Exploring the Structure of the Problem
A metaphorical representation of the gap between political and physical requirements for adequate decarbonisation. On the left are genuine bridges going in the right direction, but (constrained by politics and economics) they don't get very far. The blue rainbow-like shape represents the process of 'back-casting' from a physically realistic future state. It is not a genuine bridge but could show a realistic strategic pathway. As will be obviuous from other material here, I am firmly in the 'physical realism' camp.
The Climate Change problem is at once very simple and very complex. Underlying it all is a basic physical imbalance between energy received and energy emitted by the earth, relative to the interglacial norm of the last 10,000 years. This is largely driven by greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). The First Law of Thermodynamics tells us that 'things' are bound to happen as a consequence, and climate scientists have worked hard to try and predict at least approximately what things, when.
The complexities arise in trying to graft these basic understandings onto the fabric of modern life. There is enough evidence to suggest that urgent action would be prudent, but enough uncertainty that for the time being pretty well everybody can ignore the incipient problem. By the time it gets bad enough to prompt decisive action, it could well be too late. If this analysis is correct, it is entirely rational to be an 'alarmist', but as we all know, alarmists tend to be ignored and derided for being er…alarmist.
Most of the items below are of historical interest only: for what they are worth, they show the evolution of my thinking. In the last decade I have found myself crossing swords with a kind humanist tendency in the Green Movement, led in universities largely by social scientists and humanities scholars. They have all bought the notion that theorists such as myself urged so forcefully in the 70s, that Big Tech is bad, and bottom-up solutions, especially those involving lifestyle change, must be the bedrock of solutions to Climate Change. I have come to disagree with this view, and a humorous take on the matter can be found elsewhere on this website, see Another Piece of Political Theatre in the Blog Section.
More seriously: Emergency Technocentrism 2024 (docx)
By 2026, my heresies had gone even further, but all arising, so it seems to me, from the evidence available and — as I see it — deliberate clarity of thought.
FAULT-LINES
In 2025 I and colleagues from the University in Bath ran a series of four one-day workshops on the theme of FAULT-LINES, that is, major unresolved disputes within the sustainability discourse. Here is a general overview:
The Fault-Lines Debates 2025 (docx)
During these workshops we took the chance to dramatise some of the issues in the form of a rmoderated debate between characters on either side of each fault-line. Here they are:
Dialogue on Sharing versus Sparing 2025
Dialogue on Natural versus Artificial Foods 2025
Dialogue on Natural versus Engineered Sequestration 2025
Dialogue on Bottom-up versus Top-down decarbonisation 2025
In some cases we also introduced the material in the form of a ‘naive academic’ apparently coming fresh to the field and relying entirely on the academic literature for evidence. This tends to be far more partial than the ‘dialogues’ above, because the raw data tend to support a less holistic, less romantic, view of these issues. I myself constructed these power-point presentations as a kind of cock-shy to be knocked down during the course of each conference, but they proved alarmingly robust.
A naive academic’s view on ‘Frankenstein foods’ ppt 2025
I wrote some comments on the first meeting here.
Did we learn anything new? Well perhaps…
Did We Learn Anything New? Word 2026
OTHER STUFF
The first two items in this older section are introductory overviews of the problem, of the kind used in university courses. In many ways they are orthodox, but probably clarify certain issues.
Defining and Measuring Sustainability (ppt)
Sustainability notes 2014 (doc)
Probably the most important conceptual advance in the last five years has been the understanding that cumulative emissions (sometimes referred to as 'carbon budgets') are a key indicator for climate change and appropriate policy. This is a short essay on its implications for the UK.
Implications of Carbon Budgets for the UK 2013 (doc)
The next item uses the 'geometrical algebra' of carbon budgets to examine UK official policy, finds that it falls very short of a genuinely sustainable contribution to the world problem, and calculates a physical value for the shortfall.
What Carbon, where and when? 2014 (doc)
This one (university lecture notes) speculates about alternative futures:
Future Scenarios 2014 (doc)
The other items in this section are several years old and might be considered less relevant to the present situation. However, contemporary understanding is sometimes helped by travelling back in time to see the genesis of certain ideas, and how we were all groping for improved understanding. Things are moving rapidly in this field, so going back five years shows substantial differences, as in these short pieces. The first formally predicts the incipient 'bifurcation of history'; the second attempts to classify different 'schools' and reveals my own views as those of a small minority (but of course I would not hold them if I did not think them correct); the third tries to summarise main features of the debate up to 2009. Occasionally such 'retrospectives' are helpful in gauging the progress of various policy proposals, and the evolution of 'public mood'.
The Most Famous Date in History 2008 (doc)
Cladistics of Views on Climate Change 2008 (doc)
Evolution of the Climate Change Debate 2009 (doc)
Two even older pieces from the pre-climate-change era are still relevant in that on the whole their speculations, based on the ineluctable nature of physical processes, have been borne out. The second of these pieces discusses the strange persistence of pessimistic and optimistic interpretations of the data and attempts to resolve the apparent contradiction. I regard it as an excellent summary of the state of quantitative environmental thinking at the turn of the millennium.
Paradoxes of Sustainability 1995 (doc)
The End in Sight? 2000 (doc)
It is notable that 15, 20 years later we still cannot get the extreme gravity of the prospects for the 21st century taken seriously in mainstream policy or popular discourse. This has been labelled 'the Giddens Paradox' by the distinguished social scientist Anthony Giddens. The previous cited paper notes a special case, that even academia and the research community, with all its privileged information, has failed to engage the problem with due concern. Following Giddens' example, I am tempted to call this 'Harper's Paradox'.
I continued to explore the Great Paradox through the algorithmic straight-jacket of the Kaya Identity. Here are two attempts to extend the Identity beyond its original purpose of decomposing the energy system: