For real. How do we fix this climate thing?

Facing The Zero Carbon Endgame

Photo by ever wild⚘ on Unsplash

There is no way to sugarcoat this. Climate Breakdown is here. You are feeling the impacts now. We have a year and a half grace — tops — to hit peak emissions. And then they say we need to get to zero emissions (zero!) by 2040 (just two decades!) or…we’ll cross the 1.5 º line.

Crossing that line means — best case — Hundreds of millions of lives will be lost, nearly all coral reefs will die out, wildfires and heat waves will regularly sweep across the planet, destroying most property and messing up the food supply. Famine time!

If we don’t fundamentally change things — if we don’t transform the world economy, agriculture and culture “at a speed and scale that has no documented historic precedent” —we are sealing our fate. We are leaving a hellscape for our children (your children!). The survivors, the decimated future generations, will curse our memory.

It’s Race to Zero Carbon or bust . NOW!

Time to pull out all the stops. To systematically, candidly, figure out our next moves.

Here’s what we need to face now. Think of it as a 15 Step Program:

• Face it — this is an all or nothing situation. Partial measures won’t do. The train to hell is covered with a few token solar panels. Time to switch trains.
• Face the complexity— we need a process to tackle this big problem and cut the steps down to size.
• Face your mindset— are you ready to go all the way to zero? What’s holding you back? Name it.
• Face the distance — how far do we need to go to get to zero? Here’s where we brush up on math, maps, metrics and measurements.
• Face the Energy Supply Side Plays — Can we use renewables alone, or will we need fossils (carbon capture and sequestration) and nuclear? Does this seem like a simple question? Hahahaha tears come to my eyes.
• Face the Demand Side Plays — what are we using all that energy for? Transportation, flying, heating & cooling, gadgets, making all our stuff. What’s the best way to decarbonize that demand? Or do we…gasp…demand less? This is where we explore the R plays: “Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Repair, Retrofit.”
• Face the “jobs and consumption conundrum” — Notice the underlying conflict in the demand side plays. “Recycle” and “Retrofit” can still work for “Business as Usual” because you can still consume a lot of stuff. “Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Repair”, however, involve consuming (and spending) less. This presents a conflict of interest for “Business as Usual.” This conflict is not trivial. Imagine everyone taking those R plays to heart. What a conundrum! What would the economy look like? Seriously. imagine a streamlined, minimalist, high quality economy. This leads us to the most important R play — “Renegotiate.”
• Face your food — One of the most significant causes of greenhouse gas emissions is related to the eating of meat and dairy products. (As if climate change weren’t enough reason to cut down on/quit eating meat — mechanized meat production is breeding a pandemic. Heads up on that.)
• Face what you’ve done to the Garden of Eden — We live on a fantastic planet, a marvelous garden hanging in the emptiness of space! And what are we doing with this garden? Trashing it as quickly as we can. What are we capable of doing? The climate crisis is a test of our worthiness of this garden. There are a lot of great “Garden of Eden” plays. Afforestation, reforestation, habitat restoration, soil remineralization, biochar and more. The Garden of Eden has always been hidden in plain sight.
• Face that we have to physically remove carbon from the air— At this point, it won’t be enough to “reduce” carbon emissions. Word is we have to get our emissions to zero, and go beyond. Draw down the excess we’ve already emitted out of the atmo. Carbon removal technologies are pricey, but they exist. How do they scale? Let’s explore.
• Face the geoengineering — if all else fails, maybe we can buy some time with geoengineering. Watch out for side effects.
• Face the money & policy question — Once you’ve figured out your favorite plays, it’s time to figure out out how to pay for it, what financial instruments and regulatory framework are required. Pro tip: if it helps, think of the transitional expenses as an economic stimulus.
• Face the scoreboard— do your chosen plays add up? Now that you’ve been through the options, have you come up with plays that you like? That your friends and neighbors like too? Do we have a critical mass of support? Will it get us to zero and beyond? If they don’t, we’ll have to go back over the plays or search for new ones, until something sticks. This may take a few iterations. Because…
• Let’s face it. Right now all the plans suck! It’s going to take a bit of exploring and playing around with the options to come up with something that everyone can get behind.
• Formalize it: OK. It’s not enough for you to face these things. We need everyone to systematically go through these steps. We need to formalize the race to zero carbon. Are you in? Take the Player’s Pledge! Want more responsibility? Take the coaches pledge and sign up to run a Coaching Clinic. Then head on over to the leadership circle and help us put together the Dream Team.

If you can face all this, there is a good possibility that this time, next year, you and 7 billion of your closest planet mates will be thick in the process of flipping this planet to a whole new trajectory. I believe in you. We can do this.

Now for more detail on the above:

Face it — this is an all or nothing situation.

“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.”

We’re out of time, friends. There’s no way to sugarcoat this.

And no need to. It turns out you can handle the truth about the environment. No sugarcoating necessary. What’s needed is clarity on what to do about the situation. So let me be frank

The latest report from the UN makes it clear. The world needs to aggressively phase out fossil fuels (race to zero carbon) as quickly as possible. By mid-century at the latest.

Think that gives you some time?

Nope. Emissions must peak by 2020 — that’s 15 months to reverse trends. And then it’s a race down to zero.

And zero emissions is not enough. We also need to remove some of the excess greenhouse gases we’ve added to the atmo (go beyond zero carbon). Or else forget about it. Game over. Catastrophe is here.

Even the White House realizes this. Of course, when faced with “all or nothing”, they go for “nothing.” Their latest rationalization for rolling back car emission standards is basically: “We’re screwed anyway. Won’t make a difference.” (Well not with that attitude.)

In a surprise move late last year, the White House signed off on a lengthy report by dozens of federal agencies that concluded the planet has entered the warmest period “in the history of modern civilization,” with global average air temperatures having increased by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 115 years. And buried in a report released in August, the White House said it assumes a cataclysmic 4 degrees Celsius (or 7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming is inevitable by the end of the century.

Getting to Zero Carbon is All or Nothing

People often ask me to make it simple. “Just tell me one thing I can do to reduce emissions.”

I’m happy to supply a list of easy wins that you can do right now. Just keep in mind, the goal isn’t to “reduce emissions.” It’s to go ALL. THE. WAY. To zero carbon and beyond.

The one thing you can do is realize that token and incremental actions won’t get you where you need to go. It’s all or nothing. You can use this as an excuse, like the trump administration does. Or you can accept that we need to tackle all parts of the problem at once. That we have to get systematic and make sure someone is covering all the plays (luckily there are billions of us, so no excuse to not cover all the plays).

The one thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and figure out what you and others need to do to go all the way. Dive into the complexity and explore! Figure out your best plays. Debate, decide, delegate, DO. Execute the solutions.

Face the Complexity — And find a process to tackle it.

It’s easy to SAY “face the complexity” — but how does one actually face the complexity?

First, don’t overthink complexity. It’s just complexity. Do you realize how much complexity you handle on a daily basis? You are a complexity handling machine. How many TV shows are you tracking right now? How many sports? Do you play video games? How many apps do you juggle on your phone? Do you raise children? You probably have a job doing something super complicated that I have no idea how you do.

I have every confidence in your ability to handle this complexity. I laugh at your sudden shyness around complexity. Join me in laughing at complexity. Ha ha ha! Complexity.

That said, we don’t want to under-think it either. We need a process to handle complexity just right. A systematic, candid, creative, evidence-based process. To help you tackle the complexity, we’re doing three things:

1. Setting up “Zero Carbon Coaching Clinics.”
2. Writing the “Zero Carbon Playbook.”
3. Developing the “Zero Carbon Scoreboard App.”

The Zero carbon coaching clinic is an interactive framework to walk you and your state, step by step, to zero carbon. Here’s a video overview:

The video gets through the “Energy Supply Side Plays.” This article takes you through the rest of the overview.

While you wait for our Playbook, check out this other playbook!

As for the Zero Carbon Playbook — stay tuned!

In connection with the zero carbon coaching clinic, we’re writing a Zero Carbon Playbook. But don’t wait for us to publish. You can get started with other inspiring playbooks right now.

For starters, check out Peter Kalmus’ “Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution” shown here.

Other handy resources include Drawdown ($14.95) and Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air (Free online!)

As for the scoreboard

Join the scoreboard committee! We need help making that app. Leave a comment if you are interested in being part of it.

Face your mindset — are you ready to go all the way to zero carbon?

Are you ready to make the switch to a zero carbon economy?

Facing “The Switch”

If YES…

Yay!!!! You rock! You are awesome! Quick action: Take the Player’s Pledge and skip ahead to the next section.

If NO…

Let’s check that mindset. What’s holding you back? Share in the comments! I’ve heard many reasons, but haven’t heard them all!

Some reasons I’ve heard:

• Our brains are wired to ignore climate change.
• You feel hopeless and overwhelmed. (Climate Therapists are Standing By!)
• You’re worried you have to give something up, like your SUV. But maybe the “downgrade” is actually an upgrade.
• You’ve got a misanthropic streak. Feeling grumpy that there are all these OTHER people consuming stuff and emitting carbon. If only these OTHER people would…what? Disappear? What would Hans Rosling say?
• You want someone else — an innovator — to deal with it. You’ve heard about a new technology that will save us all. Pro tip: In the words of Eric Hittinger: “a lot of times we see a new technology and are tempted to say, ‘The known technologies that we’ve done the math on don’t provide easy answers, but this new technology that we haven’t looked into will surely solve our problems.’ Usually that is incorrect.”
• You want a politician to deal with it. Yes, Voting makes a difference. But politicians are your representatives. And they’re getting mixed messages from you. Also, they are a specialized type of player that need to pass — not the ball — but laws. And they generally need your cover in order to do so, or they get sacked by the opposing team.
• You want corporations to fix it. Yes, Corporations do need to act much differently —but consumers are a big part of the corporate dance — and you can lead the dance, if you choose. In any case, the whole economy has to learn some new dance steps.
• You think you’ve done your part. Maybe you have a hybrid car. Maybe you have some solar panels. You recycle. That’s nice, but it’s not a transformation of the economy, agriculture or culture. That’s a slight tap on the breaks of the train to hell. Doesn’t even slow it down.
• You don’t know what it would take to get to zero. WELCOME TO THE CLUB! That’s why we set up the zero carbon coaching clinic! FYI, this is my favorite reason a person could give. Show me the solutions!
• You don’t think it’s possible. Change on such an epic scale? “Such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that ‘there is no documented historical precedent.’” As if.

BUT WAIT! Maybe you’ve actually been hoping this day would come.

Could it be you’ve always wanted to make epic changes? Are there a lot of things annoying you? Things that you’d want to change even if they weren’t causing climate breakdown? You’re in luck! The time has come to deal with it all, once and for all!

Here’s Coach Steve Jobs with some inspiring words on the subject of your ability to make those big changes:

“Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Face the distance — how far do we need to go to get to zero?

So now you’ve decided you want to make the big changes. You’ve got the nerve for big decisions. The next step is to get clear on the metrics. Get familiar with the numbers.

You know your height. You know your age. You know how many months there are in a year. You know how much your house or car payment is. But there’s a good chance you don’t know any numbers that would be useful to you in racing to zero carbon. Like:

• The goal is “100% clean energy” — but, 100% of WHAT? What’s the total we use in the first place? What’s our State’s energy budget?
• Do you know which US state is in the lead in the race to zero carbon?Which state has the lowest emissions per person? Guess! You’ll never guess. Why, it’s ________, of course! With emissions per person so low, they’re lower than green Germany!
• Do you know how far your own state is in getting to zero carbon? How much of the energy you’ve decarbonized so far? My state (New Jersey) is at the “20 yard line”.

Visualize your Energy Consumption Field as a Football Field.

The ultimate Zero Carbon Scoreboard

Heads up, we’re working on an interactive “scoreboard” app to help you track your state’s emissions. More about our emissions approach here. Without a compelling scoreboard, there is no way to win the race to zero carbon. A scoreboard is a platform of accountability. It connects the progress of individuals to the whole. It tracks cumulative impact. It targets information to performance. Every player needs to know the total score and how the other players are doing to know their true position and their best moves.

Please contribute to help us complete the scoreboard app. Also, join the app team!

Note our app is not a personal carbon calculator. This isn’t about helping you get yourself to zero carbon. It’s not enough for you to go off grid by yourself. The whole grid needs to go off carbon. This is a team sport. Collective action required. Of course, individual action has a big effect on collective action. It’s a feedback loop. So don’t let up on the individual action! It’s just that we measure the score and effect at the collective level.

Face the Energy Supply Side Plays

One of the biggest collective action challenges we face in getting to zero carbon is the choice of energy supply. As seen in the Coaching Clinic video, to get to zero carbon you need a combination of the following:

• If you keep burning fossil fuel, you have to capture the carbon and sequester it. This is expensive and you will run soon out of fossils, which people of the future will resent.
• Electrify everything and switch to renewables. This is expensive, will take up a lot of land and require a lot of mining, storage and grid transformation.
• Electrify everything and switch to nuclear. This is expensive and you have to get people to accept nuclear.
• Come up with a new miracle energy supply via technology and innovation. The R&D is expensive and the results are not guaranteed.

Sorry, I can’t sugarcoat it. You’re going to want to keep your options open. Make sure your preferred solution passes the Mom Test. All the energy supply side plays are difficult, even renewables. Most people have very little idea of what it would take to switch to 100% renewable energy. For example: most people don’t realize that a 100% renewable solution for America involves 144,000 of 5MW offshore wind turbines along the east coast. As the east (Atlantic) coast is 2069 miles long, this comes to 70 turbines per mile down the entire coast.

Is this a solution American will fight for? Will your state rally around it? What’s the NIMBY Coefficient? What’s the environmental impact?

If you can’t get to 100%, how far CAN you go with any given energy source? And what are the remaining gaps? That’s what you need to know to figure out your portfolio of solutions.

As for advocating your favorite energy play, here are some organizations to connect with:

• For Renewable Energy: The Solutions Project (and? What’s your go-to renewable advocacy group?)
• For Nuclear Energy: Generation Atomic (and? _________)
• For Cleaning up Fossils: ClearPath (and? __________)

Face the Demand Side Plays

You’ve looked at the energy supply side plays. You’ve seen what a huge ask it is to switch to clean energy. You’ve seen how many square miles of land your state would need for solar farms and wind farms. You’ve seen how many new nuclear power plants you’d need for all the energy you use. And now you’re super motivated to reduce your demand so you don’t have to deal with all that energy infrastructure. You’re ready to apply the classic R-Plays: “Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Repair, Retrofit.”

How far can you go with Demand Side R-Plays?

Quite far, actually. Here’s an academic paper on the subject. Note that you won’t get very far if you just switch one type of disposable thing with a “greener” version of that disposable thing. You’ve got to dispose disposability.

Let’s break it down:

First, what are you using all that energy FOR?

Transportation | Flying | Heating & Cooling | Cooking | Gadgets & Electronics | Stuff (there’s energy embedded in making and transporting that stuff).

What’s the best R Play in each category to ease demand?

• Transportation | Drive less [Reduce]. Start by cutting down commute time. #CutTheCommute. This play won’t work for some jobs, but if your job requires that you spend a lot of time on the phone or computer, ask your employer (or if you’re the employer, ask your employee) to work from home. Bonus upside of working offsite? You’ll actually be more productive. And happier. Try it a day a week, then keep increasing the amount of time spent working from home. For those of you already working from home &or taking public transit &or buying your groceries with your bike and trailer— you rock! Encourage your friends to #CutTheCommute. Having a hard time getting your boss to let you work from home? See chapter 12 in The Four Hour Work Week. Also, read Happy City, about designing a car free world.
• Flying | Fly less for work [Reduce]. Check out the pledge to call on colleagues in academia and other professions to fly less. Check out the innovations in long distance conferencing to keep that personal touch. When you do fly, you’ll need to offset the carbon by finding a reputable carbon removal company [Note, we’reooking for the ultimate reputable offset organization here. What’s your go-to offsetter? Comments welcome.]
• Heating & Cooling | Get a home or office energy audit [Retrofit, Reduce]. Don’t put it off any longer. This is the day. Make the call. It’s time you were in touch with the energy leaks and opportunities in your space. Then Retrofit your home for minimal energy use. Also, check out this post on the world’s most efficient air conditioner.
• Cooking | Switch from gas to induction cooking [Retrofit]. Here’s a video about it. Of course you don’t have to get the whole stovetop. You can buy an induction plate for $70.
• Gadgets & Electronics | Use fewer gadgets & keep them in repair [Refuse, Reduce, Recycle, Repair]. Fix your gadgets when they break so you can keep them longer. Know that they are not being recycled, not like you think they should. Take the Repair pledge. Take action to support the Right to Repair. Shout out to repairers!
• Stuff | Try Minimalism [Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair]. Check out the Story of Stuff (video). Explore the minimalist lifestyle “you’re not going to get happier by consuming more.” Declutter your life once and for all by Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo. Take the 333 minimalist fashion challenge — spend less on clothes and always know what to wear! If you’re going to get stuff, get more lasting, un-disposable stuff. Rethink what you use. For example, is there a way to have deodorant without tossing the plastic dispenser? Why, yes.

Conflict Alert!

Note that of the R-Plays above, some require spending money (Retrofit), some are spending neutral (Recycle), and some would reduce spending (Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Repair). Guess which ones business promote?

Recycle and retrofit are less threatening to the dominant economic model. You consume a lot of stuff then plop it in a bin where it gets ground up again and turned into more stuff, so that makes the consumption instigators happy. And retrofit — well nothing better than re-doing your whole house over — lots of things to buy and pay for.

Refuse, reduce, re-use, repair. Why, if we all did this, we could cut waste a lot! And that would cut emissions a lot! Unfortunately, it all come into conflict with the dominant economic model, which demands that you consume, consume, consume. Your job, really, is to consume. A good citizen consumes, because businesses need consumers. The real job creators are consumers. So you’d be cruel not to.

Point is, you’ll get a lot of mixed messages on the demand side plays, and not a clear path through.

Kondo, etc.

Face the Economic Conflicts of Interest

Renegotiate: Jobs & Consumption conundrum

Best zero carbon play — Basic Income. And rethink business entirely.

So many terrible business models out there.

Media: Health: Eroding trust. Politics.

Education! How many people are trapped in this play?

A lot of people working in the business side of things, often trying to keep it in the “consume” model but make it greener. The biggest gains will be in the rethink it entirely. Incentivize finding the most efficient ways to do things and shifting culture to value time spent with each other rather than cheap stuff cycle. There was a big effort made to get our culture this way it is now — our lifestyle has been designed. So we are free to consciously switch to other ways of being.

• What a conundrum. If we don’t consume all that stuff, that means businesses have no customers. If they have no customers, they lay people off. If we get laid off, we have no money to buy essentials. So we HAVE to consume like there’s no tomorrow, right? Luckily, Indeed, “Retrofit” can be seen as a stimulus program. But once that stimulus is done…the conflict of interest remains.

Face your food

A lot of your food has a face. Also, your farming methods are breeding a flu pandemic, so…heads up on that.

Face what you’ve done to the Garden of Eden — and what you’re capable of doing.

I’m going to put agriculture here. Check out this image of how much land we use for ag. A lot we can do here.

Go vegan!

Face the Carbon Removal options

Many options here.

Face the Geo-engineering options

If all else fails — which it’s failing. It’s failing. We’re going to need geo-engineering. Here’s an overview of the plays.

Face the Money Question — Finance and Policy Plays

I’ve saved this for last. People somehow start with this, and you should keep it in mind as you go through each solution. It’s iterative. Still, it’s best to have an idea of what you want, keeping in mind how much money it’s going to take, and that you…anyway, what are the most effective ways to finance it, and policies that oppose or support what you’re planning. Here’s where you’d streamline that. Keep in mind the cost of inaction, and an eye out for counterproductive policies.

Face the Scoreboard — do your plays add up?

To recap: you need to switch the economy (upside, affordable education, housing, health and walkable communities! ) or do a massive switch of energy infrastructure, either destroying large tracts of land with solar and wind energy, which come into conflict with your garden of eden plays, or have awkward attempts at convincing your neighbors that nuclear power is cool, or get smart grids up the wazoo.

What are your initial choices for play?