What ‘Winning’ Against Climate Change Actually Looks Like
The Limits Of Growth, published in 1972, ran thoughtful computer models of our future up to 2100. The models were explicitly not predictions, but as a 2009 retrospective said,
Its predictions have not been invalidated and in fact seem quite on target. We are not aware of any model made by economists that is as accurate over such a long time span.
This is unfortunate because its (not) predictions are terrible.
Almost every single ‘run’ of the program has civilization crashing by 2100. Collapse is the default state. The few runs that don’t crash are because we, effectively, crash it ourselves. What is required is nothing short of global climate communism, bold 50-year plans implemented rigidly (ie, violently). And yet even this hopeless debate is also pointless, because it needed to be done 50 years ago. We have no concept of what ‘winning’ requires and — even if we did — we’re way too late.
I cover the ‘winning’ scenarios here not because they’re possible but because they’re not. Understanding what winning actually looks like can help us understand the losing state we’re in. Even in our wildest hypothetical imaginings (if I ruled the world and everyone thought the right things) we do not imagine what’s actually…
