The world we live in

Most people imagine that the current world is the natural state of things, even though it has only been around for maybe a hundred years, depending on how you count it, and where in the world you are. Every part of modern society would be unrecognizable a few generations ago. But on some level, we act as though the world will continue as it is indefinitely.

One of the defining features of the current age is fossil fuels. They unlock an immense amount of energy that previously we did not have access to, energy that is incredibly cheap and portable. This energy allows us to enjoy luxuries that would be unimaginable to kings only a few generations ago (though these luxuries are not evenly distributed: there is about one car for every 5 people in the world; in the US and Canada, about 9 for every 10).

This wealth also manifests in less obvious ways. Consider a pen. Oil was drilled from deep under the earth, refined into plastic, molded in a factory, injected with ink made elsewhere, probably shipped across the globe, driven to a store filled with more distinct items than most people would have seen in a lifetime for most of history. And yet all this effort is so trivial that you might throw it away without thinking about it, and probably you can look around wherever you are reading this and see countless equally trivial objects that took an equal amount of complexity to create. You may not feel unimaginably wealthy by owning a pen, because cheap and disposable pens are maybe not what you would choose to do with unlimited wealth and power. But that is how we use this immense source of power.

The future

The big problem is, of course, that fossil fuels are not compatible with life. Climate change is already killing people. It’s also affecting the world in subtler ways. The weather is destroying infrastructure, for instance, and that will happen more and more. The vast and interconnected network of international fossil-fuel-driven trade is probably not incredibly robust: as we saw during the beginning of the pandemic, it didn’t take much for it to break in surprising ways. A lot of oil is drilled or refined in places susceptible to extreme weather. Climate change will lead to famine and other economic disasters, which will destabilize the whole system further.

People imagine that societal collapse that looks like a zombie apocalypse movie, where you can be brave and heroic, and problems are dire but simple. Or they imagine it will be something sudden and drastic that absolves them of the responsibility to deal with it. It will more likely look like a more extreme version of what we saw in 2020, where a little bit of strain on the system created unexpected shortages. About 50 years ago, there was gas rationing in the US, and we will likely see it return. Reliably getting the parts needed to keep complex machinery working will become more difficult. Infrastrucutre will be destroyed by weather, and it will take longer and longer to fix it afterwards. There will probably come a day when you can no longer walk into a nearby store and buy a plastic pen.

This system of fossil fuel consumption is a self-limiting system. It requires complex international trade to continue indefinitely without interruption. Some people romanticize the idea of returning to a simpler time. But in the modern world, life expectancies have risen enormously due to a system that needs medicines, equipment and other resources to get to hospitals, not to mention patients. In the modern world, we are so unconcerned about getting enough calories to survive that some people even want to lose weight. Even just having access to basic goods, like that plastic pen, are something we take for granted.

A soft landing

We are not going to stop this process, at this point. Things are already starting to fall apart. What we can do is aim for a soft landing, a controlled collapse, one where we get to choose how the transition between the modern world and the future world will happen. There is often an assumption, when we talk about climate change, that the choice is between maintaining our current lifestyles indefinitely, and making changes to combat climate change. This choice no longer exists. Drastic changes are coming and our only available choice is in how we address it. Do we choose to adapt, and make choices that buy us time to adapt, or do we refuse to acknowledge what is happening until it is too late? Right now, for instance, public transit is an option to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions. Bikes will last longer and be easier to maintain than cars, but they are also complex pieces of advanced technology. If we don’t take control of the situation, we’ll be looking at going back to horses and mules instead, or even just having to walk.

Also, the solution has to focus on building a world that doesn’t need oil. There is this idea that we can just turn off the production of oil and all our problems would be solved. In reality, people would die. Food would not reach our tables, and people would not get to the hospital. Fossil fuels are all used to do specific things with concrete outcomes in the world. We need to figure out how to first preserve the things that are necessary, and then, if we can, keep the things that are nice to have. I think this approach is less popular because it requires us to be honest about what we need to prioritize, and what luxuries we may not be able to keep. It’s a large and complex project that requires us all to work together to fix it, a process which is often messy and full of conflict. But there’s no other way.