Thread by @SteB777

1) Only large scale system change can prevent the eventual collapse of our civilization through the unsustainability of our present system, and the eventual impacts of the climate and ecological crisis. This is not a doomster perspective, this catastrophe is entirely avoidable.🧵

2) In this thread I want to highlight what it is that makes our current system totally unsustainable. I will look at this from a systems perspective and point towards the trends and trajectories leading to this point, and what we need to change to avoid this.

3) The primary feature of our present system developed during the industrial revolution is that it is a free market economy, focused on economic growth. Where successful individuals can accumulate unlimited wealth and possessions.

4) This economic growth is primarily driven by the unlimited exploitation of the Earth's natural resources, the major source of energy for this has been the burning of fossil fuels.

5) What drives this whole process are a small amount of individuals massively profiting from these industrial processes, which allows them to accumulate ever more wealth.

6) Of course this is a wheels within wheels process, because below the billionaires at the top is a hierarchy of other people, also profiting and gaining from this system, but to a lesser extent.

7) This ranges from multimillionaires many times over, just below billionaire level, to those living a higher than average lifestyle. Even the billionaire tier is a hierarchy, from those with "just" being worth $1 billion, to possibly $300 billion.

8) Generally, the higher someone is up this pecking order of wealth, the greater their impact on the natural environment, and the greater their carbon footprint. This graphic from Oxfam illustrates the situation, if we take emissions as a proxy for general impact.

9) We must remember this is a continuum, with there being a gigantic gap between someone being at the bottom of the top 10% of the wealthiest, or even from the bottom of top 1%, and the very richest people in the world. The same with other demographics.
oxfam.org/en/press-relea…

10) As I say, for simplicity I am going to use individual carbon footprints as a proxy for other consumption impacts, because this is far more than just a climate crisis, but multiple crises, often as serious as each other, that go to make up the ecological/sustainability crisis.

11) However, the overall big picture is crystal clear, and that is the wealthier someone is, the greater their ecological impact, with the majority of the world's population having relatively little impact in comparison.

12) In overall system terms, the importance of this hierarchy is that it's not stable. The very rich get even richer, and there are far more of these very rich people and others seeking to catch up with them. Yet as we see, majority have not even got a foot on this wealth ladder.

13) However, whilst much of the current emphasis on the richest getting richer during the pandemic, this was the same after the 2008 financial crisis, and indeed right back to the beginning of the industrial revolution.
businessinsider.com/number-of-bill…

14) It's not just individuals, but countries. The early beneficiaries were first the European colonial powers, those adopted the industrial model early on in the industrial revolution and so on. Using the emissions proxy, this illustrates the trends.

15) The massive rise in emissions from China as it industrialised in the last 30 years, illustrates the trends and future trajectories. The overall vision of this growth system is that the wealth of everyone, and every country, will try to catch up.

16) However, even in a very rich country like the US, there is a gigantic gap between the average person, let alone the poorest, and those at the very top. It's just about the less well off trying to catch up with the rich, because the rich themselves are forging ahead faster.

17) What I am doing is laying out how this system operates. Where is it not just the less well off trying to catch up with the richest, but the richest themselves getting ever richer even faster.

18) There is in theory no end to this trend, with most trying to become millionaires, and the billionaires trying to accumulate more than any billionaire. Self-evidently this end point can never happen, because the Earth does not have the resources to sustain this growth.

19) As we can see, the wealthier someone is, the greater their impact, by a considerable amount. There might be some wealthier people who do not consume that much, but it is so negligible, that we can take it the wealthier someone is, the greater their impact.

20) Within the current system, there is no end to these trends. The primary aim of just about every government is economic growth, which means the wealthiest becoming rapidly wealthier and a massive general scramble to catch up.

21) This is why current policy to address the climate and ecological crisis is nonsense, because the drivers of the crisis will continue accelerating. It certainly can't be addressed with technology, only massive system change.

22) There is a current and ridiculous attempt to try and scapegoat China, and India. To say look, they produce higher emissions than anyone. But not per capita they don't. Rather the problem is the overall system, the economic model. They are just following the system laid down.

23) Go back 50 years or more and all informed environmentalists and thinkers were already well aware what this was leading to. The Limits to Growth (1972) was an early attempt to model this with some rigour.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limit…

24) Essentially, if you have this free market capitalist system where a few super rich individuals are going to carry on using industrial over-exploitation to create profit to accumulate more wealth, driving the tiers underneath to do similar, it is going to end in disaster.

25) No amount of technical innovation will allow you to have infinite growth in a finite system, where we are systematically destroying natural systems, to create this growth - our life support systems.

26) You need some seriously industrial strength denial to avoid this rather bleeding obvious truth/reality. Unfortunately, all those in positions of power and influence in our current system, have got a rather self-evident vested interest in denying the essential problem.

27) You see, in our present system, virtually everyone with any sort of influence, a major voice, any decision making power, anything but a very lowly position in the media, our education systems etc, is in that top 10% often the top 1%.

28) In other words, the vast majority with any influence have much greater than average income/wealth, and a much more luxurious lifestyle than the average. So even unconsciously, they are going to be motivated, to deny the core driver of unsustainability in our current system.

29) However, of course some more ethical people in these higher wealth tiers do speak out, and openly acknowledge what the problem is. But of course they are in a minority, and the higher up the ladder you go, the rarer they get.

30) Even worse, is the richer billionaires get, and the more of them there are, the more control they have over our societies, and the more they coordinate to move the narrative away from the need for system change.

31) The principle of equity attempts to address this problem in sustainability terms. Which in simplistic terms means the equal sharing of resources.
climatechangenews.com/2019/10/02/gre…

32) At COP26 there was an attempt to exclude "equity" as it's subjective. There's a general attempt to portray "equity" as just a matter of social justice (too complex to go into here) - but I assert, that in actuality, it is an objective system parameter.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1458689282416254978

33) It is actually this "inequity", gross inequality in wealth and power that is actually driving the present unsustainable system. This is what makes it an objective, and not subjective system parameter.

34) I say this false framing of equity as "just" a social justice issue, therefore making it a matter of choice, of opinion, ideology etc, is pure sophistry. I'm not saying social justice doesn't matter, far from it. But it is not a matter of choice or opinion.

35) I say this inequity is not only knowing, but it has been deliberately created and imposed to actually drive this hot house economic model.

36) I present clear an unequivocal evidence, that it was well known early in the 19th. I cite what Charles Darwin said in the 2 paragraphs of Ch.10, in The Voyage of the Beagle.
gutenberg.org/cache/epub/944…

37) This narrative has been present from the early days of the industrial revolution, that the whole project was about people "improving" themselves. I say this was just a specious, socially acceptable justification, for some people pursuing incredible wealth.

38) What it does show, that it was well known that artificially imposed inequality, was necessary to drive the pursuit of "self-improvement". Of course, back then, Darwin had no idea where it would lead to.

39) The present system is quite arbitrary. The whole notion that some individuals could absolutely own vast natural resources and do whatever they wanted with it in the pursuit of wealth, is not much older than the industrial revolution.

40) Therefore changing this basic system parameters is not so difficult, if they are quite arbitrary, and were simply put in place by a relative handful of individuals, to make themselves incredibly rich.

41) Often the false idea is put forward, that the industrial revolution just spontaneously happened, when certain technology emerged. This is a complete smokescreen, a red herring, a false narrative.

42) In fact, the industrial revolution in Britain, where it started, emerged out of great social engineering, to deliberately make it happen. Inclosure Acts, forced people off the land giving them no other means to support themselves.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure…

43) The idea that technology triggered the industrial revolution, is easily disproven. Because the first factories in Britain, which were more or less the first in history, used old technology.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory

44) The technology we associate with creating the industrial revolution, was actually developed to increase the productivity of factories and an industrial system, which already existed, and which had been carefully planned with social engineering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory

45) My only reason for making these points is not ideological. It is simply to illustrate that this system is not set in stone, not inevitable, and can easily be changed, by just changing some of the arbitrary parameters.

46) However, of course this isn't too popular with people who have benefited greatly from the current system and who have greater or much greater than average wealth, high status and luxury lifestyles, plus of course power.

47) However, as we can see with the percentage of people producing the greatest carbon emissions, where the top 1% produce more than twice the emissions of the bottom 50%. This is a minority, but an incredibly powerful minority.
oxfam.org/en/press-relea…

48) So when opinionated people argue that people will not cut back on their lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions. They are actually referring to the top 1% or at most top 10% (who of course hold all the levers of power). Most don't need to cut back.

https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1466476614498361355

49) Major system change is entirely possible and practical. Although it is not popular with those who would lose most, the top 1%, who need to reduce their personal emissions by a factor of 30, to stay within the carbon budget to keep below 1.5C.

@GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @KevinClimate @ClimateHuman @ClimateBen @DoctorVive @JKSteinberger

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