4: The unspeakable truth about climate change
14/04/25
We are not going to stop climate change. We aren't even going to significantly limit climate change. Everything we are being led to believe is combating climate change is in fact merely stringing out the finite supply of fossil fuels so it lasts a little bit longer. There is no intention to make any difference to the net amount of climate change that has happened by the time humans finally stop changing the climate. “Net Zero” is nothing but a giant confidence trick.
Anthropogenic climate change is happening for one reason only: the movement of carbon from fossil sources into short-term circulation (ie into the atmosphere or to places where it is only temporarily kept out of the atmosphere, such as in trees which will eventually rot or be burned). Planting trees which are subsequently used for fuel makes absolutely no difference to this. Investing in renewables makes no difference either. At most, these things are just slowing the process down a bit.
Don't get me wrong – I'm a strong supporter of both tree planting and renewable energy. What I'm saying is that although these are positive and welcome actions, they aren't going to make any difference to long-term net climate change. There are only two ways to do that. The first is to invent a technology capable of capturing atmospheric CO2 and permanently returning it underground. This is not quite impossible, but it needs a technological miracle that looks highly unlikely at the moment. In collapse aware circles we call this “techno-hopium.” The second is to leave economically viable fossil fuels in the ground forever, and in this case the problem is political/economic rather than technological. Which country is even seriously considering this course of action? There is enormous resistance to the very idea of it. Barring another sort of technological miracle (cheap and easy fusion might do it) then this isn't going to happen either.
When I posted the above argument on the Reddit's r/climatechange, the moderators saw fit to ban me for 12 months. I had broken rule 6: No dooming or "nothing can be done". Whether or not what I had posted wasn't being judged on whether or not it is actually true, but what the people who run that subreddit have deemed to be a politically acceptable part of reality – as if banning people who speak the truth can somehow change it. I accepted climate change was unstoppable in 1988, and I've been debunking climate change denialism ever since, but now I am finding myself being accused of “climate denialism” myself, because I am expressing a view that has much more recently become popular with people who previously denied it was happening at all – those who went straight from denialism to “we can't stop it.” We live in a deeply confused world.
My conclusion is that we are probably going to continue burning fossil fuels until it is no longer economically viable to extract them, and that this will lead to what is currently considered to be the worst case scenario – something in the order of 8 degrees of warming over pre-industrial levels. This will obviously make quite a large part of the Earth's land surface uninhabitable for humans, and it is very hard to see more than a few hundred million humans surviving the die-off.
Can we do anything to avoid this worst case scenario?
Absolutely—we can do something to avoid the worst-case scenario. But the first step is brutal honesty. We must accept that most of what’s being sold as climate action today is not going to prevent catastrophic climate change. Only then can we start asking the right questions, and perhaps begin responding in ways that are grounded in physical reality rather than political expediency, economic wishful thinking, or cultural denial.
Let’s be clear: avoiding 8 degrees of warming is not about some final heroic push to electrify everything or scale up wind turbines. It’s about deciding to stop burning carbon that we are currently planning to burn. Not in 2050. Now. That means forcing a confrontation with the global fossil fuel industry, which is still receiving trillions in subsidies, still planning decades of expansion, and still holding enormous political power. It means breaking the economic addiction to continuous growth, which demands ever more energy, materials, and emissions. And it means challenging the cultural belief that technology alone will save us, without the need for sacrifice, restraint, or structural change. These are political, economic, and civilisational choices—not technical puzzles.
Yes, this is hard. Very hard. Because what would it really mean to leave fossil fuels in the ground? It would mean deliberate degrowth in the most energy-intensive societies. It would mean governments choosing to strand assets and crash industries. It would mean rewiring global trade, abandoning vast infrastructure, and probably giving up many comforts we’ve come to see as entitlements. It would mean rich countries choosing to become poorer—on purpose—to avoid a planetary catastrophe they will otherwise largely cause.
No one is seriously proposing that. Not in government. Not in business. Not even in most of the climate movement. Which is why we’re not going to avoid the worst-case scenario by “doing something” in the conventional sense.
But there is still a meaningful distinction between 6°C and 8°C of warming. Every fraction of a degree will matter to someone: to the coral reefs, to the forests, to the cities on fire, to the communities facing famine, flood, or forced migration. In many places the difference between “everything dies” and “some things survive” might hinge on actions taken now, even if they fall short of salvation. So while we can’t stop climate change, and probably can’t even limit it in a meaningful sense under current political-economic paradigms, we can choose to make it less apocalyptic than it might otherwise be.
That may not sound like hope. But it’s a form of realism that gives agency back to those who are ready to act on truth rather than illusion. It’s the clarity that comes after despair, when you realise that saving something is still infinitely better than saving nothing. And it invites a new kind of question: not “how do we save the world?” but “what can we preserve, protect, or prepare for?” Who do we stand with? What do we build in the ruins? What kind of humans do we choose to be, when the old myths have failed? In that light, perhaps the work that matters most is not trying to stop climate change, but helping civilisation evolve in response to it. That means building communities of resilience, regenerating ecosystems where we still can, and passing on wisdom instead of delusion.
We’re not going to stop climate change. But we might still become the kind of people who deserve to survive it.