For at least a decade, I have been arguing, here and there, that neither climate chaos nor ecological destruction can be resolved by “renewable energy” or “clean energy” alone. A very small number of technical analysts have come to the same conclusion, but they are all outside of the culture of the conventional Environmental Movement. What is necessary but unspoken is the reduction of profligate energy production, use, and waste. Modern industrial societies live in the illusion that becoming low energy users is not necessary—it’s the modern illusion of progress.
Both the concepts and data are quite clear, although routinely ignored by those who are unwilling to abandon the culture of industrial consumerism, which inherently depends on the overuse, misuse, and waste of high-energy fossil fuels, and nuclear fuels as well, in sustaining and expanding industrial civilization. Old habits die hard, especially when rewarded with comfort, convenience, and power over one’s material environment, or, at least the promise of such luxuries.
Conceptual Habits and Energetic Overshoot
We moderns have very short memories, especially when history is taught as a paean to the progress of humanity as a reflection of new technology, industrial innovation, economic integration, and ever-expanding array of ‘consumer choices.” Industrial modernism touts the inevitability of ever-expanding markets, by overproducing the marketed targets of artificially ginned up consumer demand.
“Living within the truth” of the direct experience of life on planet Earth, has been replaced by “living within the lie” of internalizing, not just complying with the economic-system generated beliefs and values that serve the interests of continued expansion of the existentially totalistic culture of the techno-economic system that dominates the world.
The habit of internalizing the illusions of consumer culture has become the mechanism of social control over individual behavior that allows the autocratic operation of the technocracy. It is managed in the interests of the system instead of the freely chosen “aims of life” as we might otherwise understand them. Ideas of ‘living the good life’ are mediated and managed according to the demands and needs of the system and its growth. The pure aims of human life do not need the ever-growing techno-industrial system of perpetual growth to be realized, but in the context of industrial-consumer culture they are suppressed and sublimated by the dominant media that control the popular culture.
All of this assures that the consumption of fossil-fuel energy will continue even as it threatens life itself. Energy overshoot is sold as a necessity of life, not as a threat to its future.
Energy Overshoot: the Basis of Capital Accumulation
Climate Trace is a global not-for-profit coalition of over 100 universities, scientists, and AI experts, which collects data from the entire Earth surface on sources and quantities of carbon emissions and other sources of planetary pollution. Here is a summary of its general findings for 2025.
“Key insights from 2025 data include:
- Despite a small decline in power sector emissions, fossil fuel operations, transportation, manufacturing, and buildings all nudged global greenhouse gas emissions higher.
- Oil and gas production was the subsector with the largest jump in emissions, increasing 4.1%.
- The biggest movers in the power sector were China, India, and the US. For the first time since at least 2015, emissions from China’s power sector decreased year over year, but that decline was offset by an equivalent increase in US power emissions. Meanwhile, India’s power sector emissions fell for the first time since 2020.
- Road transportation emissions increased globally, but have dropped in Nordic countries where electric vehicle (EV) adoption is high.”
In short, overall, despite some relatively small improvements, the entire industrialized world is still living within the illusion that fossil-fuel energy is a never-ending source of the continuing operations of the global political economy. However, it is not. The rewards are short-term, the costs are open-ended.
The primary cause of growing planetary instability and potential collapse of weather systems, ecosystems, and social systems is the continuing overshoot of human energy consumption and waste in a world of finite available energy sources and high risks of ill-health, ecological degradation, and global decline of all living systems.
Energy overshoot is the direct consequence of the insatiable “goliath” of capital accumulation that is the international political economy of growth. Debt-based investment always requires a return on investment (“ROI” for debt repayment) that is larger than the amount invested. That requires growth. But endless growth in a finite world simply does not work, once growth approaches its own limits in a field of finite available supplies of energy and resources. As Donella Meadows and her colleagues predicted in 1972, those limits to growth are being felt now, in multiple ways. The thirty-year update to that original computer simulation of societal growth and material depletion is also instructive.
The culture of industrial modernity operates on the specific illusion that energy will always be available, in increasing quantities, no less, because of the corollary illusion that human innovation and the creation of new materials and inventions will always allow us to extract as much energy and materials from the Earth System as we may desire. That is just not possible. Yet, the Goliath continues unabated as we approach catastrophic collapse of not only the Earth System but of our ‘modern civilization’ as well.
The New Great Transformation: Survival or Extinction
Here is where the going gets tough. Nobody I know or have heard about is really prepared to weather the storm of the New Great Transformation of the relationship of humanity to the planet we inhabit—a transformation that is now upon us.
Let me be clear. I am not predicting a particular configuration or trajectory of the new great transformation of the Earth System and of human societies. I am just saying that it is coming, its beginnings are observable, and we really ought to have a say as to how it unfolds. But so far, most have ignored the ‘future fact’ that I am asserting, despite the overwhelming evidence that none of the proffered “solutions” to the observed rapidly accelerating trajectories of key elements of Earth System destabilization—and failing societal stability, for that matter. Most folks, laymen and professionals alike, act as if the half-hearted measures suggested by ‘authorities’ (aside from the ludicrous denials coming from the political fringe now operating government) will be adequate to assure continuation of ‘civilization as we know it.’
Clearly, it is tough to come up with a vision of a future life based not on the lives we now live, but on a set of circumstances that lead us to feel that such changes would be like “returning to the days of cavemen.” Of course, it is not that simple. This is not some simple dichotomy between high tech AI driven totalitarian hierarchies of oppression versus retracing our steps back to a hunter-gatherer economy. The options are far more complex and difficult to imagine than that.
Because of decades of societal delay in facing the clear trends toward collapse, it is clear to me now that we are too far down the path of global environmental destabilization to avoid massive population loss in the next few decades. I accept what I cannot change as the context for looking toward what might be done to minimize human suffering and optimize survival chances for as many as possible. You can call that triage if you like. Some climate and ecological damage and their consequences at this late date, are simply beyond our control. We are in fact faced with the likelihood that humans will have to be very creative in coping with radically changing environments where the primary goal will be how to sustain a food supply and protect one’s community from others who have been driven from their homelands by life-threatening circumstances. There is so much to consider now, much of which it is only possible to hint at in assessing the direction and impact of change emerging so soon in our future. Yet, we must, and we must plan and execute massive mitigation measures now if we are to face reality with hope.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 