The problem with this climate only myopic view is it fails to recognise the fact that global warming is far from our only existential threat. Just look at or planetary boundaries breaches (below). Of the seven planetary breached boundaries (staying inside the green bit is crucial to continued life on the planet) five are not related to climate change ^[1]. However, the one thing that all the boundary exceedances have in common (not mentioned in CCC report) is that they are caused by overshoot/overconsumption.

The CCC report has many recommendations for how we could reduce our emissions (see box below). Almost all are dependent on new technology that requires the manufacture of huge amounts of new infrastructure and consumption of non-renewable materials. These suggested techno-fixes are all based on the premise that they can decouple economic growth from emissions. Decoupling is not mentioned once in the CCC report despite it being core to their recommendations, perhaps they avoided using the decoupling term because it has been comprehensively debunked.

Even though overconsumption and economic growth is the driver of emissions the only recommendation for reduction is for food waste. The issue of increased material consumption is ignored as is the issue of Jevons paradox and/or the rebound effect. These two are linked and mean that emissions and harm gains from new technology are almost always negated or severely reduced in reality ^[i].

One of the clearest examples of the problem of climate myopia in the CCC report is the call for faster adoption of electric vehicles. There is no doubt that electric vehicles have lower exhaust pipe GHG emissions, and if global warming were our only existential crisis, then this would be a great recommendation. However, the reality is that when planetary boundaries are considered any gains from EV’s are far from clear cut. The planetary facts website allows New Zealand comparisons of food and transport and is the source of the graphs below. You can see that from a planetary perspective, private cars, regardless of fuel, are incompatible with a liveable future.

Maybe the Climate Change Commission should be climate myopic, I’m not sure. If we had a commission for each of the planetary boundaries then they could all be myopic, but we don’t and I so I worry the wrong message is being sent by a myopic commission.

While I accept that the wider planetary boundary impacts may not be I part of the climate commissions remit, it seems that this advice which is basically boils down to tweaking our current system is dangerous. We must accept that our current system here in wealthy New Zealand is unsustainable. We currently need 3.3 planet earths to support the average NZ lifestyle and the extra material requirements alone of the actions suggested will only push us deeper into ecological debt.

^[1] For details of other existential threats see https://realityofeverything.org/speakers/mike-joy/

^[i] “economy-wide rebound effects may erode more than half of the expected energy savings from improved energy efficiency” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032121000769

“We find that, on average, households with and without a heat pump use approximately the same amount of electricity” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1420326X16629725

Figure 1. https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/

As a high-income nation, our current lifestyles in New Zealand require more than 3.3 planet Earths^[2]. Or another way of saying it is that if we only lived within the capacity of this one planet, its capacity to support our lifestyles would run out in April; after that, we will be in ecological deficit.

It’s like living on your credit card for two thirds of the year.

Of course, when we are in financial debt, we can declare bankruptcy or pay back our credit card debt, but we cannot do that when we go into ecological debt.

This is called overshoot^[3]

Another way of looking at overshoot is planetary boundaries^[4].

Figure 2. Planetary boundaries https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

They reveal that seven of the nine boundaries crucial to continued life on the planet are now breached and are moving into extreme risk.

The reason I chose to talk about the polycrisis is that of these seven breaches, five are not related to climate change.

Figure 3. https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/why-climate-change-is-the-symptom-of-a-much-deeper-and-bigger-problem

Climate/carbon tunnel vision seems to be ubiquitous.

Of the myriad environmental risks to humanity, media coverage seems almost totally dominated by climate change.

I’m not qualified to talk about many of the crises shown on this slide^[5] above but as an ecologist I can talk to the biophysical components.

I’ll start with biogeochemical flows.

Figure 4. Erisman, J., Sutton, M., Galloway, J. et al. How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world. Nature Geosci 1, 636–639 (2008). https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo325

We have radically altered nutrient cycles but none more so than the nitrogen cycle.

For almost a century now we have used fossil gas to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and turned it into reactive nitrogen – a form usable by plants.

Prior to this synthetic process being developed, nitrogen-fixing plants did this task in real time and for free.

Now, we humans create more reactive nitrogen than all the natural systems combined on the planet.

This radical alteration of the nitrogen cycle has been described by The European Science Foundation as “perhaps the greatest single experiment in global geo-engineering that humans have ever made”. ^[6]

You can see (Figure 4) it coincided with massively increased food production and human population growth. ^[7]

Using fossil gas to make synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, we now effectively feed the world using solar energy extracted from the ancient past. We are eating the past.

This dependency on fossil gas of course means our food production systems are absolutely unsustainable.

It is important to note that most of the food produced using synthetic nitrogen goes to feeding animals (and bizarrely, creating biofuels!).^[8]

This “eating” of fossil fuels is a major factor in how the biomass of animals on the planet has increased by 700% since industrialisation.^[9]

Figure 5. A.D. Barnosky, Megafauna biomass tradeoff as a driver of Quaternary and future extinctions, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105 (supplement_1) 11543-11548, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801918105 (2008). https://conservationbytes.com/2020/01/

As an indication of just how much we dominate life on the planet: 97% of the biomass of vertebrate animals on the planet is us and the animals we eat. This means that just 3% is wild animal biomass.

This ratio is almost the reverse of the ratio prior to industrialisation.

Little wonder then that we have a biodiversity crisis even without climate change.

Our extinction rate is currently 100 to 1000 times the previous average, meaning we are now in what has been called the sixth great extinction.^[10]

In the past 50 years, wildlife populations have declined by 73%.^[11] In just the last four decades insect populations have declined by 45%.^[12]

It’s even worse for freshwater biodiversity – in the last 50 years freshwater megafauna populations declined by 88%.^[13]

The devastation of natural landscapes through deforestation and urbanisation continues destroying habitats and biodiversity and multiple ecological impacts.

Around 10 million hectares of forest are cut down each year. And the rate of deforestation has accelerated – it is now 46% higher than a decade ago.^[14]

Figure 6. Albert, J.S., Destouni, G., Duke-Sylvester, S.M. et al. Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis. Ambio 50, 85–94 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01318-8

Safe healthy freshwater is disappearing fast. We have entered an era of freshwater bankruptcy, in which 70% of the world’s major aquifers^[15] and surface waters show long-term declining trends.^[16]

70% of the world’s population lives in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water insecure.^[17] Around 25% of the global population lacks safe drinking water and about 50% experience severe water scarcity for at least one month a year. ^[18]

Figure 7. Bradford, J.C. (2020), The Future Is Rural: Societal Adaptation to Energy Descent. Am J Econ Sociol, 79: 751-798. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12335

Another outcome of synthetic nitrogen availability and the associated globalisation and industrialisation of food production is that we now have energy-negative food. What that means is that we put more energy into getting food than we get back.

Prior to the industrialisation of food production all the food we consumed was energy positive; we got more from it that we put into getting it.

Obviously, this is a pre-requisite for life.

The energy return on investment for food in the pre-fossil fuel era was about +69. ^[19] It is now minus 10 or less.

In the United States, the industrial food production system uses more than 10–33 units of fossil energy to plough, plant, fertilise, harvest, transport, refine, package, store/refrigerate, and deliver one unit of food energy. ^[20]

Another existential crisis related to food is deteriorating soil health. At the current rates of salinisation, acidification, compaction, nutrient depletion, contamination by heavy metals and erosion, 95% of the Earth’s usable soil will be significantly degraded by 2050. ^[21]

Wetlands also have been radically altered. Globally more than 80% of wetlands have been destroyed and this proportion is projected to be 90% by 2050 ^[22] – the rest of the world will catch up with New Zealand, which is already there.^[23]

What remains of our freshwater bodies are increasingly polluted. Excess nutrients in waterways lead to eutrophication; this depletes oxygen in rivers, lakes, estuaries and oceans, leading to hypoxia or death through lack of oxygen. And algal blooms are often toxic to all life.

Figure 8. The Global Ocean Oxygen Network https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/go2ne

When the nutrient rich water hits oceans it leads to dead zones seen here, ^[24] and the number of these has quadrupled in the last few decades.

Excess nitrogen in rivers and aquifers ends up in drinking water, with serious health impacts.

In some rivers in New Zealand, we have the highest flux of nitrogen found anywhere in the world.^[25]

Figure 9. Joy, M. K., and A. D. Canning. 2021. Shifting baselines and political expediency in New Zealand’s freshwater management. Marine and Freshwater Research 72:456-461. https://doi.org/10.1071/MF20210 (Figure 1.)

As a result, around 800,000 New Zealander receive domestic water with nitrate concentrations above levels associated with significant increased risk of colorectal cancer. ^[26]

And surely not coincidentally New Zealand has the highest rates of colorectal cancer in the world. ^[27]

Another water crisis is pollution from plastic and emerging contaminants.

More than 350,000 distinct chemicals and mixtures have been registered for global commercial use. They end up in the environment and our food via water and most are uncharacterised, unquantified, and unregulated. ^[28]

These emerging contaminants and plastics release hazardous compounds linked to multiple impacts on human health and aquatic life.

Another existential crisis is antimicrobial resistance.^[29] This is one of the top global public health threats and results from the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials, aka antibiotics, in humans, animal agriculture and aquaculture.

Our ocean fisheries are also in crisis. If the current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, by 2050 the populations of just about all fish stocks will collapse.^[30]

Another alarming example of overshoot is all the stuff we mine, manufacture and hoard.

The weight of all the material stuff we have amassed now exceeds all living biomass – a stark contrast to a century ago when it just three percent in weight compared to all biomass. ^[31]

Figure 10. Elhacham, E., Ben-Uri, L., Grozovski, J. et al. Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass. Nature 588, 442–444 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5

All this stuff consumed means more waste. Since 1900 we have discarded 2,500 trillion tonnes of stuff. ^[32]

We discard 85% of ores and 26% of the non-metallic minerals we extract. ^[33]

And we waste more than just physical stuff. Every year we discard, mismanage or waste around 78% of the total water withdrawn from ground or surface waters, 49% of the food we produce, and 31% of the energy we produce. ^[34]

Much of the stuff ends up in oceans – for example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now estimated to cover an area six times the land area of New Zealand. ^[35]

I could keep going with all these symptoms of overshoot, but I need to turn now to what it means and what we should do about it.

Figure 11. Data sources in graphic, graphic Art Berman from https://www.artberman.com/blog/reality-blind/

This graphic reveals our dilemma: economic growth – the goal of governments and, it seems, almost everyone – simply means more fossil energy consumption, more greenhouse gas emissions and more non-renewable material extraction. ^[36]

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, comes in for a lot of flak, but one thing it is good at is measuring harm. Of all the environmental indicators available, it is the best overall predictor of environmental and climate harm. ^[37]

It is important to recognise too that the ecological impact of our economic activity and consumption is profoundly unequal. The small, high-income fraction of the global population is responsible for most of the damage, which disproportionately harms the relatively poorer majority.

The richest 10% of people on the planet – which includes the wealthiest 50% on New Zealanders ^[38]– is responsible for two thirds of global environmental damage including most greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, pollution and resource depletion, while the bottom 50% contribute only a small proportion. ^{[39] [40]}

In the past two centuries – a tiny fraction of human history – the human population has increased eight-fold and gross world product has increased 100-fold, all powered by a 1,300-fold increase in energy consumption.

To show how impossible continued growth is: if we keep growing at the rate we have for the last 35 years, then in the next 35 years we would have to consume and pollute more than the previous 300,000 years. ^[41]

So, what we to do?

The only “solutions” to our predicament dominating the mainstream and political discourse seems to be planting trees and the much-vaunted energy transition.

It is crucial everyone understands that planting trees or any nature-based solution is absolutely necessary but can only return the carbon lost from chopping trees down and degrading nature. It will not return one single gram of fossil carbon.

Thus, the energy transition seems to be the “solution” that makes all the headlines so I took a look to see how many of the other components of the polycrisis would be mitigated by decarbonising energy. And the answer is, precisely none:

All these crises, including the climate crisis, have a single common cause: they are symptoms of overshoot. Therefore, the only possible future is ending overshoot. Even if we could “fix” climate change we would get nowhere – we must respond to all these crises to preserve a liveable future.

^[1] the simultaneous occurrence and interaction of multiple interconnected crises across various domains, creating a complex and intertwined web of challenges.

Reality Studies

Explaining Polycrisis and Metacrisis

Last week, Leah Zaidi and I announced the “Plotting the Polycrisis” workshop for storytellers, which we developed for SXSW 2024. I received some questions about the term, and since it’s going to be a recurring theme on Reality Studies, I wanted to take a moment to explain it, as well as the related notion of the “metacrisis…

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3 years ago · 47 likes · 3 comments · Jesse Damiani

^[2] https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/

^[3] The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable. https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32

^[4] https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

^[5] https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/why-climate-change-is-the-symptom-of-a-much-deeper-and-bigger-problem

^[6] Mark A. Sutton and Hans Van Grinsven, “European Nitrogen Assessment: Summary for Policy Makers,” 2011,http://www.nine-esf.org/files/ena_doc/ENA_pdfs/ENA_policy summary.pdf.

^[7] How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo325

^[8] Liu J, Ma K, Ciais P, Polasky S. Reducing human nitrogen use for food production. Sci Rep. 2016 Jul 22;6:30104. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep30104

^[9] Megafauna biomass trade-off as a driver of Quaternary and future extinctions https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0801918105

^[10] https://earth.org/data_visualization/eoindex-extinction/

^[11] https://wwf.ca/media-releases/lpr-2024/

^[12] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

^[13] The global decline of freshwater megafauna https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31393076/

^[14] https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation

^[15] Groundwater depletion in a drying world https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2825%2900250-5/fulltext

^[16] https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:10445/Global_Water_Bankruptcy_Report__2026_.pdf

^[17] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40899-024-01140-0

^[18] https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/water-scarcity

^[19] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10745-017-9908-3

^[20]

Garden Earth - Beyond sustainability

Eating oil

“For industrial man no longer eats potatoes made from solar energy, now he eats potatoes partly made of oil” (Howard T Odum…

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2 years ago · 23 likes · 12 comments · Gunnar Rundgren

^[21] https://earth.org/95-of-the-earths-soil-on-course-to-be-degraded-by-2050/

^[22]

https://www.global-wetland-outlook.ramsar.org/

^[23] https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-releases/2025-media-releases/further-losses-predicted-for-wetlands-in-future/

^[24] https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/go2ne

^[25] Joy, M. K., and A. D. Canning. 2021. Shifting baselines and political expediency in New Zealand’s freshwater management. Marine and Freshwater Research 72:456-461. https://doi.org/10.1071/MF20210

^[26] Nitrate contamination in drinking water and colorectal cancer: Exposure assessment and estimated health burden in New Zealand https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.112322

^[27] https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/nitrate-in-drinking-water-could-cause-up-to-100-cases-of-bowel-cancer-in-nz

^[28] Toward a Global Understanding of Chemical Pollution: A First Comprehensive Analysis of National and Regional Chemical Inventories. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b06379

^[29] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance

^[30] Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1132294

^[31] Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5

^[32] From resource extraction to outflows of wastes and emissions: The socioeconomic metabolism of the global economy, 1900–2015 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6333294/

^[33] Scientists’ warning against the society of waste https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721064378

^[34] Scientists’ warning against the society of waste, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721064378

^[35] https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/

^[36] https://www.artberman.com/blog/ecomodernism-modernity-without-ecology/

^[37] Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability, https://eeb.org/en/library/decoupling-debunked/

^[38] https://www.moneyhub.co.nz/average-new-zealand-net-worth-by-age.html

^[39] https://studyfinds.org/worlds-richest-destroying-the-planet/

^[40] Scientists’ warning on affluence https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y

^[41] World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10515534/

This is one of these messy lesser-of-two-evils arguments I usually try to steer clear of because I can see that ‘less harm’ (and I will argue here that the less-harm claim is far from settled) is turned into a ‘better for the planet’ meme on social media. This lesser-of-two-evils meme is often used by companies as a greenwashing tactic.

The point that is missed when this argument is used is that growth, regardless of its colour (green, black, or purple) requires taking ever more from a stressed finite planet and this is no longer an option. The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt nailed my thoughts when she said; “Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.”

The reason I don’t want to get into a clean vs dirty energy debate is that it’s not an either/or choice, and it isn’t just about the climate crisis. The life supporting capacity of the planet is already teetering on collapse with multiple existential threats reaching tipping points and any more extraction, no matter how well intentioned, is not viable.

Biophysical limits are real and non-negotiable – they simply cannot be compromised, regardless of whether the extraction is for ‘carbon free energy’ or anything else. The goal of electrification to address climate change is laudable. The problem is that it’s being seen in isolation, ignoring the reality that climate change is just one of a raft of crises, all symptoms of ecological overshoot.

Even the New York Times pointed out on Earth Day that: “Climate change is a symptom of a larger issue: ecological overshoot, the fact that humans are consuming resources faster than they can regenerate and producing more waste and pollution than nature can absorb.”

Now to the specifics of the materials/mining argument. The Rewiring Aotearoa claim that low carbon energy uses 1500 times less material than fossil fuels is based on the fact that in 2022 the world used 15 billion tonnes of materials for coal, oil and gas and only 10 million tonnes for low carbon energy. At face value, this sounds convincing but dig a little deeper and it is far from established. To reiterate, I think it’s a moot point comparing replacing fossil fuels with ‘clean energy’ because neither option is feasible for a living planet.

First, it’s not a fair comparison given the low carbon energy input in 2022 was a fraction of the energy consumed by humans on the planet: in that year 91 percent of global primary energy came from fossil fuels (just 2.5 percent from wind and solar).

Second, the 10 million tonnes quoted for low carbon energy is just counting the weight of the minerals themselves and misses the crucial reality that the harm is how much material was mined and processed to get the final product. Not just how much mineral was mined, but also how many forests were cut down, roads built, rivers and soil and air polluted to extract those minerals. To say nothing about the social costs to poor and indigenous communities. Most of these minerals are at very low concentrations in rocks, meaning that when the waste rock or overburden mining required (measured as the rock-to-metal ratio (RMR)) is taken into account the 10 million tonnes quoted by Rewiring Aotearoa and recently conceded in a follow up article by Hannah Ritchie then becomes billions of tonnes when taking into account the overburden.

Finally, and I think the most crucial point, and one that almost never makes its way into energy transition discussions or modelling, is that the amount of material mined per unit of metal (the RMR) isn’t a constant: it has always, and will always, keep rising. This a result of the simple fact that we start off mining all the easy-to-get metal and minerals and then over time must move to ever lower ore concentrations.

An example is copper. It is vital to an energy transition and the average ore grade globally has decreased approximately by 25 percent in just 10 years. In that same period, the total energy consumption for mining copper increased by 46 percent. Chile, the world’s leading copper producer, increased fossil fuel and electricity consumption per unit between 2001 and 2017 by 130 percent and 32 percent respectively.

This means even without the huge increases required to replace all the fossil-fuel powered infrastructure and energy consumption growth, more and more material must be mined every year using more and more energy just to maintain metal production.

If that wasn’t sobering enough, the fossil fuels used for almost all the mining, processing, and transport of the materials is undergoing the same conundrum of decline. The fossil fuel energy return on energy invested is declining fast, thus ever more and more fossil fuels are burnt to supply the same amount of energy. These two enigmas act on each other meaning exponentially more harm is done just to meet current demand, let alone growth.

Behind the whole debate around materials is the all pervasive assumption that we must do everything and anything no matter the risk to maintain status quo, which is ever increasing consumption.

So are we going to dig up what’s left of the planet, and threaten the very life supporting systems we can’t live without to power ever more gadgets? Will we jeopardise our futures for the sake of artificial intelligence and data centres to hold our pet and family holiday pictures? When will we shape our lives around what the planet can support rather than try to make it give us the lifestyles we have become accustomed to?

Instead of trying to keep up supply, surely we must look at the energy and material demand side and reduce consumption to a level that the planet can support. The fossil fuel powered lives of excess we in the wealthy world see as normal is not. The reduction in consumption required in the wealthy world is radical – but also necessary to meet biophysical limits. This will not be convenient, but we must realise how we in the wealthy world live is radical.

I acknowledge the distinct perspectives present in energy transition discussions. My one emphasises the fundamental ecological view that immediate radical action is critical for us to have a liveable planet. Others take a more political ‘art of the possible’ position, focusing on currently achievable steps and public consensus. Despite these differing approaches, there is an underlying alignment in the intention and that is to navigate the challenges of a civilisation in crisis.

This article was published on Newsroom but many refernce links were missing https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/09/our-plan-for-the-planet-cant-be-the-lesser-of-two-evils/

Teanks Mike

A strategy should by definition have specific, measurable targets, clear identification of who is accountable and budgetary requirements. This implementation plan lacks all these thus is not a strategy; it’s just hand waving.

If it were a genuine strategy its goals and outcomes would be based on real measurable outcomes and we have this already with the New Zealand Threat Classification (NZTCS). The NZTC is well established and would make an excellent a key indicator of success or failure of a biodiversity strategy.

The elephant in the room is all this coalitions government actions to weaken environmental protection and promotion with the likes of The Provincial Growth Fund and the Fastrack Legislation enabling all sorts of biodiversity harming projects like irrigation and hydro dams and mining.

Most of the actions outlined in the plan are based on a business growth ideology that ignores biophysical reality and assumes you can buy anything. The idea that we can buy biodiversity gains while destroying habitats is flawed. Real biodiversity gains are made by not doing something like destroying habitats rather than some commercial activity especially when in the conservation estate.

Our ecosystems are already so damaged and degraded we need to focus on trophic complexity and system robustness as much as just indigenous trajectories. We need radical shift in the philosophy behind conservation ecology not vague tweaking.

New Zealand has an appalling record for biodiversity loss, the highest proportion of threatened species in the world and this implementation plan is based on a flawed strategy will do nothing to halt declines.

https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/have-your-say/all-consultations/2025-consultations/give-your-feedback-on-two-important-plans-for-nature/implementation-plan-for-aotearoa-new-zealand-biodiversity-strategy/

Somehow, I must have missed the memo, surely for these people to have such a deep conviction there must be a decree from some higher being representing Gaia guaranteeing humankind unlimited access to everything eternally on planet earth. I guessing it goes something like this:

Dear humankind, please help yourself to everything. You can keep growing and consuming more and more forever. I planet Earth, will not be harmed by you digging me up for what ever takes your fancy. I know for example you idolise rare metals to adorn yourselves, no problem, go ahead, dig me up, make massive tailings dams that will eventually collapse. Do the same for rare minerals to make your so-called ‘renewable energy’ so that as fossil fuels run out you can keep powering your utterly unsustainable lifestyles. To the wealthy proportion of humankind dig me up so you can have datacenters, AI, snowmaking machines, desalination plants, heated floors, driveways, towel rails. No worries, fill your kitchens and garages with toys and gadgets, drive around in massive electric vehicles, ignore the impacts I’m untouchable you can’t hurt me, just keep growing as if there is no tomorrow.

I put in a couple graphics to illustrate the reality that seems to be conveniently ignored.

I’m stunned by the contradiction of green politicians and NGO’s fighting against coal mines but in the next breath pushing for renewable energy that will require ever more mining, and fossil fuel consumption.

Figure 1 UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR EUROPE; Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/LCA_final.pdf

In New Zealand our environmental groups were built on fighting hydro-dams and mining as well as protecting biodiversity but now they are pushing for renewables that will mean more of all those things. If you don’t think we have reached the limits yet what will it take for you to accept we can’t keep growing and destroying?

Just to be clear; I am in no way supporting continued fossil fuel consumption, I am merely trying to point out the contradictions and the reality that there is no free lunch, that there are biophysical limits to growth and that we are way past them. We simply cannot keep growing and consuming.

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

Even if we ignore the multitude of environmental and social issues behind so called ‘clean energy’ electrifying everything would not in any way mitigate all the other existential crises we face here and globally, in fact it would exacerbate most of them, because they are all (just like climate change) driven by overshoot.

Looking at what electrifying here in New Zealand would not achieve let’s start with our biggest GHG emitter and freshwater polluter - animal agriculture, particularly dairy. The electrification of our farms would in no way reduce emissions of methane or nutrients and other freshwater contaminants.

Here and globally electrification of agriculture would do nothing to reduce land degradation, energy negative food, over extraction of groundwater, polluted lakes loss of wetlands, oceanic dead zones, and invasive species infiltration, antibiotic resistance and the decline of biodiversity especially insect populations.

Electrifying chainsaws, logging trucks, and ships would not stop deforestation and other land-use change that drives climate change, biodiversity loss and social harm.

Electrifying fishing boats would not stop fisheries collapse. Electrification won’t reduce the pollution of freshwater and oceans with plastic, PFAS and other emerging contaminants.

Electrification of everything would however increase of the extraction processing and transportation of materials especially critical minerals and much more (NZ is 15^th worst in world per capita) requiring even more fossil fuel use and much more harm.

See the graphic below we simply cannot keep digging up the planet and expect it to have the capacity to support us, if we keep this going until 2050 it will require a 2.5x rise in global material demand.

As I tried to explain in this article instead of trying to keep up supply, we must look at the energy and material demand side and reduce consumption to a level that the planet can support. The fossil fuel-powered lives of excess we in the wealthy world see as normal are no longer possible. The reduction in consumption required in the wealthy world may be seen as radical – but also necessary to meet biophysical limits. This will not be convenient, but we must realise that how we in the wealthy world live is radical.

Alf Hornborg from Lund University says it so well: “Unsustainable resource flows and obscene inequalities are as inherent in the use of green technologies as in that of the fossil fuels they are meant to replace. The notion that the world economy is undergoing a green transformation is based on the illusion that renewable energy is replacing, rather than just adding to, fossil energy consumption. To move beyond this impasse, we must recognize that technologies are fetishized social relations and that money systematically obscures the material injustices on which modern civilization is based”

from the paper “Coming to Our Senses: Beyond the Hubristic Illusions of Green Technology” https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2025.2559085

Finally we propose “Anthropocene Intelligence” as a basis for a meta-crisis pedagogy. have a read its open access

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-journal-of-environmental-education/article/from-miserable-pedagogies-to-anthropocene-intelligence-for-universities-in-the-metacrisis/3F88B03A8ADBE857E634642A21BE6946

I’m totally opposed to LNG imports, but what this revealed to me is that there seems to be a deeply held belief that there are no planetary biophysical limits to growth. I didn’t hear a single mention of the option of reducing consumption. The view seems clear that if one energy source runs out, we can simply grab another, and if GHG emissions are less then it’s clean. There was also little or no mention of the problem of the intermittency of solar PV.

The intermittency problem of renewables especially solar, is because we expect electricity to be available 24/7 but more than half the time the sun isn’t shining and in winter it can all but disappear for days. This shortall is known as the capacity-factor, and for solar PV in New Zealand in winter months this often drops below 10%. Thus, to cover this shortfall you must install 10 times as many panels and/or build in storage.

For most people the glib response to this intermittency problem is – easy just install batteries. Never a mention of the material, human and environmental toll of producing batteries or pumped hydro or any other balancing option. Or the fact that the materials required are rare and becoming rarer (more on that below) and that these materials are required in ever greater amounts for a raft of other technologies aiming to reduce fossil consumption (EVs as one example).

My colleague at Victoria University Alan Brent wrote an article the other day on his modelling showing renewable electricity can meet NZ’s future demand without importing gas. I’m not sure why you need a model for that, I don’t imagine there is any doubt that if you spend enough money, you can install renewable capacity to replace gas, but again not a single mention of the materials required, the planetary limits, the energy, or the environmental footprint of the infrastructure.

I completely understand the attraction with renewables (rebuildables), the idea that we can replace polluting fossil fuels with clean green renewable energy is of course incredibly appealing.

The problem is we want it so much we wilfully put blinkers on and block our ears to the fact that while energy from sun and wind is renewable the infrastructure to capture and share it is far far from renewable, or clean or green.

I’m sure commentators will remind me just how fast the associated technology is advancing and becoming more efficient. I want to point out three problems with that idea that are growing as fast or faster than technology improvements:

1. The materials needed for the transition are becoming rarer, so more energy (mostly diesel) is required to mine more and more of the earth to get the ever-diminishing minerals (with growing environmental impacts). It’s not just the mining in many cases the real harm comes in the processing, the toxic, complex, and energy-intensive process of chemically un-bonding of the 17 rare earth elements from one another.

2. The fossil energy used to do all the mining and processing and transporting is on a similar trajectory, the amount of energy required to get the fossil energy has been increasing for decades as all the easy-to-get coal gas and oil is gone. This phenomena also known as the energy cost of energy (ECOE) is climbing rapidly. This means more fossil fuel mining to get the same amount of energy. So crucially these two in combination - declining ore concentrations and rising energy cost of energy means the critical materials can only get more expensive.

3. Finally, as fast as we come up with new technologies to capture energy we also come up with new ways to consume more energy. We keep increasing electricity consumption with for example AI and data centres. This means that despite all the technological advances and the installation of massive amounts of renewables we are no closer to catching up, in fact we are going backwards -fossil fuel consumption is increasing faster than we add “clean energy”.

This graphic from a comprehensive UN report assessing the life cycle of electricity generation options compares the material footprint of the different options (gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, wind and solar PV and puts paid to the “clean energy” label at least for materials.

I’m not for a second saying we should continue with fossil fuels, and there is no doubt that emissions are lower for renewables. If we lived on a limitless planet and climate change was our only crisis then the choice would be easy. But the climate crisis is far from our only crisis, we face a bunch of them and all like the climate crisis included are symptoms of overshoot.

There is always the ‘less harm’ argument put forward - the idea that we turn a blind eye to the harm because it is less. I tried to point out the flaw in this thinking with here put in a nutshell with this quote from the historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt: “Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.”

I have no doubt that renewable energy will be part of our future, but that future will have to be one of much reduced consumption otherwise we will destroy what is left of the life-supporting-capacity of our only planet trying to maintain the unsustainable (our wealthy world current lifestyles).

Around 75% of all certified voluntary credits available are what is known as ‘avoidance credits’ and these (carbon avoidance estimates) are determined by considering what emissions might have been produced, but weren’t.

Big corporates like JP Morgan, Walt Disney, and BlackRock for example claim that by buying these credits, they can offset their greenhouse gas emissions. In a deal with The Nature Conservancy they got credits for not chopping down a forest. However, the sad reality is they are claiming credits for not chopping down trees that were never going to be chopped down. The forest in Pennsylvania, was not at serious risk of being logged, despite the project claiming high intensity, “avoided” deforestation because it was already protected by The Nature Conservancy.

In an article for Bloomberg Ben Elgin described the scam and concluded that The Nature Conservancy had become “a dealer of meaningless carbon offsets”

Back to my not having a child analogy - under the scheme used by Blackrock etc. to offset their emissions the current price paid for voluntary offsets is NZ $13 - $47 per tonne. Most of my similar aged friends have kids now in their 40s and over that time per capita emissions in NZ were around 6 tonnes per year so roughly 240 tonnes emitted per child over the four decades. Thus using the Blackrock, Disney and JP Morgan logic I could claim NZ $3k – 11k for each child I didn’t have. And it looks like a great investment for my retirement as the price is projected to be US $125 per ton by 2030.

We must stop these scams, they don’t reduce emissions in reality they increase them. For more information here is a series of articles debunking the most frequently used corporate myths about carbon offsets https://www.somo.nl/facing-the-facts-carbon-offsets-unmasked/

Of all the presumed so called ‘solutions to our climate crisis’ the rallying cry ‘electrify everything’ it is central to the ‘net-zero’ delusion and probably seen the most popular option. It sounds so simple it’s easy to see why it’s so attractive. What’s not to like - no need for real change, just carry on as we are but with electric stuff rather than fossil powered, net-zero 2050, no worries.

But the reality is the climate crisis is far from our only existential threat, so even if we could electrify away the climate crisis (ill argue later we can’t) we still have all the other looming threats. As an analogy think of it like this; your car has four flat tyres each representing an existential threat, you manage to fix one, say the climate crisis, you still can’t go anywhere, the car is effectively useless. You either fix them all or you achieve nothing.

I am not denying electricity’s crucial role in the transition away from fossil fuels, but unless it is combined with substantial measures to curb our growing overconsumption it will fail. As Nate Hagens and DJ White said in their book Energy Blind “Renewables could power a great civilization, just not THIS civilization”.

A recent post from New Zealand Energy highlighted some of the grid related technical problems with solar PV, I want to talk about some of the many other problems that are often ignored. I’m not going to try and fit all in one post, but I will start here with what electrifying New Zealand, or the world will not achieve.

Even if we ignore the multitude of environmental and social issues behind so called ‘clean energy’ electrifying New Zealand would not in any way mitigate all the other existential crises we face here and globally, in fact it would exacerbate most of them, because they are all (just like climate change) driven by overshoot.

Looking at what electrifying New Zealand would not achieve let’s start with our biggest GHG emitter and freshwater polluter - animal agriculture, particularly dairy. The electrification of our farms would in no way reduce emissions of methane or nutrients and other freshwater contaminants.

Here and globally electrification of agriculture would do nothing to reduce land degradation, energy negative food, over extraction of groundwater, polluted lakes loss of wetlands, oceanic dead zones, and invasive species infiltration, antibiotic resistance and the decline of biodiversity especially insect populations.

Electrifying chainsaws, logging trucks, and ships would not stop deforestation and other land-use change that drives climate change, biodiversity loss and social harm.

Electrifying fishing boats would not stop fisheries collapse. Electrification won’t reduce the pollution of freshwater and oceans with plastic, PFAS and other emerging contaminants.

Electrification of everything would however increase of the extraction processing and transportation of materials especially critical minerals and much more (NZ is 15^th worst in world per capita) requiring even more fossil fuel use and much more harm Ill save this for another post. As I tried to explain in this article instead of trying to keep up supply, we must look at the energy and material demand side and reduce consumption to a level that the planet can support. The fossil fuel-powered lives of excess we in the wealthy world see as normal are no longer possible. The reduction in consumption required in the wealthy world may be seen as radical – but also necessary to meet biophysical limits. This will not be convenient, but we must realise that how we in the wealthy world live is radical.

Of all the presumed so called ‘solutions to our climate crisis’ the rallying cry ‘electrify everything’ it is central to the ‘net-zero’ delusion and probably seen the most popular option. It sounds so simple it’s easy to see why it’s so attractive. What’s not to like? no need for real change, just carry on as we are but with electric stuff placing fossil powered stuff, net-zero 2050, yeah no worries.

But the reality is the climate crisis is far from our only existential threat, so even if we could electrify away the climate crisis (ill argue later we can’t) we still have all the other looming threats. As an analogy think of it like this; your car has four flat tyres each representing an existential threat, you manage to fix one, say the climate crisis, you still can’t go anywhere, the car is effectively useless. You either fix them all or you achieve nothing.

I am not denying electricity’s crucial role in the transition away from fossil fuels, but unless it is combined with substantial measures to curb our growing overconsumption it will fail. There has been no energy transition, our energy consumption is far outpacing our renewable energy additions. As Nate Hagens and DJ White said in their book Energy Blind “Renewables could power a great civilization, just not THIS civilization”.

A recent post from New Zealand Energy highlighted some of the grid related technical problems with solar PV, I want to talk about some of the many other problems that are often ignored. I’m not going to try and fit all in one post, but I will start here with what electrifying New Zealand, or the world will not achieve.

Even if we ignore the multitude of environmental and social issues behind so called ‘clean energy’ electrifying New Zealand would not in any way mitigate all the other existential crises we face here and globally, in fact it would exacerbate most of them, because they are all (just like climate change) driven by overshoot.

Let’s start with New Zealand’s biggest GHG emitter and freshwater polluter - animal agriculture, particularly dairy. The electrification of our farms would in no way reduce emissions of methane or nutrients and other freshwater contaminants.

Here and globally electrification of agriculture would do nothing to reduce land degradation, energy negative food, over extraction of groundwater, polluted lakes loss of wetlands, oceanic dead zones, and invasive species infiltration, antibiotic resistance and the decline of biodiversity especially insect populations.

Electrifying chainsaws, logging trucks, and ships would not stop deforestation and other land-use change that drives climate change, biodiversity loss and social harm.

Electrifying fishing boats would not stop fisheries collapse. Electrification won’t reduce the pollution of freshwater and oceans with plastic, PFAS and other emerging contaminants.

Electrification of everything would however increase of the extraction processing and transportation of materials especially critical minerals and much more (NZ is 15^th worst in world per capita) requiring even more fossil fuel use and much more harm but I’ll save this for another post.

As I tried to explain in this article instead of trying to keep up supply, we must look at the energy and material demand side and reduce consumption to a level that the planet can support. The fossil fuel-powered lives of excess we in the wealthy world see as normal are no longer possible. The reduction in consumption required in the wealthy world may be seen as radical – but also necessary to meet biophysical limits. I know this transition will not be convenient, but we must realise that how we in the wealthy world live now is utterly incompatible with a future livable planet.

I acknowledge the distinct perspectives present in energy transition discussions. Mine emphasises the fundamental ecological view that immediate radical action is critical for us to have a liveable planet. Others take a more political ‘art of the possible’ position, focusing on currently achievable steps and public consensus. Despite these differing approaches, there is an underlying alignment in the intention and that is to navigate the challenges of a civilisation in crisis.

As with other double-binds, this solution relies on us creatively finding a way out from seemingly impossible “either-or” scenarios (Bateson, Reference Bateson1972). Indeed, the pragmatic way forward in response to the meta-crisis is about being clear about the subjectivity or “Intelligences,” we want students and society to develop, as well as the knowledge students need. In this regard, Anthropocene Intelligence does not seek to limit the plurality we should have in higher education, but it does frame this plurality within the reality of the meta-crisis. In the face of the planet’s meta-crisis, anything else is too miserable.”

open access

"I’ve recently spent considerable time and energy trying to get climate-change NGOs – and wider society, for that matter – to look beyond global heating to it’s cause, the much greater problem of ecological overshoot. Why? Because society’s focus on climate change per se (wind and solar power, EVs, non-existent carbon capture and storage) misses the point entirely. As a result, we are not fixing the climate, are causing considerable additional environmental damage and are worsening overshoot.“

Bill Rees https://desertreport.org/whats-the-real-problem/