.

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Vernadsky, V. I. (1998). The biosphere. Springer Science & Business Media.

Wolf, J., Asch, J., Tian, F., Georgiou, K., & Ahlström, A. (2023). Canopy responses of Swedish primary and secondary forests to the 2018 drought. Environmental Research Letters, 18(6), 064044.

Zelinka, M. D., Myers, T. A., McCoy, D. T., Po-Chedley, S., Caldwell, P. M., Ceppi, P., et al. (2020). Causes of higher climate sensitivity in CMIP6 models. Geophys. Res. Lett. 47, e2019GL085782. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085782

[1] In the process of photosynthesis, the stomata of green leaves open to pick up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While the stomata are open, water vapor evaporates into the atmosphere from the internal wet milieu of the leaf. This process is called transpiration. Per each molecule of carbon dioxide fixed, several hundred water molecules can evaporate.

Preface. Heavy-duty diesel-engine trucks (agricultural, mining, logging, construction, garbage, cement, 18-wheelers, and more) are the essential for our fossil-fueled civilization. Without them, no goods would be delivered, nothing could be manufacturied, no food planted or harvested, no garbage picked up, no minerals mined, no concrete made, no metals smelted, and roads are constructed with specialized diesel trucks and petroleum asphalt. If trucks stopped running, gas stations, grocery stores, factories, pharmacies, and manufacturers would shut down within a week and civilization would end.

Since oil, coal, and natural gas are finite, biomass doesn’t scale up, and hydrogen is an energy sink, clearly someday trucks will need to run on wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal generated electricity with batteries or overhead catenary wires (though that won’t work either, see chapter 8 of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy and this post). Yet even batteries for autos aren’t cheap, long-lasting, light-weight, or powerful enough for most Americans to replace their current gas-guzzlers with. And given the distribution of wealth, few Americans may ever be able to afford an electric car, since two-thirds of Americans would have trouble finding even $1,000 for an emergency.

Trucks that matter — that haul 30 tons of goods, pour cement, haul mining ore — can weigh 40 times more than an average car. So scaling batteries up for heavy-duty trucks (NRC 2014) is impossible now given the state of battery technology. For example, a truck capable of going 621 miles hauling 59,525 pounds, the maximum allowable cargo weight, would need a battery weighing 55,116 pounds, and so could only carry about 4,400 pounds of cargo (den Boer et al. 2013). And because a heavy-duty truck battery is so heavy and large, charging takes too long — typically 12 hours or more.

Or as Ryan Carlyle, oil company engineer puts it: “As far as heavy trucking is concerned, there is no replacement for hydrocarbon fuels. The physics of power/weight ratios, and existence of legal road weight limits, means you simply can’t build an “electric semi” and expect it to haul anything comparable to what diesel trucks haul today. This is not an area where Tesla can build a 30% better battery pack and suddenly it’s feasible. The necessary energy density numbers are more like 50 times less than they need to be. The truck will use over half its payload capacity just carrying its own batteries. There are chemical limits to what batteries can do. Electrochemical galvanic cells physically cannot store enough energy — ever — to approach today’s large diesel engines (Carlyle 2014).

Microsoft founder Bill Gates agrees: ” The problem is that batteries are big and heavy. The more weight you’re trying to move, the more batteries you need to power the vehicle. But the more batteries you use, the more weight you add—and the more power you need. Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles (Gates 2020).”

And car battery development is hitting the brick-walls of the laws of physics and thermodynamics, yet truck batteries need to be even more powerful, durable, and long-lasting.

_Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Women in ecology author of 2021 Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy best price here; 2015 When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity_

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There are not any commercially available heavy-duty Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) outside the transit bus segment at this time. It is not expected that BEVs can penetrate into the long-haul trucking vocation in the next several decades, where significant high speed steady-state operations dominate the vehicles duty cycle, without significant advances in battery energy density and BEV recharging technologies. (ARB 2015).

There are however, demonstration projects with class 8 electric trucks. The first, NFI, has two trucks running between Chino and the Ports of Los Angeles/San Pedro 135 miles round-trip using two of the five heavy-duty charging stations in Southern California. Only one round-trip can be made, there isn’t enough juice left in the battery to go again. The second, Penske is averaging 150 miles per shift on dedicated routes to a California quick-service restaurant chain with two battery-powered trucks in a relay system to make the most of the available electric charge. And other demonstration projects are planned (Adler 2019).

Nikola claimed to have a working Nikola One truck and portrayed it as fully functional with a video called “Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion. But investment firm Hindenburg Research published a bombshell report claiming that the Nikola One wasn’t close to being fully functional. Even more incredible, Hindenburg reported that the truck in the “Nikola One in motion” video wasn’t moving under its own power. Rather, Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a shallow hill and let it roll down. The company allegedly tilted the camera to make it look like the truck was traveling under its own power on a level roadway, and has admitted that it didn’t have a working hydrogen fuel cell or motors to drive the wheels, the two key components (Lee 2020).

And the latest Nikola scandle from August 1, 2021: Nikola electric-truck prototypes were powered by hidden wall sockets, towed into position and rolled down hills. The prototypes didn’t function and were Frankenstein monsters cobbled together from parts from other vehicles. Nikola also overstated the number of pre-orders the company had received. Federal prosecutors have charged the founder of the Nikola Corp. (NKLA) with lying to investors about the supposed technological breakthroughs the company had achieved in order to drive up its stock price. Prosecutors said in the initial period following Nikola starting to trade publicly, the value of Milton’s shares shot up by $7 billion. After it emerged the company was under investigation, shares tanked causing many retail investors to lose tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. In some cases, some investors lost substantial portions of their retirement savings, they said. Nikola founder Milton was taken into custody and later released on a $100 million bond.

Electric trucks do exist, mostly medium-duty hybrid that stop and start a lot to recharge the battery. This limits their application to delivery and garbage trucks and buses. These trucks are heavily subsidized at state and federal levels since on average they cost three times as much as a diesel truck equivalent (Table 1).

But even these stop-and-start a lot to recharge the battery trucks may not be economically feasible. Nikola Motor Company’s plans to mass produce 5,000 garbage trucks for Republic Services, one of the nation’s largest waste management service providers, were canceled, the latest in a string of bad news for the electric truck and hydrogen cell maker (Alcorn 2020).

The most vital truck is a farm tractor to plant and harvest food. A battery-driven tractor would have to be very small or the weight would compact the soil and reduce crop productivity for many decades. The first one I saw appear in the search engine was the 7030 series John Deere battery pack tractor in December 2016, and it was pretty small. But they never did make it, and it isn’t even mentioned anywhere on their website.

The latest tractor, not in production but promised in 2021, is the $50,000 Monarch Electric Tractor with peak power of 70 HP for a few seconds, otherwise 40 HP (Smith 2020). The farmers comments were interesting:

• Most farmers I know frequently have to drive their tractors long distances, sometimes miles, just to get to the field of the day. And there’s no power out there…. Talk about range anxiety!
• 40hp class tractors do not usually till fields. Where I am now, for these applications we see a 75hp class tractor at the very least, usually 90hp and up on larger farms
• Take it from someone who is actually a farmer. This will never take over the heavy tractor work as there are constant interactions due to irregularities in the ground which require the operator to adjust the tractor or the attached implement to the terrain, ie. rocks, roots, animal burrows. drainage etc. Farming is extremely brutal on equipment and it must be durable enough and simple enough to fix so that we don’t miss very small time windows on each step of the process. Farming has ridiculously small margins so the economic proposition of service life vs. amortized and operating costs over that life must make sense no one wants to pay $4 for one onion.
• I bought my MF 133 for $1200 USD and it works just fine for being 50 years old. Would I like 4WD? Yeah. Would I like an electric? Sure! Do I see this thing running very long in -10º with a snow-blower hanging off of the PTO? Color me skeptical.
• As far as the “goal of 20-plus years of continuous service life” — uh huh. Considering my issues and my friend’s issues with getting EVs repaired, I’ll believe it when I see it.
• I know a few farmers (corn, beans and hogs or cattle) and they dont really have a use for a 40-70hp tractor. This is likely to end up at grape vineyards or hobby farmers who use a tractor intensely for a few days or weeks of the year.
• The grid is thin in the country, if battery tractors existed, could they all charge up at once in the narrow planting and harvesting seasons?

Tractors do a lot of heavy work over rough ground, and today only internal combustion engines can provide efficient mobile and portable heavy-duty power (DTF 2003).

The Port of Los Angeles thought about using heavy-duty all-electric drayage trucks to improve air quality. Drayage trucks drive at least 200 miles a day back and forth between the port and inland warehouses. But it remained a thought experiment because electric drayage trucks cost too much, $307,890. The 350 kWh battery alone is $110,880 dollars. That’s three times as much as an equivalent diesel truck $104,360, and 100 times more than a used $3,000 drayage truck. And cost wasn’t the only problem (Calstart 2013a):

• The range is too short because of the battery weight and size. Drayage trucks need to go at least 200 miles a day, but at best an electric truck could go 100 miles before having to be recharged, which would take too long, and require expensive infrastructure to charge each truck several times a day.
• The batteries/battery pack cost too much.
• Overcoming the long time to recharge by using fast-charging may shorten battery life which would result in the unacceptable expense of a new battery pack before the lifetime of the truck ended
• Although electricity is available almost everywhere, the quantities required for a fleet of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) drayage trucks are very high and could require significant infrastructure. Multiple costly high-power and/or fast-charging stations would be required
• Roadway power infrastructure is complicated and expensive, and may be appropriate only in certain areas or applications. The impact on the grid and whether enough power could be supplied is unknown for the roughly 10,000 drayage trucks in the I-710 region
• Large battery pack life-cycle and maintenance costs are unknown
• Swapping stations are impractical and would require “industry standardization and ‘ruggedization’ of battery packs, as well as standardized software and communication protocols for batteries and system integration, plus many locations, and the storage space and operating space for multiple large trucks and hundreds of large battery packs.

Table 1. Electric trucks coust 3 times more than diesel equivalents (ICEV) on average. Source: 2016 New York State Electric Vehicle – Voucher Incentive Fund Vehicle Eligibility List. https://truck-vip.ny.gov/NYSEV-VIF-vehicle-list.php

Other costs

• Battery cost is a major component in the overall cost, ranging from $500 to $700 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) range. This is substantially more than the cost for a conventional diesel powerplant. In their 2013 I-710 commercialization study, CALSTART estimated the cost of a 350 kWh battery system at over $200,000 in 2012.
• A BEV 240 kW fast charger can cost can cost $1,500,000 (with $300,000 in additional costs). It can charge 5 heavy duty trucks (ICF 2016) per charger: $350,000 EVSE 450kW+ $150,000 to $200,000 installation costs per EVSE (Calstart 2015), or $350,000 for a specialized Proterra fast charger able to accommodate up to eight Proterra transit buses (ARB 2015)
• Additional costs to upgrade the distribution system if the rated capacity of the installed electric equipment is exceeded. A fleet with 20 E-Trucks in Southern California had to upgrade a transformer on the customer side of the meter. The transformer cost $470,000. 100 medium-duty E-Trucks charging at the same time would demand 1.5 MW of power on the grid and 50 E-Buses would demand 3.0 MW. This is in the same order of magnitude as the peak power demand of the Transamerica Pyramid building, the tallest skyscraper in San Francisco, CA (Calstart 2015)
• Unlike electric cars, which can charge at night when rates are lowest (11 pm to 8 am for $0.05), e-trucks and buses need to run during the day at the highest peak hours (12 noon to 6 p.m. $0.20) and mid-peak charges (8 a.m. to noon and 6 pm to 11 pm ($0.10), doubling to quadrupling the price paid for electricity (Calstart 2015).
• Earning money from V2G is not likely to be adopted by commercial fleets because they have rigid operating schedules while the grid varies constantly and unpredictably. If the grid tapped into e-truck batteries, it might reduce their range or delay availability (Calstart 2015)

Electric trucks are also not commercial yet because they have too many performance issues, such as poor performance in cold weather, swift acceleration, driving up steep hills, too short a range and battery life, they take too long to recharge, declining miles per day as the battery degrades, all of which make planning routes difficult and inefficient.

It is also much harder to develop batteries for trucks than cars because trucks are expected to last 15 years (versus 10 for cars) or go for 1 million miles. Trucks also have to endure more extreme conditions of temperature, vibrations, and corrosive agents than autos (NRC 2015), and it is hard to make battery packs durable enough for this rougher ride, longer miles, and longevity.

Calstart interviewed many businesses about their reluctance to buy hybrid or all electric trucks, and found their greatest concerns were the purchase cost, lack of confidence in the technology, lack of industry and truck manufacturer support, lack of infrastructure, and the heavy weight (Calstart 2012).

Elon Musk recently tweeted that Tesla will build a semi-truck with absolutely no details, promising to tweet again half a year from now with more information. Why should I believe an Elon Musk tweet any more than a Trump tweet? Especially since nearly all of the electric truck companies I studied for “When Trucks Stop Running” are out of business now, despite huge federal and state subsidies. Given that Tesla is nearly $5 billion in debt, he’s clearly angling to get drayage truck subsidies from the Ports of Los Angeles and San Pedro and more money from investors. None of the electric trucks I studied or that are on the market now were long-haul or off-road tractors, harvesters, construction, logging, or other class 8 heavy-duty trucks (except garbage trucks). They were all much smaller class 4-6 delivery trucks or buses, because they stop and start enough to use hybrid batteries, a far more commercially likely possibility than long-haul trucks, that can go for hundreds of miles before stopping, and be up to 80,000 pounds (and even more weight off-road). This wired.com article points out other issues as well with electric trucks as well.

But if the devil is in the details, then read more below in my summary and excerpts of a paper about electric trucks. Catenary trucks, which use overhead wires, will be covered in another post. Both electric and catenary trucks are covered at greater length in “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer

Abbreviations:

• BEV Battery Electric Vehicle
• PEV Plug-in Battery Electric Vehicle
• HEV Hybrid Electric Vehicle
• ICEV Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (usually diesel, also gasoline engines)

What follows is a summary and then deytails of the following paper:

**Pelletier, S., et al. September 2014. Battery Electric Vehicles for Goods Distribution: A Survey of Vehicle Technology, Market Penetration, Incentives and Practices. CIRRELT. 51 pages.

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SUMMARY

Financial

While commercial BEVs’ energy costs can be nearly four times cheaper than ICEV equivalents, the downside is that their purchase costs are around three times higher.

A study of drayage trucks on the I-710 corridor found that $3,000 old used trucks were used to take containers from Los Angeles ports to inland facilities that paid $100 per container delivered. “Costs for a full BEV truck are not expected to go below $250,000 even past the 2025 time frame of this report. … The same is true for fuel cells” (Calstart 2013b).

Furthermore, the cost of the equipment necessary for charging the battery can be several thousand dollars. The high cost of level 3 Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) is still a significant barrier to a wider adoption of fast charging. Level 2 charging equipment costs approximately $1,000 per station and installation costs approximately $2,500 to $6,000 for one unit or $18,520 for 10 units. Level 3 fast charging is not used much yet because more research needs to be done on whether this shortens battery life.

PEV and HEV vehicles typically have significant autonomy and payload limitations and involve much larger initial investments in comparison to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV). The battery pack is the most expensive component in PEVs and significantly augments their purchase cost compared to similar ICEV trucks.

Competing with compressed natural gas (CNG) and existing diesel (ICEV) trucks will be hard — significant improvements in ICEV efficiencies are likely in the future from the 21st Century truck partnership and other efforts to improve diesel engines. BEVs will also have to compete with other fuel alternatives such as CNG, in which case their business case can be even harder to make.

Battery Issues

Can’t carry enough cargo: Battery size and weight reduce maximum payloads for electric vans and trucks compared to equivalent diesel trucks. Even HEVs suffer from the extra weight of two power-trains reducing payload capacity.

Short range. Technical disadvantages include a relatively low achievable range. Typical ranges for freight BEVs vary from 100 to 150 kilometers (62-93 miles) on a single charge.

The miles a truck can travel declines over time. In Germany and the Netherlands, the limited operating range of electric trucks caused less flexibility in planning trips and restricted ad-hoc tour planning, resulting in less efficient operations. Also, the range declined over time through battery aging, when carrying heavy loads, and in winter from heating, lights and ventilation. Furthermore, the range listed by EV manufacturers is based on measurements according to the New European Drive Cycle which, compared to real life energy consumption in urban last mile delivery, do not give a reliable indication of the expected range. The reliability of the EVs was dependent on the model; certain prototypes and conversions were judged as reliable, while others were reported as insufficient (Taefi 2014).

Short battery life. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years.

Range is also shortened by: extreme temperatures, high driving speeds, rapid acceleration, carrying heavy loads and driving up slopes. The efficiency and driving range varies substantially based on driving conditions and driving habits. Extreme outside temperatures tend to reduce range because more energy must be used to heat or cool the cabin. Cold batteries do not provide as much power as warm batteries do. The use of electrical equipment, such as windshield wipers and seat heaters, can reduce range. High driving speeds reduce range because more energy is required to overcome increased air resistance. Rapid acceleration reduces range compared with smooth acceleration. Hauling heavy loads or driving up significant inclines also reduces range (U.S. Department of Energy 2012b).

Long time to charge battery: It takes a long time to charge the batteries because of their low energy density. Recharging time may take up to 4 to 8 hours, and even with quick-charging equipment, recharging a battery to 80% takes up to 30 minutes.

Charging issues: The most common way of charging was to slow charge the vehicles over night at company premises. The in-house charging infrastructure had to be fixed several times when it was overloaded by the high capacity need of the e-trucks in Germany. Other charging related issues found were that the implementation of a smart grid and load management for large electrical fleets is not yet clarified; solutions to ensure charging in case of power outage are necessary; and charging plugs were too damageable, so only specially trained staff could handle the plug, which caused problems with replacement drivers and training issues. The limited number of charging spots outside the cities and lack of battery swapping for larger vehicles was also an issue (Taefi 2014).

Batteries have low energy density — too low. Batteries are a critical factor in the widespread adoption of electric vehicles but have a much lower energy density than gasoline, partly caused by the large amount of metals used in their production.

Battery life too short: Lithium-ion batteries in current freight BEVs typically provide 1,000 to 2,000 deep cycle life, which should last around six years.

Some manufacturers are working on a 4,000 to 5,000 deep cycle life within 5 years, but there are often tradeoffs to be made between different lithium based battery chemistries. For example, lithium-titanate batteries already reach 5,000 full discharge cycles, but have lower energy densities than other lithium-ion technologies. Calendar life, on the other hand, is a measure of natural degradation with time and was in the 7-10 years range as of 2010 with a projected range of 13-15 years by 2020. Typical battery warranty lengths for electric trucks have been reported as being in the three to five year range.

Battery degradation. Battery health can be influenced by the way they are charged and discharged. For example, frequent overcharging (i.e., charging the battery close to maximum capacity) can affect the battery’s lifespan, just as can keeping the battery at high states of charge for lengthy periods**. As expressed through deep cycle life, battery deterioration can also occur if it is frequently discharged to very deep levels . This generally implies that only 80% of the marketed battery capacity is actually usable. Using high power levels to quickly charge batteries could also have negative impacts on battery life, especially if used in the beginning and end of the charging cycle. The uncertainty regarding the effect of extreme operational temperatures on lithium batteries is another issue that should be further considered. All these potential deteriorating factors can speed up the reduction of maximum available battery capacity and shorten vehicle range and battery life**.

Lithium-ion batteries. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years (AustriaTech 2014).

The Demands on the Electric Grid

Power Requirements to recharge batteries are high. A battery electric truck with a 120 kWh battery would require a charging power level of 15 kW to be able to charge in 8 hours, and the same vehicle with a battery pack of 200 kWh would require a power level of 400 kW to be able to be charged in 15-30 minutes.

The impact of the high power demand from the electricity grid. This could limit the amount of vehicles in a depot which could simultaneously be charged with high power levels, potentially requiring further investments for transformer upgrades.

The stations would also need to recharge a very large amount of batteries at the same time, which could impact the electric grid.

Out of Business

Better Place was considered a fron-trunner in the battery swapping industry but it recently filed for bankruptcy (Fiske (2013)).

Some models have recently been discontinued due to manufacturers’ financial difficulties or restructuring plans; these include Azure Dynamics’ Transit Connect Electric in 2012, Navistar’s eStar in 2013, and Modec’s Box Van in 2011.

Commercial Vehicles are dependent on government subsidies

To see the New York State All-Electric NYSEV-VIF incentives, click here.

To see the California Hybrid Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP) incentives, click here.

Many U.S. companies which operate battery electric trucks also have received funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Plug-in electric trucks and vans (class 2 to 8 vehicles) have generally only penetrated niche applications, while remaining dependent on government incentives. They attribute this to key industry players going out of business, the conservative nature of fleet operators when it comes to new technologies, renewed interest in natural gas, and the important cost premium of these vehicles.

Sales of HEV & BEV trucks are very low

The global stock of class 2 to 8 HEVs, PHEVs and BEVs was around 20,000 at the end of 2013, versus 15 million diesel and gasoline (ICEV) trucks sold in 2013.

The vast majority of expected sales are not fully electric plug-ins, but are Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) which do not require plug-in recharging (but which are only suitable for applications that require a great deal of stopping and starting, i.e. garbage trucks, delivery vans).

One of project FREVUE’s reports identifies other factors explaining the limited use of electric freight vehicles in city logistics, namely doubts regarding technology readiness, high purchase costs, limited amount of models on the market, and rapid technology improvements themselves can be a market barrier since fleet operators fear that an electric freight vehicle purchased today could quickly lose all residual value. The uncertainties surrounding the vehicles’ residual value also limit leasing companies’ interest in electric freight vehicles.

The bottom line is that a wider adoption of Battery Electric Vehicles can only be achieved if these prove to be cost-effective.

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[ Here are more details. ]

The worst possible use of an e-truck is daily mileage less than 40 km, never needs to return to the base, has little chance of charging while on operations, needs to be charged in 20 minutes or less, carry a full load equal to a diesel truck, carries the full load all day, goes the same speed much of the day, travels on freeways, hilly terrain, and charges at peak load. The best possible use of EV is 60+ km/day, returns to the base to recharge 3 to 6 times a day for 30 minutes a day, carries half a load, has very high variations in speeds traveled in flat urban areas and only charges off-peak (AustriaTech 2014b).

Cost Competitiveness of Battery Electric Vans and Trucks

While commercial BEVs’ energy costs can be nearly four times cheaper than diesel equivalents, the downside is that their purchase costs are approximately three times higher (Feng and Figliozzi 2013).

Furthermore, the cost of the equipment necessary for charging the vehicle’s battery, which can reach several thousands of dollars, should be considered. Maintenance costs should also be significantly less than for ICEVs (Taefi et al. (2014)) and this advantage should increase as the vehicles get older (Electrification Coalition (2010)). Because of these different cost structures between ICEVs and BEVs, the only way to appropriately compare the cost competitiveness of battery electric vans and trucks for goods distribution is to study their whole life costs (McMorrin et al. 2012), according to which all costs incurred over the vehicle’s life are actualized to a net present value. Whole life costs are also referred to as the vehicle’s total cost of ownership (TCO). The following are brief descriptions of the cost structure and TCO of battery electric freight vehicles compared to their conventional counterparts.

Cost Structure: High Fixed Costs and Low Variable Costs Purchase costs for medium duty battery electric trucks offered by AMP Trucks, Inc., Boulder Electric Vehicles, Electric Vehicle International, and Smith Electric Vehicles range from $130,000 to $185,000 US, while equivalent ICE trucks go within the $55,000 to $70,000 range (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014)). One way to decrease the cost premium of these larger BEVs is to be able to right-size the costly battery according to the application (Electrification Coalition 2013). However, while this measure could significantly improve the vehicles’ business case and allow for additional payload capacity, the smaller battery would require more frequent deep discharges, which could cause accelerated battery deterioration (Pitkanen and Van Amburg 2012). Another option for reducing upfront costs while also addressing fleet operators’ concerns about battery life is to lease the battery for a monthly fee based on energy consumed or distance traveled (McMorrin et al. 2012).

However, uncertainties regarding battery residual value limit many fleets’ interest in battery leasing (Pitkanen and Van Amburg (2012)), most likely because these uncertainties will be integrated into the leasing fee. Furthermore, battery leasing currently only seems available for a few battery electric vans but not for trucks, for whom it could significantly help the business case based on whole life costs (Valenta (2013)). Purchase costs for battery electric vans vary largely depending on GVWs and the availability of battery leasing. Large manufacturer products with battery leasing go for about $25,000 for GVWs close to 2,100 kg. Examples of these include Renault for its Kangoo Z.E. vans and Nissan for its e-NV200 van, with monthly battery leasing fees starting at approximately $100 per month and varying according to monthly mileage and contract lengths (Renault (2014c), Nissan (2014d)). Typical purchase costs with battery ownership range from approximately $25,000 for lighter battery electric vans (GVW starting at 1100 kg) with limited battery capacities, to about $100,000 for larger battery electric vans (GVW up to 3,500 kg) with higher battery capacities. Conventional cargo vans with GVWs close to 4,500 kg cost between $30,000 and $40,000, GVWs close to 3,500 kg are within the $25,000-$30,000 price range, and GVWs around 2,500 kg are closer to $20,000 (Nissan (2014a)).

Valuable sources for vehicle prices include Source London (2013) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014), referred to as SL (2013) and NYSEV-VIF (2014) in the tables. Some models’ prices are simply not available, most likely because, as Lee et al. (2013, p.8025) point out, “commercial vehicle prices can vary depending upon negotiation between fleet operators and truck manufacturers, and truck volumes to be purchased”. This could also imply that the prices listed here could vary depending on specific purchasing contexts. Ranges for these class 3 to 6 trucks are from 115 to 200 km (71-124 miles) depending on battery size, vehicle weight

• $133,000 AMP vehicles 100 kWh battery, 6350-8845 kg GVW
• $130-150,000 Boulder 500-series 72 kWh battery, 4765-5215 kg GVW, payload 1405 kg,
• $150,000 Navistar eStar 80 kWh battery 5490 kg GVW, payload 1860 kg
• $185,000 EVI walk-in van 99 kWh battery, 7255-10435 GVW
• $150,000 Smith Electric “Newton” 80 kWh, $181,000 with a 120 kWh battery

Den Boer et al. (2013) state that approximately 1,000 battery electric distribution trucks were operated around the world as of July 2013. CALSTART’s report on the demand assessment of electric truck fleets (Parish and Pitkanen 2012) claims that industry experts have estimated there were less than 500 battery electric trucks in use in North America as of 2012, with most sales made in US states like California and New York, which offered incentives for these vehicles. Also, approximately 4,500 hybrid electric trucks were sold in North America as of 2012. The large majority of hybrid and battery electric trucks sold were in medium duty and vocational applications rather than long-haul class 8 applications. Stocks of freight electric vehicles (vans and trucks) as of January 1st 2012 in Europe included 70 in Belgium, 106 in Denmark, 338 in Germany, 1,566 in France, 217 in the Netherlands, 103 in Norway, 38 in Austria, 13 in Portugal, 459 in Spain, and over 2000 in London (TU Delft et al. 2013). However, most of the electric vans in the UK are old low performance vans with lead-acid batteries, with only a few hundred modern electric vans with lithium-ion batteries sold in 2012 (Cluzel et al. 2013).

As previously noted, the advantage in the cost structure of BEVs comes from their lower variable costs (i.e., energy and maintenance costs) (McMorrin et al. 2012).

However, electricity rates incurred depend on geographical location, average consumption levels, and time of use (Hydro-Quebec (2014)). Charging during off-peak hours can allow for reduced electricity rates and seasonal price variations may also occur. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the potential of lower energy costs of commercial BEVs according to one’s specific context.

Gallo and Tomi´ c (2013) provide an overview of the performance of delivery BEVs (class 4-5) operated by a large parcel delivery fleet in Los Angeles. The findings showed that in comparison to similar diesel vehicles, the electric trucks were up to four times more energy efficient, offering up to 80% lower annual fuel costs. The report estimated maintenance savings ranging from $0.02 to $0.10 per mile, finding these savings “will vary widely depending on driving conditions, vehicle usage, driver behavior, vehicle model and regenerative braking usage”(p.53). Other findings included the need for drivers to be trained to adapt their techniques to electric trucks, that a minimum utilization of 50 miles per day is necessary to recuperate purchase costs in a reasonable time span, and that incentives are still necessary at this stage to make the vehicles a viable alternative. Additionally, some repairs needed to be provided by the vehicle manufacturers because of the limited experience of fleet mechanics with electric trucks. TU Delft et al. (2013) also reported several companies having experienced a lack of available resources for quickly solving technical issues with freight BEVs. This is important to consider because in order to profit from lower variable costs, companies must have access to reliable maintenance services and spare parts.

Figliozzi (2013) compared whole life costs of battery electric delivery trucks to a conventional diesel truck serving less-than-truckload delivery routes. The BEVs are the Navistar eStar (priced at $150,000) and Smith Newton (priced at $150,000), while the diesel reference is an Isuzu N-series (priced at $50,000). Different urban delivery scenarios were designed based on typical US cities values and different routing constraints. Thus, 243 different route instances were simulated by varying values for the number of customers, the service area, the depot-service area distance, the customer service time, and the customer demand weight. Different battery replacement and cost scenarios were also studied. The planning horizon was set to ten years, with the residual value of the vehicles set at 20% of their purchase price. In spite of the fact that the electric trucks had a higher TCO in 210 out of the 243 route instances, a combination of the following factors would allow them to be a viable alternative: high daily distances, low speeds and congestion, frequent customer stops during which an ICEV would idle, other factors amplifying the BEVs’ superior efficiency, financial incentives or technological breakthroughs to reduce purchase costs, and a planning horizon above ten years. With a battery replacement after 150,000 miles at a forecasted cost of $600/kWh, the diesel truck always had a lower TCO.

The need for a battery replacement significantly decreases thee business case for BEV Trucks

Battery electric freight vehicles currently fit much more into city distribution than long haul applications because of the battery’s energy density limitations (den Boer et al. 2013). Typical daily miles traveled by urban delivery trucks are often lower than the range already achieved by electric commercial vehicles (Feng and Figliozzi 2013). With limited payloads, this makes them more viable for last mile deliveries in urban areas involving frequent stop-and-go movements, limited route lengths, as well as low travel speeds (Nesterova et al. 2013), AustriaTech 2014b), Taefi et al. 2014)). With forecasted reductions in battery costs and evolution of diesel prices are compared to electricity prices, as time goes by, BEV distribution trucks should become more competitive with equivalent ICEVs based on their own economic proposition (den Boer et al. 2013). However, commercial BEVs will also have to compete with other fuel alternatives such as compressed natural gas, in which case their business case can be even harder to make (Valenta 2013). Furthermore, significant improvements in ICEV efficiencies are expected in upcoming years (Mosquet et al. (2011)). Nevertheless, for now, the appropriateness of using delivery BEVs ultimately depends on the context of their intended use, but the high purchase cost has been extensively pointed out as a huge cost effectiveness barrier, and the need for incentives at this stage of the market seems like a recurring requirement for a viable business case.

Financial Incentives

The goal of financial incentives is to reduce the upfront costs of electric vehicles and charging equipment (IEA and EVI (2013)). One form is purchase subsidies granted upon buying the vehicle (Mock and Yang (2014)). An example of this is the California Hybrid Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP) which provides up to $35,000 towards hybrid truck purchases and up to $50,000 towards battery electric truck purchases to be used in California (Parish and Pitkanen (2012)). Eligible vehicles can be found in CEPAARB (2014). Another similar program is the New York Truck Voucher Incentive Program, which offers up to $60,000 for electric truck purchases to be used New York (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014)).

Companies are also eligible to receive similar purchase subsidies for participating in demonstration or performance evaluation projects (US DOE (2013b)).

Overviews of tax exemptions related to electric vehicles can be found in IEA and EVI (2013), Mock and Yang (2014), ACEA (2014), and US DOE (2012a).

Companies Experimenting with BEVs In North America, large companies using battery electric delivery vehicles include FedEx, General Electric, Coca-Cola, UPS, Frito-Lay, Staples, Enterprise, Hertz and others (Electrification Coalition (2013b)). Frito-Lay alone has been operating 176 battery electric delivery trucks in North America since 2010 (US DOE (2014b)). Fedex also operates over 100 electric delivery trucks (Woody (2012)). Many U.S. companies which operate battery electric trucks have received funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to cover a portion of the vehicles’ purchase costs (US DOE (2013b)).

BEVs in city logistics have often been used for parcel delivery, deliveries to stores, waste collection and home supermarket deliveries. A few notable private initiatives identified in the report include Deret’s 50 electric vans for last mile deliveries to city centers in France, UPS’s 12 Modec vehicles for parcel and post delivery in the UK and Germany, Tesco’s 15 Modec vehicles for on-line shopping deliveries in London, Sainsbury’s use of 19 electric vans for supermarket

Drivers expressed concerns regarding the reduction in payloads.

Delivered products include parcel, courier, textiles, fast food, bakery, hygienic articles and household articles.

Negative factors experienced included the required investments (vehicles and EVSE), reduced payloads, limited range, the effect of cold temperatures on range, imprecise marketed vehicle ranges, the lack of resources to fix technical problems, incompatibility of vehicles’ connectors with public charging infrastructure, and the need to train drivers to better adapt to the vehicles. All in all, the case studies indicated that the vehicles were found to be most adequate for last mile and night deliveries.

Electric Tricycles carrying up to 440 pounds (200 kg)

Urban consolidation centers (UCC) are logistic facilities multiple organizations use, close to the area they serve. UCCs using BEVs for last mile deliveries also often use smaller vehicles ideal for tight urban areas, which can lead to increases in vehicle kilometers per ton delivered (Allen et al. (2012)). These smaller vehicles are typically electric tricycles, which have payloads of up to 200 kg (AustriaTech 2014b) and low driving speeds. These tricycles can find parking locations more easily than larger vehicles, can often use bicycle lanes for faster access to customers in congested and pedestrian areas, and from a cost point of view are more affected by driver costs than purchase costs and utilization rates (Tipagornwong and Figliozzi 2014). Allen et al. (2007) present an example of the use of electric tricycles by a UCC. La Petite Reine used a consolidation center in the center of Paris for last mile deliveries of food products, flowers, parcels, and equipment/parts with electric tricycles with a maximum payload of 100 kg (220 pounds). The initial trial in 2003 was deemed a success, with monthly trips growing from 796 to 14,631 and the number of tricycles from seven to 19 in the first 24 months. Operations are now permanent and La Petite Reine operates three locations in Paris with over 70 collaborators, 80 tricycles, 15 electric light duty vehicles and 1 million deliveries per year (La Petite Reine 2013).

Nesterova et al. (2013) present two other cases of two phased deliveries in Paris integrating to some extent electric bikes and tricycles. The first is Chronopost International, which offers express delivery of parcels and uses two underground areas in Paris for sorting last mile deliveries. The parcels are first transported from their facility at the border of Paris to their underground areas, where they are sorted per route and distributed to customers by electric bikes and vans in inner Paris. The second is Distripolis, a delivery concept tested by road transport operator GEODIS. A depot in Bercy receives shipments from three organizations and delivers the packages under 200 kg to multiple UCCs in the city center of Paris (heavier packages are directly delivered to the receiver). From here, electric trucks and tricycles are used for the last mile deliveries of the light packages. Distripolis operated 10 light duty electric vehicles (Electron Electric truck, GVW 3.5 tons) and one electric tricycle in 2012, and aims at having 56 tricycles and 75 electric vehicles by 2015.

BESTFACT (2013) provides another case of two-phased deliveries with electric vehicles. Gnewt Cargo operates a transhipment facility for the last mile deliveries of an office supplies company in London (Office Depot). They use an 18 tons vehicle to transport parcels from the office supplies company warehouse in the suburbs of London to the transhipment center in the city, where the parcels are transferred onto electric vans and tricycles for final delivery to customers. Initially a trial in 2009, the company has permanently implanted this system because it involved no increases in operational costs, and it plans to implement similar delivery systems in other cities (Browne et al. (2011)).

Other Interesting Distribution Concepts for BEVs

An interesting experiment regarding last mile deliveries with BEVs can be found in the context of project STRAIGHTSOL, during which TNT Express integrated a mobile depot into their operations in Brussels with electric vehicles during the summer of 2013 (Nathanail et al. 2013), Anderson and Eidhammer 2013), Verlinde et al. 2014). A large trailer equipped as a mobile depot with typical depot facilities was loaded with parcels at TNT’s depot near the airport in the morning. Next it was towed by a truck to a dedicated parking spot in the city center, where last mile deliveries as well as pick-ups were made with electric tricycles by a Brussels courier company, which then returned to the mobile depot with the collected parcels. At the end of the day, the mobile depot was towed back to TNT’s depot, from where the collected parcels were shipped. Challenges included gaining exclusive access to the parking location for the mobile depot, significant increases in operating costs, and decreases in the punctuality of the deliveries and pickups (Johansen et al. 2014), Verlinde et al. 2014).

They could find a niche application in short haul port drayage operations (CALSTART 2013b). One example of this practice is found at the Port of Los Angeles, where 25 heavy duty battery electric drayage trucks manufactured by Balqon were tested for operational suitability. In exchange for the purchase of the trucks, Balqon agreed to locate its factory in L.A. and pay the port a royalty for future sales (EVI et al. (2012)). The Port of L.A. also tested similar heavy duty battery electric trucks from Transpower and U.S Hybrid, as well as a fuel cell heavy duty truck (Port of L.A. 2014).

Incentives still play a critical role in the business case of these vehicles, but the long-term unsustainability of certain financial incentives and recent trends suggest their imminent phasing out (Bernhart et al. 2014) will require that these vehicles be cost competitive independent of such incentives. One could argue that these vehicles are not ready for this challenge, in view of current cost dynamics, recent financial setbacks of key industry players, often resulting in discontinued vehicle models (Schmouker 2012), Shankleman 2011), Truckinginfo 2013), Everly 2014), Torregrossa 2014)).

The market take-up of electric vehicles in urban freight transport is very slow, because costs are high compared to conventional vehicles and companies are still uncertain about the maturity of the technology and about the availability of charging infrastructure.

The worst possible use of an e-truck is daily mileage less than 40 km, never needs to return to the base, has little chance of charging while on operations, needs to be charged in 20 minutes or less, carry a full load equal to a diesel truck, carries the full load all day, goes the same speed much of the day, travels on freeways, hilly terrain, and charges at peak load. The best possible use of EV is 60+ km/day, returns to the base to recharge 3 to 6 times a day for 30 minutes a day, carries half a load, has very high variations in speeds traveled in flat urban areas and only charges off-peak.

Financially at least 50% public subsidies pay for it

At present, lithium ion batteries are most often used in electric freight vehicles with a current battery lifetime of 1000 to 2000 cycles (approximately 6 years). Also, the kilometer range declines over time, which may reduce peak power capacity and energy density. For these reasons electric vehicles are currently most suitable for daily urban distribution activities as the battery energy density is too low for regular long haul applications. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years. Improvements in battery powered trucks are expected within five years in terms of the cost and durability of batteries.

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An astute journalist I know once described carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a "delay-and-fail strategy" devised by the fossil fuel industry. The industry's ploy was utterly obvious to him: Promise to perfect and deploy CCS at some vague point in the future. By the time people catch on that CCS won't work, the fossil fuel industry will have successfully extended the time it has operated without onerous regulation for another couple of decades.

And because huge financial resources (mostly government resources) will have gone to CCS projects instead of low-carbon energy production, society will continue to be wildly dependent on carbon-based fuels (giving the industry further running room).

The trouble is that the cynical CCS strategy has already been under way and failing for more than two decades already. And yet, it is seeking a renewed lease on life with a proposal for a vast network of carbon dioxide pipelines "twice the size of the current U.S. oil pipeline network by volume." The public face of the effort is a former Obama administration secretary of energy with a perennially bad haircut, Ernest Moniz.

Moniz has a partnership with the AFL-CIO to push the idea. No doubt unions like the project because it would create a lot of jobs regardless of whether it actually addresses climate change.

Just for the record, here's a list of reasons that CCS doesn't work and likely will not work in any time frame that matters for addressing climate change:

1. It's very costly. Many of the pilot projects have been shut down because they are uneconomical.

2. Suitable underground storage is not abundant and frequently not near facilities that produce the carbon dioxide.

3. Long-term storage may fail, releasing the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere anyway. After all, one must have injection wells into the underground storage, wells that can leak if not properly maintained. Not least, there is no multi-decade record of successful, leak-free sequestration. And finally, there is no assurance that such storage facilities can be maintained properly for the many centuries required to have them actually protect the climate.

4. The carbon dioxide in some current viable CCS projects is used by the oil industry to flush out more oil from existing wells. That's hardly in keeping with the purpose of addressing climate change.

Energy expert Vaclav Smil did some calculations for an American Scientist magazine article that demonstrate the scale of the CCS challenge:

[I]n order to sequester just a fifth of current CO2 emissions we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation-storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build. Technically possible—but not within a timeframe that would prevent CO2 from rising above 450 ppm.

Smil wrote that back in 2011. The latest reading in Hawaii at the often-cited Scripps Institution of Oceanography Mauna Loa Observatory is 418 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. The relentless upward slope of the observatory's graph of carbon dioxide concentration shows that the fossil fuel industry's tactics—of which delay-and-fail CCS is just one—are working splendidly.

It is troubling that a key official at the U.S. Department of Energy is taking the CCS plan seriously. One would think that decades of failure would finally make clear the false promises of the industry. But, of course, failure is the whole point of the CCS ruse. What's puzzling is that the failure to date has somehow become a rallying cry to try harder by building one of the biggest boondoggles ever conceived.

I am not a climatologist, but as a physician, you only master certain areas and otherwise you listen to various other specialists. We are also used to deal with uncertainties: e.g. If you are considering an operation, you estimate the chance of success based on the patient's age, nutritional and physical condition, morale, heart health and previous illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes etc. Every risk factor reduces the chances of success. Inability to calculate anything precisely does not release you from making an estimate.

Similarly, the uncertainties in the climate discussion do not release one from making an assessment. There we are unfortunately hindered by some taboos and illusions, but let’s try:

I grew up in Basel where in the museum hangs a picture of the dead Christ, painted by Holbein 500 years ago.

This made a deep impression on me and I had it above my desk for years: A mercilessly realistic view of our God, his passion and the end of us all. We have to measure our actions against this end. Until then we must do, what we do as well as possible and not lose time. And there is already the first taboo, death. Death being repressed in the prevailing consciousness, much that is related to it cannot be seen.

Later I studied medicine and learned some principles:

1. Illnesses often begin in secret: First symptoms are often not the beginning, but the last act. A drunkard or a smoker take decades to ruin their liver or lungs; this goes unnoticed because the organism compensates. Once jaundice or shortness of breath occurs, the further course is not in decades, but rather years. Similarly, if our bees die, this is not a beginning but the end, because they have been poisoned already for a long time.

2. Risk factors for disease can more than add up: E.g. depression occurs in one percent of the population every month. A serious stress factor (death of family member, loss of workplace, illness, etc.) adds two percent more. Two stress factors add three percent. With three stress factors, one could assume depression in nine percent, but it is 24 percent: Suddenly the risks multiply. Similar mechanisms may apply in other situations.

3. Patients and insurances want forecasts. Diseases often remain true to themselves: A patient with multiple sclerosis who is only slightly disabled after ten years, will probably not be in a wheelchair after another decade.

4. This is only true in the absence of self-reinforcing mechanisms: The most dreaded example is the narrowing of the aortic valve, the valve of the main artery. The heart adapts, uses more energy, generates more strength and pushes enough blood through the valve; patients can even practice athletics. But when the heart can no longer get enough blood for its own energy requirements, heart failure and death occur within seconds, We physicians are terrified of such self-reinforcing and uncontrollable mechanisms.

5. In our profession there are authorities: If a physician repeatedly has made diagnoses missed by everyone else, he will get a fabulous reputation. You believe him with advantage, even if you don't quite understand his reasoning.

6. Cheating is useless: If the patient dies you are dealt with by the pathologist or the coroner. They are merciless.

Let's apply this wisdom to the environmental situation:

In 1972 the Club of Rome fed whatever one knew into a computer and he predicted that if we don't stop economic growth and limit the population at four billion, ecosystems will destabilize in the middle of our century. They even mentioned the greenhouse effect hoping for a timely solution. The limiting factor was pollution, not scarcity of resources or of land. Whoever pretends that the Club of Rome is discredited because it incorrectly predicted a resource shortage tells a lie or has not read the report. Later, the Club of Rome corrected, that perhaps even a population of 8 billion could be sustainable, but they explicitly stated that the consequences of human aggressiveness could not be modelled.

In 1988 James Hansen first demonstrated that the greenhouse effect was happening while predicting the future warming with great accuracy to this day. Hansen is an authority. If he questions official forecasts and measures, this must raise concern.

James Hansen is taken away by police in shackles

The Paris Treaties of 2015 wanted to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 or 2 degrees. And this brings us to the illusions:

First illusion: The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) takes 1850-1900 as the starting point which gives a temperature rise of more than one degree. But industrialization started 100 years earlier, and starting from the lower pre-industrial values we have already reached the 1.5 degrees.

Second illusion: From the start it was clear that the Paris 1.5-degree target would be missed. James Hansen speaks of a fake deal. If it were kept, the temperature would rise above 3 degrees, over land twice as much. Moreover, the Paris Agreement assumes large-scale sequestration of CO2 from the air, which Hansen describes as illusory.

Third illusion: Hardly anyone keeping the Paris Agreements we are underway to global warming of 4-5 degrees by 2100, again meaning about the double over land.

This is official mainstream, i.e. the predictions of the IPCC.

The fourth illusion assumes that this is hysterical alarmism. Even the greenhouse effect is denied although he has been proven more than 150 years ago.

But in fact, all statements made so far are not alarmistic, but rather too tame,

Fifth illusion: Many think that the temperature increase is linear. But it becomes faster, as one sees with the naked eye:

Even the IPCC suffers from this illusion: Before 2015 they talked of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees by 2100. In 2018, the IPCC moved this to 2040. American climatologists immediately objected: The IPCC had forgotten that greenhouse gases continue to rise which takes the 1.5 degrees to 2030, a shift of 70 years in some years.

The sixth illusion holds that the greenhouse mechanism is the whole story. This would be bad enough, but the many positive feedback mechanisms are even worse because according to Hansen they were always match-deciding in the previous history of the earth and they can cause tipping points.

The IPCC neglects these feedbacks, because precise predictions are impossible. However for a physician, they are more frightening than anything else: All go in the wrong direction, each can become uncontrollable, and their effects can not only add, but possibly multiply. And then, developments can be shortened to years.

The seventh illusion imagines that the CO2 concentration only depends on how much we blow into the air. However almost a third of the CO2 emissions have been absorbed by the ocean and a warmer ocean no longer absorbs, but releases CO2.

Similarly with trees and vegetation: So far, they also absorb almost a third of the CO2 emitted. Most CO2 compensation programs work with actual or alleged reforestation. But we are already losing forest through logging and fires. And with a temperature increase of four degrees by the year 2100, the trees will die off over large areas, like the coral reefs, and thus trees will change from being a CO2 buffer to CO2-production. The German Climate Pope Schellnhuber says: "We kill our best friends". CO2 emissions will increase, even with zero emissions by humanity! Not counted by the IPCC either.

In the eighth illusion the ice melts slowly, but things accelerate in the Arctic. Wadham, the Pope of Ice, believes that without snow and ice, the reflectivity of the earth decreases and warming becomes 50 percent greater. That may bring us to six degrees by 2100, twice as much over land. Not counted by the IPCC.

The ninth illusion was that the permafrost would not thaw until the end of the century. But it is already thawing, and methane is bubbling there and elsewhere and rising rapidly in the atmosphere. This short-lived but very powerful greenhouse gas can acutely accelerate warming with self-burning becoming a matter of years. Not counted by the IPCC.

The tenth illusion: At a higher temperature, the air stores more water vapor, also a greenhouse gas. Several models predict a decrease in cloud cover, which could further accelerate warming. Not counted by the IPCC.

The eleventh illusion is that everything goes slowly. But geologically, the pace of the current changes is unprecedented, ten times faster than the fastest changes in the last 65 million years.

Twelfth illusion: It’s not only the climate that endangers us, but also the extinction of species, at an extraordinary pace in terms of earth history. It’s still rather climate-independent, mainly caused by hunting and by the loss and poisoning of habitats due to expanding human population and activity. E.O. Wilson thinks that half of the earth should be reserved for wildlife if one wanted to stop this extinction.

Let’s summarize, like a surgeon before an operation:

The first symptoms of disease are omnipresent: droughts, fires, glacier retreat, loss of species, not a beginning, rather the beginning of the end. The biosphere can no longer compensate.

The effects of causal factors - CO2, methane, water vapor, forest fires, cloud loss, ocean acidification, pesticides, habitat loss - don’t necessarily just add up, they sometimes multiply with unpredictable results.

But a physician panics above all about the multiple self-reinforcing feedbacks: ice melt, methane release, forest fires, CO2 release from soil and ocean. There is little handle against such self-reinforcing mechanisms, even if they occur individually, and even much less if they work together.

The 1,5- or 2-degrees goal is out of question. The Paris Agreement is fake, the governments reactions inadequate or contra productive. Only with luck will we reach four or five degrees at the end of the century, but this is improbable, because the self-reinforcing feedbacks have already all kicked in. Some experts expect six or seven degrees, meaning twice as much over land, which human civilization cannot survive.

For Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, with four degrees of global warming the earth can only feed four billion people. This means widespread wars for a living space that will become increasingly scarce.

Because death is tabooed in our consciousness we are unable to see him, even if he stares directly into our eyes. I don't blame idiots like Trump. But rather the climatologists, who do not tell the whole truth. And the Greens, who are raving about the 1.5 degrees, a lie to the voters.

Last but not least, we come to the second taboo: Nobody wants to see the fact that we are too many. We are reproductive machines and reproduction is programmed into us as the most sacred goal. Therefore many - e.g. our benevolent Greens – prefer to believe into the illusion that reduction of consumption is enough.

Admittedly, only the wealthy produce the pollution: The ten percent of the wealthiest probably fifty percent, the 50 percent of the wealthier almost all the rest. But a large part of resource consumption and pollution is forced because we have to live in megastructures, which need energy-guzzling transports.

Some want to solve the problem by eliminating the privileges of the top 10 percent or even - according to old revolutionary customs - by eliminating the top 10 percent of the privileged, e.g.by guillotine. But even half the burden is too much. Therefore one would have to guillotine the wealthier half. This would work if the remaining half would not want to multiply and become wealthy, with industry, meat consumption, cars, airplanes. This they are already trying to do all over the world, e.g. in India, for the noble savage is just another illusion.

Many whose birth is not avoided by birth control will be killed by manslaughter, starvation and disease. That’s the reality we should face. Two generations of one-child family would be more humane.

_Lukas Fierz (79), from a Swiss family of musicians and scientists became a physician and neurologist. Shocked by the report of the Club of Rome together with others he founded the Swiss Green Party for which he sat in the national parliament without any effect. He fought the resulting depression as an amateur cellist with music once played on the Titanic (live recordings on playlist “Music for Titanic”). Moved by the climate youth, he began to participate in the discussion again with his Blog “Letting down humanity”._

Carbon emissions may continue to rise, the polar ice caps may continue to melt, crop yields may continue to decline, the world’s forests may continue to burn, coastal cities may continue to sink under rising seas and droughts may continue to wipe out fertile farmlands, but the messiahs of hope assure us that all will be right in the end. Only it won’t.” — Chris Hedges

One thing the climate crisis underscores is that Homo sapiens are not primarily a rational species. When forced to make important decisions, particularly decisions affecting our economic security or socio-political status, primitive instinct and raw emotion tend to take the upper hand.

This is not a good thing if the fate of society is at stake. Take “hope” for example. For good evolutionary reasons, humans naturally tend to be hopeful in times of stress. So gently comforting is this word, that some even endow their daughters with its name. But hope can be enervating, flat out debilitating, when it merges with mere wishful thinking — when we hope, for example, that technology alone can save us from climate change.

As novelist Jonathan Franzen asks: “If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario, what will you do 10 years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory?”

We needn’t bother Roger Hallam with this question. He can scarcely be held up as a “messiah of hope.” Quite the contrary. Hallam, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, has been desperately warning of societal collapse for years.

...

One day before the presidential election in 2000, president-to-be George W. Bush told an audience in Bentonville, Arkansas that his vanquished primary opponent, Sen. John McCain, had "misunderestimated me."

That malapropism became one of the most famous of his many linguistic missteps. But, it was Bush, or rather his vice president and Ph.D. advisors, who "misunderestimated" the risk involved in going to war with Iraq. The predicted "cakewalk" into Iraq turned into a bloody nightmare occupation lasting more than a decade. The unforeseen consequences of war are very often "misunderestimated."

I began thinking about "misunderestimated" risks this week when I read an article about the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration slapping a more visible warning on popular sleeping pills. I went through a serious bout of insomnia many years ago. For months I only slept every third night. I understand how desperate people get under such circumstances. But is it wise to take a sleeping pill, the known side effects of which can be driving while asleep and even suicide?

By the way, I never took sleeping pills during my bout with insomnia. I feared their side effects and dependency risks then as much as I do now.

Alongside the FDA announcement the Extinction Rebellion movement burst into the news with its decidedly better ability to analyze risk, in this case, regarding the consequences of climate change. Whether this movement succeeds at its goals, the people behind it understand what is at stake.

While I regard it as unlikely that humans will disappear from the Earth even with unchecked climate change, it seems quite plausible that billions of them will die early deaths as a result and that the population will plummet. That by itself would likely destroy our current complex, industrial civilization if the die-off were compressed into a few decades.

It also seems plausible that the infrastructure we have built—dams, reservoirs, roads, electric grids, seawalls, water systems, and other industrial and agricultural systems—will not withstand intact the heat, drought, floods, sea level rise, severe weather and other problems that unchecked climate change will bring with it. At the very least, we are unlikely to be able to reliably grow enough food to feed all of us.

How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world's population? Of course, for the poorest among us—those who barely make it from one day to the next—risk is immediate, personal and abundantly clear. Lack of food, shelter, medical care and protection from violence are existential questions that command attention.

For many of the rest of us, we have been living in a fool's paradise in which we have been convinced that risk could be abolished. Take a pill and go to sleep. No need to worry about side-effects or complications. Embrace your cellphone, even sleep with it on under your pillow. There are no risks of harm, physical or psychological, that can come from it. Eat whatever you see on television. Food is just fuel. Why not have anything that tastes good to you?

And, of course, scaling up the burning of fossil fuels to ever greater heights will be good for all of us and increase our wealth collectively. By now most people understand that fossil fuel combustion must decline and dramatically. But it keeps going up.

When there is no immediate personal punishment for any of the risks just listed, we tend to risk even more. We do not understand that we are in a game of Russian roulette. We wrongly believe that the longer we escape consequences, the safer we must be. But just the opposite is true. It turns out that the more often we perform risky acts, the more likely we are to perform one that is fatal.

It is true that living is filled with risks and we cannot eliminate them. But we can distinguish between those that will likely wipe us out personally and collectively, and those that will only harm us in minor ways that we can absorb.

The ultimate question that the Extinction Rebellion poses is this: Why should we care about human extinction? The geologic record suggests that humans will one day go extinct no matter what they do. So, what if that happens sooner rather than later?

The answer to those questions hinges on whether a person defines his or her community strictly in spacial terms and does not include temporal terms. In other words, are we a community of people only by space (and then only weakly at that) or are we a community that extends through both space AND time? In other words, does it matter whether human culture continues?

Those who deny climate change are answering the last two questions "no." If those who accept that climate change is largely human-caused do not see it as an existential question, they may as well be deniers.

The hardest minds to change are those who accept climate change as a reality, but cannot embrace the necessary steps implied by that belief. Will the Extinction Rebellion change that? I'd like to think the answer is yes. But I think a more thoroughgoing change in human hearts and perceptions will likely only come from actual catastrophic consequences hitting much larger groups of people and only if they understand that those consequences are the result of climate change.

Rebellion is in the air. On November 17 of last year, the “Gilet Jaunes” movement spontaneously erupted in France, in reaction to a planned tax on diesel fuel. Over 300,000 people took part in demonstrations across France, with actions ranging from blocking roundabouts to vandalizing banks, shops and luxury vehicles. As I write these words, the movement is still holding demonstrations across France every Saturday.

Almost as spontaneously, a youth movement calling itself Extinction Rebellion came into being in the UK, and held its first “Rebellion Day” on the same day that the Gilet Jaunes first shook France. This initial action, which blocked London’s five main bridges, was much smaller and lower key than the Gilet Jaunes protests, but by April 2019, non-violent civil disobedience protests brought large sections of London to a halt, and resulted in the arrest of over 1,000 demonstrators.

These movements are superficially diametrically opposed: one was provoked by measures to address climate change, the other is demanding action on climate change. However, they are united by one key detail. The policy action that the Gilet Jaunes oppose, and the policy inaction that Extinction Rebellion deride, are both the products of economists—and most specifically, the economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on Climate Change, William Nordhaus.

The Gilet Jaunes rebellion was sparked by the proposed introduction of a carbon tax on diesel fuel—and this is precisely the method that Nordhaus and most economists recommend to use to combat Climate Change.

Extinction Rebellion was sparked by the failure of policymakers to do anything substantive to prevent Climate Change, and are demanding policies that would cause net CO2 emissions to fall to zero by 2025:

Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025…
The truth is that the climate and ecological emergency poses an unprecedented existential threat to humanity and all life on Earth.
Rapid, unprecedented changes to many aspects of human life – energy use and supply, transport, farming and food supply, and so on – are now needed to avert global climate and ecological catastrophe.
Globally governments have been unwilling to tackle a problem of this magnitude. In 2015, the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change was signed by world leaders to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. However, scientific evidence now tells us that our leaders have not taken enough action and we are still on a path to reach 3-4°C, which will be catastrophic to all life on Earth. https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/, May 3rd 2019

Nordhaus agrees that man-made Climate Change is happening—he is not a “Climate Change Denialist”. However, his research actually encourages policymakers not to take the action that Extinction Rebellion demands, or anything like it. He instead recommends managing Global Warming so that the Earth’s temperature will stabilize at 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels in the mid-22nd century.

Nordhaus also argued that the policy Extinction Rebellion recommends, of restrict Global Warming to 1.5 degrees—even if it is done over the next century, rather than the next six years as Extinction Rebellion demands—would cost the global economy more than 50 trillion US dollars, while yielding benefits of well under US$5 trillion.

How is it possible that the optimal temperature for the planet is 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels—and that damages from that level of warming would amount to under 10% of global GDP—when it would also be “catastrophic to all life on Earth”? How is it possible that Global Warming of 1.5 degrees would reduce global GDP by a few trillion US dollars—less than 5% of what it would have been in the absence of Global Warming—while the policies to achieve that limit, even if executed over a century rather than just five years, would cost over ten times as much?

It isn’t. Instead, either Extinction Rebellion’s claims are vastly overblown, or Nordhaus’s estimates of the economic damages from Global Warming drastically understate the dangers.

Both are possible, of course. But categorically, Nordhaus’s estimates of the potential economic damage from Global Warming are nonsense. They are also one of the key reasons why policymakers have not taken the threat seriously. If Extinction Rebellion is going to make policymakers take Climate Change seriously, then one of their first targets must be Nordhaus and his DICE model.

...

Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don't know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works.

Dr. Daniel Britt is a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated at the University of Washington and Brown University, receiving a Ph.D. from Brown in 1991. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of two NASA missions, Mars Pathfinder and Deep Space 1. He was the project manager for the camera on Mars Pathfinder and has built hardware for all the NASA Mars landers.

Britt currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars under several NASA grants. Honors include 5 NASA Achievement Awards, election as a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and an asteroid named after him; 4395 Dan Britt. He is currently President of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He lives in Orlando with his wife Judith. They have two sons, ages 16 and 21.

I write this piece primarily to get you to read an academic paper that has attracted relatively widespread attention. It is entitled "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy."

It is remarkable in a number of aspects. First, it was written by a professor of sustainability leadership who has been heavily involved for a long time in helping organizations including governments, nonprofits and corporations to become more sustainable. Second, the author, Jem Bendell, has now concluded the following after an exhaustive review of the most up-to-date findings about climate change: "inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe and possible extinction." Third, his paper was rejected for publication not because it contained any errors of fact, but largely because it was too negative and thought to breed hopelessness.

It is important to understand what Bendell means by "collapse" in this context. He does not necessarily mean an event taking place in a relatively short period of time all over the world all at once. Rather, he means severe disruptions of our lives and societies to a degree than renders our current institutional arrangements largely irrelevant. He believes we won't be able to respond to the scope of suffering and change by doing things the way we are doing them now with only a few reformist tweaks.

That this idea doesn't go down well in sustainability circles should be no surprise. That's because our current arrangements, even if "reformed" to take environmental imperatives into account, are in no way equal to the task ahead. Our existing institutions are structurally incapable of responding to what is coming and so consulting about how to reform them is largely a fool's errand—not the way sustainability experts and consultants want to be thought of.

Instead, Bendell proposes a "post-sustainability" ethic. We must give up on the hope that our society can proceed largely on its current trajectory—with proper allowances, of course, for carbon emission reduction and climate change adaptation—and embrace what he calls "deep adaptation." That agenda calls for resilience, relinquishment and restoration. The words themselves, especially "relinquishment," convey something of the radical approach Bendell believes is now necessary. For details I implore you to read the paper.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this paper is its detailed discussion of what Bendell calls "collapse denial." Understanding the psychology behind the denial of collapse as a possibility and the opprobrium visited on those who speak of it openly is essential for grasping the current discourse on climate change (and many other existential environmental topics).

Hope, it turns out, can be an opiate. It can keep you from thinking about what you might have to do if the worst happens. Whether you agree with Bendell or not about the inevitability of collapse, reading him will likely disrupt your usual ways of thinking about responses to our environmental challenges and likely increase the scope of responses you are willing to consider.

A U.S. Patent Application

Inventor: J.D. ALT (acknowledging all advocates of modern fiat money)

Assignment: To all citizens of democratic free societies

Abstract:

A macroeconomic system including the issuing of a fiat currency by a sovereign government; the establishment of a tax regime on the government’s citizens wherein the taxes levied can only be paid with the sovereign government’s fiat currency; the sovereign government’s debiting of its tax collection account to purchase goods and services from its citizens and their commerce; the sovereign government’s issuing of future fiat currency certificates—to be redefined as “treasury bonds”—which it trades, at a discount, for existing fiat currency held in private financial markets; the sovereign government then spending the traded-for existing fiat currency to purchase goods and services from its citizens and their commerce over and above what it is able to purchase by debiting its tax collection account; the management of the value of the said fiat currency relative to goods and services by the general means of draining the currency from circulation through the sovereign tax regime—and by the specific means of controlling the discount and time-to-maturity of the issued future fiat currency certificates (treasury bonds); and wherein the sovereign government’s spending is thereby enabled to be orders-of-magnitude greater than what the government collects in taxes—without encumbering the government with debt, and without devaluing the fiat currency with respect to the citizens’ commerce; said macroeconomic system thus enabling a sovereign government to spend whatever fiat currency is necessary to enable and assist its collective society to mitigate and adapt to climate-change.

Background of the Invention:

The present invention relates to the problem of a sovereign government paying for goods and services which are necessary for a collective society, represented by the sovereign government, to mitigate and adapt to climate-change; specifically, to the following general aspects of that problem:

1. Tasks which mitigate and adapt to climate-change are usually not tasks which generate financial profits, or are tasks which, if they ultimately have the potential to generate financial profits, are tasks with very high risk and/or very long lead-times for profitability and, for these reasons, are tasks which private, profit-making enterprise, has little or no incentive to undertake and accomplish. Therefore, if these necessary tasks are to be undertaken and accomplished, they must be paid for by the sovereign government representing the interests of the collective society.
2. The cost of the goods and services necessary to mitigate and adapt to climate-change—which must be paid for by the sovereign government—are projected to be several orders-of-magnitude greater than any expenditures historically made, for any purpose, by a sovereign government; if the mitigation and adaptation tasks are to proceed, then, spending by the sovereign government will have to increase by several orders-of-magnitude beyond current, or historical, spending.
3. Increasing sovereign government spending by several orders-of-magnitude is prevented by an existing macroeconomic system which holds that a sovereign government may only spend currency which it has either collected in taxes from its citizens, or borrowed from private financial markets, thus limiting the government spending to some percentage of the currency held by private citizens, private enterprise, and the private financial markets—while each of these groups, pursuing their own natural interests, strives to limit the government’s taxing or borrowing from their currency, thus establishing and locking in a self-regulating mechanism which makes it impossible for the sovereign government to increase its spending by the orders-of-magnitude necessary to address the challenges of climate-change.

If a collective society is to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate-change, therefore, it is advantageous for its sovereign government to be capable of spending currency several orders-of-magnitude greater than what the government can acquire by means of tax collections or borrowing from private financial markets. More specifically, it will be advantageous if the sovereign government has the means—without collecting additional taxes or borrowing—for issuing and spending whatever currency is found necessary to purchase the goods and services necessitated by collective society’s efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Within the definitions, assumptions, and operations of the existing normative macroeconomic system, however, it is unobvious how to provide a sovereign government with this capability. Specifically, the needed capability is thwarted by the existing macroeconomic system as follows:

1. If required government spending is greater than currency which has been collected in taxes, the existing macroeconomic system requires the government to issue treasury bond promissory notes which are traded to the private financial markets in exchange for currency held therein which the government shall then use for its spending; it is further understood that the government will pay interest to the promissory note (bond) holder until the bond matures, at which time the government will repay to the bond-holder the principal face-value of the bond.
2. To pay the interest and principal on the treasury bond promissory notes, however, the sovereign government is required by the existing macroeconomic system to collect additional taxes which puts it, therefore, in the illogical position of having to collect greater future taxes to make up for an initial tax-collection shortfall—or, alternatively, issue another round of treasury bond promissory notes to acquire the currency necessary to pay the interest and repay the principal on the initial promissory note issue, thus creating a Ponzi scheme which necessitates a continuous expansion of the tax base.
3. Because of the necessitated and continuous expansion of the tax base, the sovereign government can only justify the issuing of additional treasury bond promissory notes with arguments that, because of the additional government spending made possible by the new promissory notes, the aggregate currency held by private citizens, businesses, and financial markets will grow—thereby enabling the government to collect the greater future taxes that will be needed to meet the obligations of the new promissory notes.
4. The need to justify new government borrowing and spending with the forecast of greater future tax revenues makes it logically difficult, if not impossible, to curtail existing private sector enterprises which generate the tax revenues—most specifically and crucially (from the perspective of the present invention) those enterprises which substantially contribute to the carbon emissions responsible for the climate-change the government is seeking to mitigate.

For all these reasons, the norms of the existing macroeconomic system make it virtually impossible for a sovereign government to spend the currency that will be necessary to assist and enable its collective society to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate-change; compounding this difficulty, the existing macroeconomic system furthermore makes it virtually impossible to curtail profit-making enterprises responsible for the carbon emissions driving the climate-change itself.

It is therefore advantageous to envision a macroeconomic system which will remove these disadvantages.

The naive notion that we can, for example, "just use more air conditioning" as the globe warms betrays a perplexing misunderstanding of what we face. Even if one ignores the insanity of burning more climate-warming fossil fuels to make electricity for more air-conditioning, there is the embedded assumption that our current infrastructure with only minor modifications will withstand the pressures placed upon it in a future transformed by climate change and other depredations.

That assumption doesn't square with the facts. Take, for instance, the Miami, Florida water system. One would think that Miami's first task in adapting to climate change would be to defend its shores against sea-level rise. But it turns out that the most troublesome effect of sea-level rise is sea water infiltration into the aquifer which supplies the city's water.

Once that happens the city would have to adopt desalination for its water supply, a process that currently costs two and one-half times more than current water purification processes. And, of course, desalinating water for a city as large as Miami, a city of more than 400,000 who consume 330 million gallons per day, would require a huge, expensive new infrastructure.

But the problems don't end there. Superfund sites dot Miami and are already contaminating some of the water supply. The rising waters and more frequent floods will only make matters worse, requiring expensive decontamination equipment even before desalination becomes a necessity.

In addition, limestone mining allowed in many places leaves holes which quickly fill with water and allow much freer movement of chemicals through the aquifer.

At this point I feel like one of those late-night infomercials blaring, "But, wait there's more!" That's because the list keeps getting longer.

Myth #1:  Liberals Are Not In Denial 

“We will not apologize for our way of life” –Barack Obama

The conservative denial of the very fact of climate change looms large in the minds of many liberals.  How, we ask, could people ignore so much solid and unrefuted evidence?   Will they deny the existence of fire as Rome burns once again?  With so much at stake, this denial is maddening, indeed.  But almost never discussed is an unfortunate side-effect of this denial: it has all but insured that any national debate in America will occur in a place where most liberals are not required to challenge any of their own beliefs.  The question has been reduced to a two-sided affair—is it happening or is it not—and liberals are obviously on the right side of that.

If we broadened the debate just a little bit, however, we would see that most liberals have just moved a giant boat-load of denial down-stream, and that this denial is as harmful as that of conservatives.  While the various aspects of liberal denial are my main overall topic, here, and will be addressed in our following five sections, they add up to the belief that we can avoid the most catastrophic levels of climate disruption without changing our fundamental way of life.  This is myth is based on errors that are as profound and basic as the conservative denial of climate change itself.

But before moving on, one more point about liberal and conservative denial: Naomi Klein has suggested that conservative denial may have its roots, it will surprise many liberals, in some pretty clear thinking. [i]  At some level, she has observed, conservatives climate deniers understand that addressing climate change will, in fact, change our way of life, a way of life which conservatives often view as sacred.  This sort of change is so terrifying and unthinkable to them, she argues, that they cut the very possibility of climate change off at its knees:  fighting climate change would force us to change our way of life; our way of life is sacred and cannot be questioned; ergo, climate change cannot be happening. 

We have a situation, then, where one half of the population says it is not happening, and the other half says it is happening but fighting it doesn’t have to change our way of life.  Like a dysfunctional and enabling married couple, the bickering and finger-pointing, and anger ensures that nothing has to change and that no one has to actually look deeply at themselves, even as the wheels are falling off the family-life they have co-created.  And so do Democrats and Republicans stay together in this unhappy and unproductive place of emotional self-protection and planetary ruin.

Welcome to America’s first experiment in the World Made By Hand lifestyle. Where else is it going? Watch closely.

Ricardo Ramos, the director of the beleaguered, government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, told CNN Thursday that the island’s power infrastructure had been basically “destroyed”. That’s about as basic as it gets civilization-wise.

Puerto Rico is back in the 18th Century, minus the practical skills and simpler furnishings for living that way of life, and with a population many times beyond the carrying capacity of the island in that era. For instance, how many houses get their water from cisterns designed to catch rain runoff? How many communities across the island are walkable? (It looks like the gas stations will be down for quite a while.) I’ve been there and much of the island is as suburbanized as New Jersey — thanks to the desire to be up-to-date with the mainland, and the willingness of officials to make it look like that.

We’re only two days past the Hurricane Maria’s direct hit on Puerto Rico and there is no phone communication across the island, so we barely know what has happened. We’re weeks past Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, and news of the consequences from those two events has strangely fallen out of the news media. Where have the people gone who lost everything? The news blackout is as complete and strange as the darkness that has descended on Puerto Rico.

I don’t have a Plan B because I’m very happily married to an optimistic husband who like 99.9% of people recoils from the horror of peak everything and insists the scientists will come up with something.  I’d have to leave my husband to move somewhere more sustainable, and I love him too much to do that. Plus I’d have to leave other dearly loved family and friends nearby as well as delightful neighbors in our community that I’ve come to know the past 25 years.

I think most of us have strong ties and are doomed to front row seats on the roller coaster ride down the Seneca cliff and Hubbert’s curve.  

The military/security complex spent seven decades building its empire. The complex assassinated one American president (JFK) who threatened the empire and drove another (Richard Nixon) out of office. The complex does not tolerate the election of politicians in Europe who might not follow Washington’s line on foreign and economic policy.

Suddenly, according to the Western and even Russian media, the complex is going to let one man, Trump, who does not rule America, and one woman, Merkel, who does not rule Germany, destroy its empire.

According to the presstitutes, by pulling out of the Paris Accord (the global climate pact) and stating that NATO members should contribute more to the alliance’s budget for which the US taxpayer has an overweighted share, Trump has caused Merkel to conclude that Europe can no longer rely on Washington. The discord between Trump and Merkel and Washington’s resignation of its leadership position has destroyed the Western alliance and left the EU itself on the verge of being torn apart.

All of this is nonsensical sillyness. What has happened is this:

The Paris Agreement was the capstone of President Obama’s climate action plan, the political strategy by which he intended to give the Clean Power Plan and other legally dubious climate policies a treaty-like status, but without going through the constitutional treaty process.

By relabeling his domestic climate agenda as commitments America made to the world, he tried to dictate U.S. energy policy for decades to come regardless of the preferences of future presidents, Congresses, and voters. It was a climate coup of breathtaking ambition, and the treaty’s supporters at home and abroad did all they could to misdirect the debate and pressure Trump to break his campaign promise. President Trump kept an open mind, listened to all sides, and made the right decision for America and the world.

Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement overturns Obama’s end run around the Constitution’s treaty process, safeguards American democracy from foreign interference, dispels the Agreement’s long shadow over the U.S. energy and manufacturing sectors, foils corporate schemes to enrich special interests at consumers and taxpayers’ expense, and helps ensure developing countries will have the access to affordable energy they need to lift people out of poverty.