Please read the following to understand why Yale's new 15-year prediction for climate chaos is wrong and why the correct prediction is actually six years.

If you live in a medium—to high-risk climate change consequence area, right or wrong, it's only a matter of time before your insurance company skyrockets your rates or cancels your policy.

Are you taking your escalating climate change emergency preparations seriously enough? Is it difficult to do the preparation you know you should be doing? If not, watch this inspiring video!

EARTH DAY, 2024, SHOULD BE A DAY OF GRIEF FOR HOW WE HUMANS HAVE WROUGHT HAVOC ON THE EARTH.

One of our Fossil fuel and climate change battle peers, the Desmog blog, published the perfect International Women's Day (March 8) message on the fossil fuel cartel. I'm re-publishing it with permission because it is perfect!

Part Two

3. HOW TO ACCEPT OUR ROLE IN CREATING THIS PREDICAMENT

We want to live longer and have access to more goods and services. When coupled to the energy of fossil fuels we have become so successful that exponential growth is the result. But our successes have come at the  expense of the natural world. The diagrams (repeated below) of ‘Global Ecological Footprint’,  ‘Recent Changes in Natural Ecological Systems of the Earth’,  and of the impinging of the  Ethereal Environment into the Natural World summarize these conflicts. 

Global Ecological Footprint Recent Changes in Natural Ecological Systems of the Earth         Predictions for 21^st Century 

By now most educated people have accepted the idea that there are major, worldwide environmental problems.  We have personally experienced “heat domes,” temperature extremes, devastating fires, ocean warming, and unexpected flooding.  Many of us have also accepted the fact that human activities have indirectly caused these and many other major environmental problems.  We see that humans thoughtlessly but without malice or intent have altered and polluted the land, water and air around us. On a personal level, we are unable to change our cultural stories and to alter an unrelenting social inertia that prevents acceptance of these existential predicaments. Nor, in the recent understanding of the problem, have we been able to change, collectively, the course of  our government or our economy. 

Most of us have been enamoured with the ideals of progress and growth that underlie our culture.  But we largely remain unaware of the scientific facts that conflict with those ideas. Few can see the direct relationship between humans’ incessant energy demands and the dynamics of thermodynamics and evolution. That is what I tried to show in Parts 1. and 2. The laws of physics and biology, when considered within the intricacies and immense extent of natural ecological systems, are fundamental to understanding the environmental problems we now face. 

We have probably grown up with an optimistic outlook that is basic to this peak period of American economic prosperity. William Catton calls it exuberance! From childhood, I have been influenced by the optimism of better access to diverse sources of food, means of transportation and communication, of better health through better medicine and public sanitation, of more leisure time, of expectations of access to education and employment. In other words, to ‘modern life’.  And even as I am aware of the relations of humans within the biosphere, I continue to live the way of life with which I grew up.  I continue to consume the world, largely unaware of the diverse and extensive energy transformations in assembling goods and services. I travel with little real sense of how it contributes to air pollution. I do not know how my pension plan contributes indirectly to the burning of fossil fuels. In my tenth decade on Earth, I can’t calculate the very high energy costs of my education, career, or health, all of which were extraordinarily  energy consumptive.

The Dominant View of Modern Life

American culture has been mine since birth and is the background to my thoughts today. Some ideas have changed but always within the context of my 20^th century acculturation. Lewis Mumford’s “Pentagon of Power”-- Power, Profit, Production, Property, and Publicity-gets at underlying cultural concepts. My habits and ideas, built up over the years, remain front and center. Within this 20^th-century social contract, it is relatively easy to shift my political views from Republican to Democrat,  to consume less meat, to get rid of my  automobile, to avoid artificial fibers in clothing. I could insulate my house and use solar panels; I can maintain healthy activity patterns, and  grow some of my own food. All of these actions are acceptable within my culture. I can contribute money to environmental causes. But I still consume large amounts of goods and services that I do not need for survival or even to live well. I use digital devices that are new and useful for present day activities but are not necessary for a sustainable existence. In other words even as I am aware of the roots of environmental degradation,  I am unavoidably and inextricably embedded within both the organic imperative to grow and reproduce and the modern cultural complex to get more and more and prosper in social and economic life.

I am addicted.

If you do not believe the evidence, you may ignore, deny, contradict, disbelieve, or not consider it to be important. However, If you believe the scientific evidence of ecology, evolution, and energy and also believe that you are addicted to the ideas of growth and progress, you most likely will experience stress or psychological anxiety.  Many of us feel unsettled as we envision the future of our own, our children's, and their children’s lives because we are living in ways that harm the future. 

 Addiction to Environmental Destruction

In Gregory Bateson’s words:

 If “we realize that we are caught in the double bind of mind versus  body; our mind and body are sending us conflicting messages that cannot be reconciled and which are depriving us of sanity and health.” (Substitute ‘behavior’ for Bateson’s, ‘body’ and you will see the analogy directly).

If you, as I, cannot reconcile your life style with the impact that it is having on the natural world, you have become helplessly addicted to exploitation of your earthly home. The admission that our actions cannot be made to correspond with our thought is fundamental.Environmental addiction is a disease more deadly than drug addiction.

To find relief from that double bind of addiction and belief, it is fundamental to adjust both our thoughts and our actions. Differences between what we know and what we believe to be true result in cognitive dissonance. To reconcile this dissonance, we need help. Gregory Bateson offered some help when he  alerted me to an ecological model about the ways in which alcoholics and other addicts might substitute a sane and healthy life for their addiction, thereby relieving the dissonance.

“It is [***] asserted that the nonalcoholic world has many lessons which it might learn from the epistemology of systems theory and from the ways of AA.  If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also continue to see the world in terms of God versus man; elite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation; and man versus environment.  It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at its world can endure.” (My emphasis)

I believe that adopting AA’s systems model  can bring some “sanity and health” to us who are addicted to our modern cultural beliefs as we see environmental crises unfold before us.  Even a modified AA model will not solve the physics of environmental disruptions. It won’t change the course of evolution. And it won’t soon change the course of American culture.  But it may help some of us find peace of mind as we live through and try to understand the troubled environmental predicament of today. 

The AA model is similar to an ecosystem that recognizes that we are organisms who live in larger ecosystems--the natural world--and also in subordinate ecosystems--our minds and the stories we live by. Thinking of the natural world and our mental worlds together causes great stress. Is that stress so great that we have ‘hit bottom’ and recognize the we are addicted (not simply aware) of damaging our environment?

To overcome our addiction to our current ways of thinking of mind versus nature, we must come up with a new way of thinking—a new epistemology.  We must recognize that we are part, but only part, of a system that is greater than ourselves, a system that is sane and healthy, a system in which mind and matter, humans and environment, are not opposed. Bateson’s writes:

“The self is but a small part of a much larger trial-and-error system which does the thinking, acting, deciding.”  

The realization that we are merely a part of a naturally evolving and ecological world that is immensely greater than ourselves is truly a humbling experience for those of us raised in the traditions of The Enlightenment and of modern beliefs which stress the power, rationality, and individuality of humans and humanity.

To acknowledge that we are part of the natural processes of evolution and ecosystems, which we are significantly disrupting, is highly disturbing. Viewed in the context in which every technological triumph has also disrupted some ecological or evolutionary relationship, one can catches glimpses of disasters far more threatening than alterations of our current life styles.  We have to admit that continued human survival  rests largely outside our control but, instead, within ecologic and evolutionary terms.  For a shorthand term, we might say that we are in the hands of Mother Earth or Gaia. 

After admitting that we are not in control, the next step toward sanity-- to surrender to this new way of thinking--is extraordinarily difficult.  We need to acknowledge that our behavior is both addictive and destructive. Few among us have ‘hit bottom’ because to do so would be seen as a threat to our current ways of life. Nevertheless, we can actively and honestly become part of Gaia by physically acknowledging and, wherever possible, rectifying, the wrongs (the disruptions to natural ecosystems) we have done to her in the past.  

We can do so by making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  We must admit to ourselves and others the exact nature of our wrongs to what may be called Mother Earth, Gaia, or natural ecological systems. We need to make a list of the environmental and ecological systems we have harmed and, where possible, make amends to them. We should continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. Through prayer and meditation we can reaffirm our humility as part of an unimaginably larger system. There  is no need to feel guilty or find blame for your  actions. Instead, you may find lessened stress simply  in the recognition that you are doing whatever you can to live a sane and healthier life.

This is important to my thinking, these principles also allow me to understand human behaviour in historic time, especially in my own lifetime. Humans, extraordinarily successful organisms, have been simply carrying out their lives, unaware of the consequences of their physical and cultural imperatives. If now, humans have become aware that their very existence is at stake, even as they cannot overcome these imperatives, they can find ways to live more sanely and peaceably.

Thus I am  not panicked by what I have come to think about the human role in changing global ecosystems. I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the results of the continuation of the negative, radical changes that I now see going on around me. I think that I understand the principal basic facts about the general trends of the alterations of the natural world and I have a very general understanding of the major ecologic systems that are being altered and of the existential questions of humankind's place in the evolution of organic life. I also have a general understanding of the ways in which worldviews and culture are effecting change. 

I am personally aware of many of the ways that I fit into American culture and worldviews. I am particularly concerned with the uniquely insistent human characteristic of consciousness and how I might use it to live the best life possible in the existential predicament of today. Most importantly, I must be mindful of the ways in which I continue to participate in both the cultural and natural world. 

We must learn to live with the knowledge that our brief moment of human exuberance is expiring, in large part, because of our own doing. Now, we must try to remain sane on the Earth that we have insanely altered.

1. 4.HOW TO LIVE  A SANE LIFE ON AN GREATLY ALTERED EARTH

For most of the last 10,000 years, alleviation of environmental problems for humanity was possible only because new lands and technologies were available. The growth imperative of humans, as with that of all organisms…to maintain and reproduce themselves through thick and thin--could continue until limits within the natural environment restricted expansion. But when technology, science, individualism, and the belief that humans are the masters of the Earth were coupled with the power of fossil fuels, the natural limits to growth were released, swamping any remaining sense of  human wisdo

A.Sustainability   

In the 1970s, with ecological views in mind, H. T. and Elizabeth Odum wrote what to do if  we wanted to attain a  sustainable society or to decline prosperously. To attain a sustainable society, the major requirement would be to consume less. Reading through the list of the Odums, it is understandable  why their suggestions were not adopted.  They simply contradicted the Mumfords “pentagon of power” in multiple ways. For example: 

Redefine progress as adaptation to earth restoration. 

Decentralizes organizational hierarchy; 

Place an upper limit on individual incomes;

Provide incentives to eliminate luxury use of fuels, cars, and electric power;

Use agricultural varieties that need less input. 

Almost none of their suggested  policies could be adopted because they were then unpalatable to political and economic leaders and to most modern Americans. 

( I remember going to the City Council of Eugene, in the 1980s, with colleagues from the Planning Department and the School of Architecture of the University of Oregon urging it to limit growth of the City. We were met with silence before it adopted policies of economic and physical growth of the City.)

 Degrowth--necessary for attaining sustainability--was not even considered. 

Sustainability may remain a goal for some people, today, but will remain elusive because our leaders still want economic growth,  which is impossible without further destruction of the natural world.  Growth and Progress,  today’s dominant world views, can only result in collapse of modern civilization and the vast alteration of the natural world.   

The future after the Recognition of the Crash

A major ecological thinker concerned with  the future of humankind, William Catton, writes:

” … in an age of global overshoot, the task facing mankind is to minimize the severity and inhumanity of the crash toward which we … are headed. Presumably mankind has found high death rates less unbearable when due to natural causes (e.g., microscopic predators) than when imposed by arrogant, sadistic human executioners. “

He continues: 

“Our best bet is to act as if we believed we have already overshot, and do our best to ensure that the inevitable crash consists as little as possible of outright die-off of Homo sapiens. Instead, it should consist as far as possible of the chosen abandonment of those seductive values characteristic of Homo colossus. Indeed, renunciation of such values may be the main alternative to renewed indulgence in cruel genocide. If crash should prove to be avoidable after all, a global strategy of trying to moderate expected crash is the strategy most likely to avert it.”  (Catton, William R.. Overshoot (p. 266). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition. on, William R.. Overshoot (pp. 215-216). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition.) 

 B. Ethical views.

 All major religions incorporate prohibitions in their worldviews: do not kill, do not steal, do not speak in anger or derision, et cetera.  They also include positive directives: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, be kind, be considerate, loving, and compassionate, et cetera. One can try to live by these commands because they offer directives as to how to live ethically, responsibly, supportive, and concernedly with other people. But they  do not offer ethical guidance as to how to live with nature.

In 1864, George Perkins Marsh published, “Man and Nature-or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.’  HIs books were among  the first to incorporate modern views on ethical relations of humans towards nature. He wrote:

“the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic and inorganic world.” p. vii 

In 1955, William Thomas edited the massive volume, ‘Man’s Role in Changing The Face of the Earth’, which was the result of meetings of over 100 scholars concerned with human modifications of the natural world. The conference was dedicated to George Perkins Marsh. In the introduction, Thomas stated that Marsh believed that man should moderate his activities and develop a morality in respect to his use of the earth. Thomas included the ideas that

 “ The identification, use, and care of resources is in the end a problem of human values and behavior,”  and “The dichotomy of man and nature is … thus seen as an intellectual device and as such should not be confused with reality.”

 In 1948, Aldo Leopold, a forest ecologist, addressed ethics directly when he wrote (in A Sand County ALMANAC, Oxford University Press):

“The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals.*** Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. *** There is yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it.*** It is still property.”

“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land.” **

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.  It is wrong when it tends otherwise. 

“In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.” *** “In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes: man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism.”

‘By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and implements.We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam shovel, and we are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use.” 

Written 75 years ago, Leopold’s ethical proposals have been almost completely ignored. The steam shovels have been busy, nearly completely remaking the world. His land ethic sounds quaint, coming as it did before the “great acceleration” of goods and services supported by energy from fossil fuels. The genie of growth and progress has no chance of being put back in the bottle. We can never be a ‘plain member and citizen in the land-community’. We remain ‘man the conqueror using science as the sharpener of  our sword’ and ‘land (and sea and air) as the slave and servant’. 

In the 1970s, Howard Odum also proposed a set of ecological ethics focused on energy flows in society.

Unlike Marsh, Leopold, and Odum, I  have had no hope that their ethical ideas might be adopted. Instead, ethics remain focused on human relations among themselves, not on their relationships in the natural world.  But, like them, I can actively support attempts to preserve 'natural' areas, urge efforts to decrease the input of carbon dioxide and other disruptive gasses into the atmosphere, eat less beef, support increased use of organic foods, and on and on because I respect the ecosphere and the Land Ethic.  One can live an ethical life even as natural and human systems fall apart. The predicament in which we live does not preclude acting for what we believe is right.

C. Religious views. 

In many ways the ethics and morality of ecology appear to be in direct conflict with some basic concepts of traditional religions.   Michael Dowd a minister,  in a series of extraordinary videos describes his religion as Sacred Realism / Religious naturalism and how those religious beliefs can be interpreted in today’s world.Sanity 101: Living Fully in an Age of Decline - Essential Wisdom for Hard Times Is a recent video in which he expresses his ‘ Eco-Theo Creed’ in some of the same terms as traditional religious practices. The two images below are take form that video. His ecological/evolutionary concepts are similar to those that I presented above. He has come to scientific concepts of the world from a traditional religious background whereas I have come from an a-religious, secular, background in environmental studies to religious views.  We have come from different backgrounds but have reached many of the same conclusions. Our strategies of how to live life may be different but we live in the same spiritual world.  The second image suggests ways to better live a full life if you accept the inevitability of ecological and societal collapse

D. Behavioral Views or Ideas about how to act. 

Solutions: Technology

A word about looking for solutions through the use of technology. Ways of preventing or moderating global warming have been proposed by many people and organizations.  However, I believe that there are no technological solutions that will stop global warming nor prevent a major collapse of modern society. Governmental  and most other influential leaders continue to talk of growth of the economy and act to encourage greater use of energy. They do not want to concern themselves with the realities of ecology and its consequences for organic life.  Instead, they look to technology and false hopes. To reach Net Zero Emissions by 2050, the IPCC, indicates that Low-carbon technologies are key to necessary reductions. Behaviour changes, changes of attitudes, and the lack of needed materials are largely dismissed. Ecological view are ignored.

IPCC role of technology in attaining Net Zero emissions

To try to continue our lives as we have in recent decades is not fruitful. Before making suggestion about how to act in a practical way, I want to dismiss technology as being practical in solving environmental problems.

Technology cannot provide solutions to the problems of global warming, which it has created. Technology has been extraordinarily successful because it can focus on specific problems with little regard to the secondary, tertiary, or more remote ecological effects of the solution to particular problems. Technology has produced great medicines, lots of food, better living conditions but also eight billion people on an Earth that will not be able to support them.  Technology has produced the machines and resources to produce  a plethora of goods and services, but not ways to limit the pollution of its waste products. Technology has produced plastics that contribute to many beneficial goods and services but now is a contaminant or pollutant throughout the natural environment, even within the human body. Little sense of large group decision-making survives Technology has devised artificial Intelligence, even among computers themselves, but cannot employ wisdom. In fact, technology, no matter how intelligent, cannot be wise. The lack of human wisdom may also not have been possible once political power became rested in organizations larger than subsistence groups or tribes whose wisdom was necessary for group survival. Technology, in its self, is a human creation. It is not part of the biotic world of evolution nor does it exchange information with the natural world.

For most of the last 10,000 years, alleviation of environmental problems for humanity was possible only because new lands and technologies were available. The growth imperative of humans, as with that of all organisms--to maintain and reproduce themselves--could continue until limits within the natural environment restricted expansion. But when technology, science, individualism, and the belief that humans are the masters of the Earth were coupled with the power of fossil fuels, the natural limits to growth were released, swamping any remaining sense of  human wisdom with regard to nature.

Renewable energy is based on current resources, not those of millions of years ago. But to use renewable sources of energy, almost all of which are based on incoming sunlight, it takes modern technology, which is based on nonrenewable source to use it. Renewable energy, although in continuous supply, cannot support the technology that it takes to  harness it to other uses. Its EROEI is far below the energy required for modern society. It is not a perpetual motion machine!

[As a side thought, even if renewable energy were to substitute for fossil fuel energy  (So far, it has not. Use of fossil fuel energy continues to grow.), the natural ecological systems of the Earth would continue to be greatly altered. Further, the problem of peak oil would then loom large. With continued use of Fossil Fuels at current rates, a peak in production should occur in the 2040s.]

 2. Deep Adaptation

I believe that neither the ‘Eco-Theo Creed’ nor a land ethic, alone or together, will be adequate to keep a personal sane in the insane world  of the coming collapse of modern society. Another approach that may help is ‘Deep Adaptation,’ a philosophy and course of action devised by Jem Bendell, an academic systems analyst who searched for ‘sustainability’ in a world in which humans were radically altering the Earth’s natural systems. As he became overwhelmed with the impossibility of cultural change leading to sustainable  societies , he asked the question:

 “How on Earth do we begin to talk to each other and work from a starting point of experiencing or anticipating societal disruption and even collapse?”

He writes of the Four Rs of Deep Adaptation, a broad framework which are questions to keep in mind in times of social disruption:  Resilience, Relinquishment, Restoration, and Reconciliation.

Resilience requires us to think about what we want to keep.  What values and behaviors are most important to maintain when under great stress, even societal collapse? What fundamental positive beliefs do you consider essential when your cultural context is disintegrating? 

On a practical level, what do  we want to retain beyond access to fresh water, basic food items, primary health care, and clothing and shelter.

Relinquishment means what we are able to  give up.  “It involves people and communities letting go of certain assets, behaviors and beliefs where retaining them could make matters worse. Examples include withdrawing settlements from coastlines, shutting down vulnerable industrial facilities, or giving up expectations for certain types of consumption.” In line with what Aldo Leopold writes, we should be able to give up practices that damage the natural ecosystems that support life other than our own. We should give up the technologies that pollute or damage our life support systems and manufacture items that might be called luxuries.

Restoration means to rediscover attitudes and approaches to life and to organizing people and communities that were lost during the days when fossil fuel energy dominated technology. Humans need to restore the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community through such activities as rewilding and organic gardening. We need to restore the communal activities that strengthen families, neighborhoods, and larger community. We may encourage this through restoring participatory sports, dance, music, and arts of all kinds  We can substitute personal contact for reliance on mechanical and electronic devices. 

Reconciliation means the process of learning to live with each other and nature within the emerging existential predicament. We must do so in an open, calm, and adaptable manner, without panic. We should look for consensus.

To lessen our impact on the ecosphere and personal cognitive dissonance, I think that we should always ask the four questions of Deep Adaptation before we act.

The question of Resilience is  “What do we most value that we want to keep and how?”

The question of Relinquishment is  “What should we let go of so as not to make matters worse?” 

The question of Restoration is: “What could we bring back to  help us in these difficult times?”  

The question of Reconciliation is: “With what and with whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our common mortality?” 

I believe that these questions ask us to think about human consciousness. The better responses are to be found in the depths of consciousness. They include honesty, kindness, truthfulness, concern for others, openness to love--the positive characteristics of most religious beliefs. I also believe that Michael Dowd’s recommendations to act through love, laugh, learn something new, leave  a legacy, and live courageously are good behaviors to keep through the predicament of modern life and societal collapse. 

 3. The Post-Carbon Institute through its web-site, Resilience, offers ideas about how to live in a collapsing society. Their ideas are positive and pro-active in that they show ways in which local communities can become more resilient in a declining economy. I recommend its video course entitled Resilience. It emphasizes actions at the local level. 

(https://www.postcarbon.org/  and  https://www.resilience.org/)

4. Stockholm Resilience Center also offers many ideas about sustainability and guides to survival. The Wayfinder guide is particularly good at offering organizational skills dealing with sustainable development.

(https://www.stockholmresilience.org/   and  https://wayfinder.earth/the-wayfinder-guide/)

5. The website of Job One For Humanity, in addition to offering solid scientific advice about the climate predicament, has proposed a series of strategies of survival for people, whatever their situation may be today. They have very recently prepared a program called: Climate Change Backup Emergency Preparations & Climate Disaster Recovery Survival Kit, which proposes several ways to survive the impending global climate disaster. The outline of the proposed actions (listed below) is followed by detailed explanations:

Action Step 1: Enjoy your life now and build psychological and emotional stability, reserves, and resilience. 

Action Step 2: Build your necessary backup emergency supplies and resilience for runaway global heating disaster survival and recovery.

Action Step 3: Create a climate change emergency preparation cash or valuable commodity reserve fund equaling 5%-10% of your annual income.

Action Step 4: Plan how to adapt where you are and move critical resources, technology, and infrastructure to handle the escalating consequences of runaway global heating.

Action Step 5: Get as personally sustainable as possible, as quickly as possible, and create renewable long-term food supplies that you can manage.

Action Step 6: Evaluate if you must relocate or migrate, and if so, plan where and when. Here you will learn about the concepts of Managed Retreat.

Action Step 7: Carefully Watch Our Accelerating runaway global heating and Other Related Consequences and Their Warning Signs to Wisely Stay Ahead of Them for as Long as You Can.

Action Step 8: If you are also of a spiritual nature, your faith can provide a critical and powerful motivation to help you persevere and survive what is coming.

Action Step 9: Work together passionately and wisely to slow and lessen the avoidable pain, suffering, and death that is and will be caused by accelerating runaway global heating.

Action Step 10: Join one of our existing ClimateSafe Villages or create a climate-safe eco-community to have a prepared community to help protect you and your loved ones through the many hardships ahead. (This is an essential survive and thrive step as climate consequences worsen.)

Action Step 11: How to become a part of or build one of the four urban, rural, hybrid, or virtual resilient models of the new supportive ClimateSafe Villages that will have your back as conditions worsen. 

Action Step 12: Do everything possible to also protect and preserve the biological life and ecological systems within your zones of influence and resources while protecting yourself and your loved ones.

The above are just the emergency preparation's found that job one for humanity. Click here for an equally useful list of the necessary adaptations that will be needed for true climate resilience.

6. Sixteen Words of Advice to Young People in the 21st Century 

And for down to Earth advice, I recommend Richard Heinberg’s advice to young people:

In his book, Power,  Richard Heinberg presents what is probably the most important practical ideas and actions for everyone who will have to live their lives in a disintegrating society. He writes:

1.Learn to grow food. Study permaculture. 

2.Learn to read people. You’re going to need to know whether people in your vicinity are trustworthy. 

3.Be trustworthy. Otherwise smart and trustworthy people won’t associate with you. 

4.Learn to express yourself clearly & Persuasively. 

5.Consider making a commitment not to reproduce. There are already plenty of people in the world. 

6.Learn to make decisions by consensus and to work collaboratively. 

Be a person with whom others enjoy working. 

7.Learn to repair and use relatively simple technologies. Studying to be a computer programmer or hacker could pay off in the short run, but over the longer term you’ll benefit more from learning to fix farming and construction tools.

8.Learn to make spare parts from junk. 

9.Learn how energy works. Be able to identify the sources of energy 

in your environment and find ways to harness that energy to do useful work. 

10.Learn to defend yourself. Sadly, for the remainder of this century the world is likely to be a more violent place. Even if that turns out not to be the case, martial arts can still be useful paths of self- discipline. 

11. Learn to heal the human body via nutrition, herbs, and basic emergency care. 

12. Learn to recognize the subjective effects of sex hormones, dopamine, and other brain chemicals, and find ways to use their effects to help achieve goals. 

13. Learn about nature. Memorize the names of local plants, birds, and insects, and observe their habits. Learn to be comfortable in the wild. 

14. Learn how to produce beauty via art, music, or movement, and how to engage others in creative, celebratory activities. 

15. Learn to emotionally process trauma and grief, and to help others do so. 

16. Learn when and how to use humor to release tension.

Summary Remarks

I try to apply ecologically positive behavior to how I live. At 92, I try to follow Heinberg’s advice to young people. In small ways one can conserve, preserve, encourage diversity and integrity of the spaces we occupy, use, or travel through. I have tried to apply ideas as a person concerned with planning my workspace, my yard, my neighborhood, my city, and my state. And ecological understanding is the issue I find most important in trying to influence my political leaders. (with little response.) Many of my contributions in time and money have gone to organizations imbued with Leopold’s ethics. My fundamental conscious thought is trying to raise awareness of human/nature interactions, which are as important as interaction between and among humans. And to understand the physical context of the land ethic it is necessary  to    learn the basic facts of the natural environment within which humans live-- evolution, ecology, and energy--Biology, Geography, and Geology.

I believe that the ongoing political, social and economic crises will result in unprecedented psychological stress. New technologies or radical changes in worldview will at best slow or delay the processes that are leading to crises. As cultural changes get more disordered, personal unease and stress will increase.  To lessen the stresses of living in a society in which growth and progress are less possible, I believe that more direct communal activities-- as well as greater personal self-sufficiency-- must be learned. To that end, education, especially of young children, should shift emphasis from global technology and how to get a job in a capitalistic economy to concerns of how to live locally and respect the natural world around us. In particular, education should emphasize participation in the care of the local environment and local community and in teaching ways of living an enjoyable, non- consumptive lifestyle through personal skills such as conversation, music, dance, drama, art, physical training, and participatory sports. As well, meditation, in whatever form practiced, can help clear the mind, leading to greater personal peace and possibly to connections with the 'power' of existence. 

This is not to say that activists should stop protesting new fossil fuel production projects, to advocate for a fossil fuel tax, or that planning agencies should stop advocating more energy efficiency and solar panels, or that conservationists should stop protecting creatures and ecosystems. I encourage the old-line preservation, conservation organizations to continue their efforts. And everyone who recycles, reuses, and reduces their consumption must by praised.

We must do what we can, even if it’s not enough to avert all the environmental, social, and economic crises that we’ve been fomenting with decades of over-consumption.    

“In this trembling moment ... is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?”  Barry Lopez

Humanity has entered a world that is radically different from any preceding period of life on Earth. The growth of  available goods and services and the decline in the diversity of organic life have collided to create a predicament completely beyond humans ability to manage, possibly even to survive. Modern Technology through its highly focused goals and coupled with massive amounts of fossil fuel energy has created the modern world of growth and progress. And now, the technology of creative intelligence of AI unthinkingly accelerates innovations previously unimaginable. However, technology has also created unwanted secondary, tertiary and more distant repercussions in its application. The ongoing success of a multitude of projects is increasingly overwhelmed by natural restraints and limitations. Technology’s greatest success--growth of  a population of eight billion people--presses the limits of the biosphere to sustain them. Some humans may well survive into the foreseeable future. However, most of the survivors will live at a level that is greatly reduced from that of the present.

Today, some people can’t imagine being deprived of modern goods and services, let alone of lessened health care,  the prospect of a shorter life, a shortage of food, or increased restrictions on movement. Instead, they are presented with thoughts of space and undersea travel, of artificial intelligence, and of continued exponential growth of our economy. No one wants to return to the simple lives that over 99% of humans lived until the 20^th century. Many believe that current luxuries can exist along side continued heating of the atmosphere, oceans, and land. With a great deal of hubris, humans blithely or unthinkingly believe that they are the masters of the Earth and its other inhabitants even though many of our best scientists warn us that human omnipotence is coming to an end. We have reached an irreversible place in climate warming; we are approaching tipping points when temperatures will accelerate, causing natural and human disasters never before seen on Earth.

What  are some of the ways we can face this oncoming world? What can we do as members of communities and nations, and as individuals--Earthly creatures--who find ourselves approaching this predicament? We must understand that we exist within a world that is beyond simple human solutions. Then, ask what can we do as we survive in a greatly changed world. And how can we humans, especially the younger among us, live in the real world that lies ahead without false hopes or despair that will inevitably arise in a declining society? Many negative emotions will arise when humans no longer are able to grow and reproduce as we have in the last decades. Nor can we remain calm in a natural world that is changing before our eyes. This will require us to discover the very best qualities of what it is to be human. It will require us to find new ways of living and how to comport ourselves with dignity.

First, we need to face the reality of the natural world as, through science, we have best come to know and understand its workings.  We need to become aware of the ways in which are disrupting the natural world. We need to learn how to approach the world without destroying it. And we need to change our behavior with this newly found knowledge.  I present, here, my thoughts on these needs, awareness, and actions.

Second, we need to recognize the tragedy created by the ideas and behaviors of the modern world.  

Third, We need to accept our role in creating this tragedy.  

And fourth,we need to find ways of living in the declining civilization that confronts humanity.

I. Some basic ideas about the natural world

“But to be successful with this experiment of human life on earth we have to understand the laws of nature as they are encountered in the study of the sciences and mathematics.”

 Albert Bartlett

To understand the magnitude of the predicament created by human alterations to the Earth, we must look at the world through fundamental natural processes that touch our lives. Because we have learned about many natural processes only in the modern era, we can now understand aspects of the natural realm that closely affect human existence, many of which were formerly hidden to us. I think that the processes of Ecology, Evolution, Energy, and Environment are  basic and frame the dialectics of natural and cultural interactions focused on the human animal. We  also need to understand the arithmetic function of exponential growth because many of the recent natural and cultural changes follow exponential curves.  

A. Ecology

Ecology is, literally, the study of home or household.  In a more technical definition, Eugene Odum, an early practitioner of biological ecology, defined an ecosystem as: "Any unit that includes all of the organisms...in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined (trophic structure) place in the food chain, biotic diversity, and (material cycles i.e)., exchange of materials between living and nonliving parts within the system...."[Odum, Eugene P. (1971). Fundamentals of Ecology (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]  An essence of ecology is the understanding of organisms within the many interacting systems that are present in a defined area.  (A system is anything that functions as a whole of interacting parts. The parts are sub-systems in themselves and systems are parts of larger systems.)  Ecology emerged as a scientific study with a focus on particular areas occupied by a common organic theme such as a pond, a forest type, a particular organism or group of organisms. The systematic interrelationships of the organisms with each other and with the impinging natural elements is the focus of ecology. 

However, when considering the interrelationships of all organisms on Earth with their surroundings, the concept of ecology must be expanded greatly beyond studies of limited areas or of limited kinds of organisms. The terms ecosphere or biosphere  better describe the scale of interactions among organisms and natural systems on Earth. When human cultural systems are included the interactions are greatly increased. 

The ecosphere is composed of an extraordinary complexity of interacting systems.  As an example of the complexity, in the partial diagram of a climate system, below, look at its starting point  and its direct links with six other major subsystems (shown in different colors). Each of those subsystems are highly connected internally and with many parts of the other six subsystems as well as systems not shown in the diagram.  Imagine the starting point is the content of greenhouse gases within the Earth’s climate system and its connection with other sub-systems. Each different color represents another system with which it is actively connected. For example, consider the blue represents the system of the carbon cycle; the orange represents links within the oceanic systems; the green represents the forest systems; red/violet represent agricultural systems. And these major systems are interconnected, some more intimately than others.

The impact of changes within the system and subsystems are not simple and direct. Many changes have secondary, tertiary, or more remote consequences. The major point  is that abrupt human alterations to natural ecosystems have extraordinary impacts throughout the Earth’s ecosphere. Changes in the flows of information within and among ecosystems are extraordinarily complicated and carry ramifications at each point of contact. Some computer models have identified limited aspects of natural systems  and their impacts on other natural systems.  For example, many climate models have illuminated the severity that greenhouse gasses have caused in raising atmospheric temperatures as part of a climate system. 

A major difficulty in understanding the biosphere is apparent when you realize that ecosystems are composed of other ecosystems and are also parts of larger ecosystems. It is impossible to identify all of the major ecosystems that are interconnected, let alone, understand them. (Academic studies have largely emphasized specialization of smaller  systems rather than connections within larger systems.)

More generalized consequences of global warming on many ecosystems is indicated in the following diagram.  And each of the illustrated ecosystems or conditions is part of yet other ecosystems as is indicated by dotted lines.  Starting at the bottom of the diagram, the effects of global warming are shown as being intensified with increasing global temperatures. In the middle section, the results of continued global  warming are the passing of tipping points, beyond which changes are irreversible. The upper part of the diagram illustrates probable consequences within the human world. (Diagram is from Job One for Humanity)

Ecologists- Geographers

George Perkins Marsh--1864--Man and Nature --Or Physical Geography as Midified by Man

Carl Sauer, Marston Bates, Lewis Mumford,William Thomas (ed.)--Man’s Role in Changing the Fase of the Earth--1955

Eugene Odum--1961--Fundamentals of Ecology

Howard T. Odum--1971--Environment, Power, and Society in the 21st Century

William Catton--1982--Overshoot; The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

Although ecological theories had not yet been invented in the 19^th century, ideas that humans were causing major alterations to the natural  world, were written about  by George Perkins Marsh and others. Almost 100 years later, in the early 1950s, broader recognition of destructive modification of the Earth resulted in the first international  conference of seventy scholars and writers and the publication of “Mans’ Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.”(University of Chicago Press; 1956)  Geographer, Carl Sauer, introduced that conference with an article, ‘The Agency of Man on the Earth’. In it, he states:

“The theme (of the conference) is the capacity of man to alter his natural environment, the manner of his doing so, and the virtue of his action. It is concerned with historically cumulative effects, with the physical and biologic processes that man sets in motion, inhibits, or deflects and the differences in cultural conduct that distinguish one human group from another.” p 49

“We need to understand better how man has disturbed and displaced more and more of the   organic world, has become in more and more regions the ecologic dominant and has affected the course of organic evolution.”

Having taken place 70 years ago, the participants’ discussions of environmental changes, now seem dated. The magnitude of post-World War II alterations of the Earth by humans was largely unforeseen. Fossil fuels had barely begun to exert there extraordinary impact on the Earth. And the relationship of what was said was largely ecological only by inference. 

Fifteen years later, the ecologist Howard T. Odum (Environment, Power, and Society for the 21^st Century--The Hierarchy of Energy; John Wiley ; New York 1971--2007) thoroughly discussed the implications of ecological thinking on both the natural world and  human society.  In the 2007 revision of the 1971 edition of the book, he writes:

“The purpose of this book is to increase our understanding of the system of civilization  and its resource basis so as to chart a better future.  A macroscopic understanding of environment and society is sought with the principles of general systems, energy hierarchy, and earth metabolism. By accounting for the sequence of society from agrarian landscapes to urban frenzy, we can extend the reasons for history to the future.  Even now  the environmental resources of the planet are beginning to limit society just as the earth's fossil fuel-based urban civilization is flowering in storms of information. ”

Odum looked at ecology from the perspective of energy flows, storage, and degradation and of the consequences of those actions both in terms of natural materials and within human systems. (I will postpone further discussion Odum’s  ecological thinking to my section on energy.) He addressed a future that emerged out of the first Earth Day in 1967 in which ‘peak oil’ and the running out of fossil fuel energy was a major environmental concern. Global warming was not a major topic  at the time. 

Odum wrote about the “energy crisis: 

“We could make a mess of our transition (to a low energy society) if we fail to understand its nature. The terrible possibility before us is that there will be a continued insistence on growth with our last energies. There would then be no reserves with which to make changes, maintain order, and cushion the impact on human life of a period when energy use must drop.”

Based on his understanding of ecology he hoped that public would become aware that the uses of fossil fuel energy must decline. He showed ways that might lead to a moderate energy, steady state economy. Of course, energy use has accelerated rather than declined. And with it, pollution causing global warming has become the major problem of energy use, not forced contractions  in economy based on the decline in energy supplies.

Another influential late 20th century scholar was the sociologist, William Canton, whose book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, (University of Illinois Press: 1982) placed the actions of humans in the context of ideas and terms derived from  traditional studies in biological ecology. He was most concerned with the concepts of carrying capacity and overshoot. Canton boldly applied biological/ecological terms to human actions and history. 

“We must learn to live within carrying capacity without trying to enlarge it. We must rely on renewable resources consumed no faster than at sustained yield rates. The last best hope for mankind is ecological modesty.”

Catton, William R. Overshoot (p. 260). University of Illinois Press. Kindle Edition. 

The natural systems of most natural scientists have not yet been integrated with the cultural beliefs of religious, economic and political leaders, let alone the general public; Most social scientist have not been concerned with natural ecology. And  humans are still more fascinated with the stories we tell ourselves about culture, politics, economics, religion, and our daily life, than about how our cultural ecosystems are intimately connected to natural ecosystems. If humanity is to survive, these systematic connection must become more widely known and acted on.

1. B.Evolution

Evolutionary processes are guided by the innate propensity of all organism to grow and reproduce.  And evolution is intimately tied to ecology as a process through which all organisms, including humans, have found a place within the biosphere.  However, in their attempt to grow, not all organisms survive. They die out when they reach the limits imposed by their ecosystems. If the ecosystem changes are slow or minor, many can adjust to the new conditions, although most mutant variations die. Some mutations may be better adapted to rapidly changing ecological conditions and survive in the course of evolution. As explained in the Wikipedia article on evolution,

“Each population within an ecosystem occupies a distinct niche, or position, with distinct relationships to other parts of the system. These relationships involve the life history of the organism, its position in the food chain and its geographic range. This broad understanding of nature enables scientists to delineate specific forces which, together, comprise natural selection. Natural selection can act at different levels of organisation, such as genes, cells, individual organisms, groups of organisms and species. Selection can act at multiple levels simultaneously. ”

When natural ecosystems are changing rapidly and geographically, some organisms will be restricted or selected out; others may evolve into new, distinct species. Most species have disappeared during Earth’s previous five extinction events. A few species may survive the new ecological  systems. An asteroid impact, 65 million years ago caused the last major extinction during which all dinosaurs and many other larger plants and animals died. However, a few mammals, which date back some 85 million years ago, survived this last major extinction event. Among those mammals were the ancestors of humans.

The first hominids appeared about 14 million years ago (mya) evolving into 15-20 species. The earliest species of Australopithecenes evolved about 4 mya. And the first of the genus Homo (shown in green in the diagram below) appeared about 2.8 mya--during just the last 0.0006 % of geologic time.  All hominid species with the exception of Homo sapiens are extinct!

Divergence of Humans from Chimps

Modern man (Homo sapiens) is now thought to have evolved from H. heidelbergensis about 315,000 years ago and diffused out of Africa into Asia 120,000 years ago and to Europe 40-50,000 years ago.

.

Branches of the later species of humans

(By Homo-Stammbaum, Version Stringer.jpg: Chris Stringerderivative work: Conquistador - This file was derived from: Homo-Stammbaum, Version Stringer.jpg:, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36416828)

During the period of their evolution, small populations of Homo sapiens and other organisms have been able to live through the slowly changing natural ecological systems that accompanied major changes in climate that followed the extremes in the orbital pattern of the Earth. Humans evolved within their ‘distinct niche, or position, with distinct relationships to other parts of the system’. 

The  Quaternary geologic period, which began 2.58 mya, is characterized by 60 major periods of cooling that were accompanied by glacial ice sheets. They were followed by rising inter-glacial temperatures.  This is the period during which our distant hominid ancestors evolved and died. Homo sapiens evolved  during the last four major glacial advances.  These changes were gradual. The last glacial maximum was 22,000 years ago and was followed by increasing warming. In the 20th century, the average peak temperature of the last four inter-glacial periods  was recorded. 

Changes in Temperature, CO2, and Sea Level during the last four inter-glacial periods).

In 1950, temperatures reached the average of the peak temperatures of the last four inter-glacial periods. Since then they have risen exponentially. (See diagram above.) Solar radiation has maintain normal variations; CO₂ captured in ice show a moderate increase since 1880; CO₂ measured in the air on the Volcano Mauna Loa has been rising exponentially; and global temperatures have followed the rise in CO₂.

Our other human ancestors of the genera Homo have died out. Only Homo sapiens remains.  Modern humans have eked out an existence over the last 315,000 year. Their lives were very short until the 20th century. Movements of ice sheets, long periods of drought, and rising sea levels during the Pleistocene forced many groups to migrate if they were to survive. Gigantic volcanic explosions caused major worldwide ash fall. Plagues also killed large numbers of humans.   Homo sapiens are but recent survivors of long periods of adjustment to the natural world that surrounds them. They outlasted or absorbed Denisovan and Neanderthal species of Homo.

However, today humans no longer live within the same natural ecological systems that allowed the evolution of small groups of human animals. Today, humans have greatly altered the Earth’s ecological systems. The natural world  differs from the one within which Homo sapiens evolved. Have Homo sapiens also reached the limits of their particular evolutionary line?

1. C.Energy 

“Everything that happens is an expression of the flow of energy in one of its forms.   ….components of energy are necessary for the the action of all the processes of the universe. … Energy is a measure of everything. It measures the amount of stored capability for future processes and the rate at which processes go. The total amount of an accomplished process is measured by the energy used. ….Everything has a component of energy.” 

The ecologist, Howard T.  Odum, most comprehensively introduced the concept of energy into ecological studies. With the quotation above, he states a basic concept to understanding  a major aspect of life on Earth and its relationship to the natural world--to understanding the biosphere that includes humans. His ideas derive from the understanding of four laws of thermodynamics.

The first law--the law of conservation of energy--states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Energy may be transformed, stored, and degraded; but is not lost. 

Until very recently, human existence has depended on the transformation of solar energy derived mainly through direct processing of photosynthesis in plants. Humans have transformed, stored and degraded energy from plants and animals as their major sources of energy. Through the application of technology humans have also used solar energy that drives wind and water systems, for example in water wheels and turbines and in sailboats. In the 315,000 years of life of humans on Earth, only since the 19th century have humans  transformed and degraded solar energy that was transformed and stored in plants that were fossilized in distant geologic time. The rapid degradation of this fossDegraded energy is ultimately in the form of heat.

The second law--the law of degradation of energy--states that All energy when transformed is concentrated and loses heat. 

From its initial form at extraction, the energy of all fossil fuels becomes available for use or transformation. At each stage of its use or transformation, energy is either lost as heat or changed in form, incorporating lesser amounts of energy in the new product or service. At each stage of transformation, the remaining energy also becomes more complex and concentrated as it is stored in a product of service. 

Stored or potential energy, such as is found in fossil fuels, may be used to produce higher quality energy, i.e., more concentrated or more ordered energy. In the transformation process, some energy is concentrated and other energy is degraded. Although some degraded energy may be recycled as exemplified in the recycling of  nutrients when plants decay, much energy is degraded and  is lost in the form of heat. The dispersal of that heat, which  is the loss of the molecular activity as it approaches absolute zero, is called entropy. In common terms, degraded energy is less ordered. That everything tends to fall apart or depreciate  is an example of the 2nd Law of thermodynamics.

A third law or principle of thermodynamics is the maximum-power principle, which states that those systems that survive in competition among alternative choices are those that develop more power inflow (work) and use it to meet the needs of survival. “ They do this by (1) developing storages of high- quality energy, ( 2) feeding back work from the storages to increase inflows; (3) recycling materials as needed; (4) organizing control mechanisms that keep the system adapted and stable; (5) setting up exchanges with other systems to supply special energy needs, and (6) contributing useful work to the surrounding environmental system that helps maintain favorable conditions. “

More simply stated; the system that gets the most energy and uses it most effectively survives in competition with other systems. To be efficient, systems that have the largest sources of energy will produce more places to store energy which may be used as feedback. (Feedback is the reinforcement of the source of the energy.) The continual production of storage places is commonly called growth. The increasing accumulation of  storage places is, at least temporarily, called progress. 

Maximum power is attained when 50 % of the system’s energy is used either to maintain the system or to create storage places that feedback energy used in maintaining the system. The remaining 50% of the incoming energy is degraded. When a system’s maximum power is no longer attained or is short-circuited, other competing systems that are at maximum power, may replace the existing system or modify its position within the larger system in which both exist. This is the energy element in the process of evolution. 

When energy sources exceed production in maximum power efficient systems,  exponential overgrowth or overshoot occurs unless another system subsequently is able to limit its energy sources. The prime example of  exponential overgrowth is the addition of excess energy from fossil fuels into energetically-stable systems. In addition to the production of high quality of goods and services (storage devices), if sufficient feedback to maintain a stable system is not attained, excessive heat will be released into the biosphere. If the continuing use of fossil fuels in satisfying the demands for greater goods and services in modern societies is not accompanied by human limitations to maintain the natural and cultural systems of which they are a part, overgrowth occurs. The question today is: When will the Earthly biome, its natural systems, eliminate or reduce greatly the modern human systems, which are in overgrowth mode?

T.H. T. Odum suggests a Fourth thermodynamic law--the law of energy transformations. 

“All the known energy transformations can be connected in a series network according to the quantity of one kind of energy required for the next.” 

Odum illustrates this in the diagram below.

The Hierarchy of Energy; Columbia University Press; New York. 418 pp. 2007.

a: Reading left to right, energy is transformed from solar energy through the processes of  photosynthesis and is stored as (wood), which may be fossilized as (coal), which may be extracted as a fossil fuels (mining), and subsequently burned in power plants and concentration in factories, (the making of an electric light bulb).  The right-pointing arrows show potential energy (originally solar energy) as it is transformed. The left-pointing arrows show feedback energy. The down-pointing arrows show the degradation of energy to heat. (All measurements are in equivalents of ‘solar calories’.)  

b. At each stage of transformation, power (energy) is lost in work. Compare ‘a” with ‘b’.

c. At each stage, energy is concentrated and more specialized. It is stored in product or as feedback.)

The graph below shows a more generalized example of the transformation of solar energy as it flows through multiple different pathways.  Each pathway uses available sources of potential energy (when measured in common energy terms). Transformations are always toward greater concentration of embedded energy as well as greater degradation of energy. The ultimate source of the potential energy from Earthly sources is transformed at each stage of its use and is accompanied by the loss of degraded 

energy.

In this diagram, first levels of transformation--A, B, C, D, E--contribute concentrated energy to the second level of production--J, K, L--which in turn are processed and concentrated--S, T--to the final goods or services--Z. Each process of transformation leads to heat loss but also to feedback of energy to the lower level. Product Z , in turn may supply energy, say to systems of education or entertainment.

The end product, such as a smart phone or an educated person, is the result of huge amounts of concentrated and complex energy that has already been transformed in the stages leading to its use in the parts and services in making a smart phone or education a person. The total amount of energy consumed by a person has already been greatly concentrated in the transformations of energy from their original sources.

These transformations are accompanied by very large amounts of degraded energy that is lost to further concentration of products. Much of this degraded energy results in atmospheric accumulation in the form of greenhouse gasses. (The oceans absorb over 90% of the emitted CO2.) Throughout most of recent geologic time, the flow of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere has equaled their flow out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Only with  human activities, starting with agriculture and culminating today with the burning of fossil fuels, has the warming of the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses exceed its loss to outer space. 

(A major human error in determining amounts and types of energy in the transformation of materials and sources of energy is the selection of only one or two energy pathways or only one or two levels of transformation in  looking at the energy used in the  product in question, often only of the last stage--the desired product.)

The next diagram shows the approximate costs in terms of energy  needed to create a useful form of energy.   (How much energy to you get from the amount of energy it takes to make it useful.  Energy returned on  energy in-EREI) We know, for example, natural gas provides much more energy than the energy used to make useful. By contrast, it is difficult to establish the cost in energy needed to produce electricity from photo-voltaic solar cells.It Is not enough to note that PV solar cells cost fewer dollars  than some other sources of electricity. But does the production of PV cells provide more useful energy than the energy used in making it useful?  The answer is not clear. Although the determination of the actual energy costs are extremely difficult to determine, often speculative, the positioning on scales of concentration of energy and yield in energy remain relatively consistent in various studies done over time. The chart below is one rough estimate of energy costs of production and the energy output from their use. All numbers less than 10  are not cost effective in terms of energy.

                                                                      Materials required in construction (tons/kilowatt hour)

At present, humanity continues to want to maintain an high-energy society. To do so, it has been estimated that an EROI must be above 7 to economical.  Although our leaders may be aware of the natural costs of doing so, they are unable to  continue to find energy sources that do not exceed the energy cost of producing them and the infrastructure to support them. Although renewable sources may not have a high energy return for energy produced, renewable sources may remain desirable because they are less polluting than fossil fuel sources. It should be remembered, however, that  all forms of energy  whether renewable or not, alter the natural systems of which they are a part.

Actual energy costs are not used in determining economic costs. Most energy costs are ‘externalized’ in economic processes. Thus  thinking about the relationship between major human economic systems and natural ecological systems is broken. In the diagram below, you can see where natural resource and waste systems, potential energy and degraded energy, as well as where natural and degraded materials are found. They are all part of the Earth’s biosphere. The economic system is also a part of the Biosphere, but is usually considered a world unto itself. Energy flows in and out of the economic system from the biosphere.  

[The rectangular box (red) represents the economic system that is embedded in the Earth’s biosphere, (shown in green.] The predicament in which humanity finds itself today is represented by the extraction of energy and materials (which can be described in terms of energy) and the waste products, (largely heat, which it discharges into the biosphere.) When these costs are ‘external’ to the economy, their costs to natural ecosystems are excluded. Equating  economic costs  with the energy costs of resources and waste disposal would go a long way towards creating a feedback system within a more stable system that is the biosphere. Energy needs to be evaluated in terms of energy, not simply in financial terms.

The existential crises that humanity faces today have been created by the increased use of energy. Exponential overgrowth of energy today, contrasts with the slow, stable interactions of natural systems of earlier times.  Over millenniums, those systems have slowly adjusted to variations in solar radiation, the rotation and inclination of the Earth, growth in ice sheets and changes in vegetative cover. The exponential growth of the use of energy, especially from fossil fuels since 1950, differs both in its scale and the speed of its occurrence from the energy changes of the Pleistocene. The ecological disruptions of the Earth’s biosphere directly reflect human actions which are based on the increased use of non-renewable energy. To understand the disturbed world in which we now live, energy must be considered along side ecology and evolution.

D.Environment

Environment is a very broad idea that encompasses energy, ecology, evolution, and matter.  At its most comprehensive, environment is whatever interacts with a selected subject through exchanges of information.  Of  most concern in this presentation is the exchange of information between the cultural world of humanity and the natural  world of earthly materials and energy.

Natural Environment 

For millenniums, the human species--an evolving species of mammals--adapted successfully to the flow of information of slowly changing ecological systems--its environment.  Natural ecosystems accepted the habits of the ancestors of the human species. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, the flow of information from humans to natural ecological systems differs radically from what it was when Homo sapiens evolved over 300,000 years ago.  The consequence of those flows of information is that many of the ecosystems within the natural world have  been altered to tipping points, which make them unstable. The consequences to humanity of reaching tipping points of natural ecosystems are extremely uncertain. The environmental evidence is overwhelming  that several  tipping points are locked in. We are most aware of those dealing with global warming.

The climate crisis and the ecosystems at its base may be partially  identified by  an excess of  “greenhouse gases”. For over 400,000 years atmospheric levels of CO2 had not exceeded 300 ppm. Since 1950 they have risen by over 120 ppm. This year, 2023, recorded global temperatures at their highest, as are the levels of the three main greenhouse gases--Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), and Nitrous Oxide (N2O).

The diagram below illustrates some of  the flows of information from increased amounts of greenhouse gasses.  Follow the red arrows from the lower left hand part of the diagram. Several pathways lead to changes in the states of the oceans. Other flows of information from increased amounts of greenhouse gases effect  changes in glaciers, sea ice, and vegetative land  cover.

Other major examples of interference in natural ecosystems by humans as their population grew are the clearing of land for agriculture, the destruction of forests, the damming of rivers,  the extinction of species, and the desertification of dry lands. The amount of  agricultural and grazing lands have greatly increased in the last 200 years, affecting the reflectivity and absorption of solar energy. As the diagrams of Land Use Changes and of the Changes in the Biomass of the world’s Terrestrial Vertebrates show, the environments of all organism has change greatly in modern times.

Ethereal environment or stories we tell ourselves

In addition to a natural environment, humans also participate in an ethereal world through exchanges of information with one another. The unique exchanges of a human animal within his or her ethereal environment are guided by flows of abstract and symbolic information that has been stored within the body/mind, and are expressed in speech, body movements, cultural artifacts, or technology. The flow of information through language, behavior, and artifacts is usually mediated by institutions of which print and electronic media are now among the most important.  

Today the most important narratives--the stories or codified forms of information flow--are science, individualism, and capitalism. An partial example of major stories we tall ourselves is illustrated here. 

 Their coupling with an unrelenting technology has transformed, unalterably, not only the cultural environment of all humans but also the material environment of all life. The material world has increasingly been forced to respond to the increasing productions of the human mind which are creating effects both beneficial and deleterious to the very survival of the human species.

The flows of information from applied natural and social sciences and many modern humanistic studiesare at the root of  today’s existential crises. Because they relate primarily to activities within an ethereal world and ignore natural ecologic systems they remain inventions that are isolated from physical reality.  If Homo sapiens is to survive, many of the underpinnings of our dominant stories demand drastic revision to include the realities of the physical properties of nature.

The growth of human population that is supported by the goods and services of modern life cannot continue when the natural ecosystems  are increasingly altered by that human population.   The “Bads” of  human making--the extinctions, resource extraction, pollution, increasing entropy--are radically transformed natural environments. In the diagram below, the the real world of humans is shown as thrusting its flows of intelligence in the production of artifacts and  descriptions of the real world of Nature. The creation of ‘Goods’ or artifacts has created ‘Bads’--the  alterations of Nature. The world of matter and energy and  wilderness  is now transformed at a scale that has been labeled the Anthropocene because the techniques and values of humans--the ethereal world--have come to be the major transformer of the natural world. All natural environments have been  invaded by ethereal environments.

The Biosphere focused on Human/Nature Environments

The environment of humanity has been greatly changed since the evolution of Homo sapiens. During the last two centuries, especially in the last 70 years, humans have disturbed the environments in which they evolved by their coupling of technology with the burning of fossil fuel energy.  The steady, slow flows of information in both natural and ethereal systems--environmental processes--have been accelerated, interrupted, altered, or broken by human actions and thought.  Humans have created the Anthropocene!

Eight billion humans living on the same planet on which Homo sapiens evolved is the largest environmental change resulting from the use of fossil fuels. Food supplies are adequate to maintain the 8 billion only through the “Green Revolution,” which is based on fossil fuels. The same fossil fuels that let humans live longer and in better health are the same fossil fuels that are creating the environmental  disasters that threaten us.  

E.Exponential Growth

However, within the lifetime of many people still living, the population has quadrupled to 8 billion. Goods and services have grown exponentially in recent decades. Humans have excelled in the imperative to grow and reproduce. And who can decry better health, longer lives, and freer movement? But recently we are beginning to recognizance that economic systems based on stories of growth and progress are also dependent on the real world of nature. 

Only with exponential growth of rapid entropy, have pollution, extinctions, resource depletion and other negative aspects of economic growth become apparent. 

“In this trembling moment ... is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?”  Barry Lope

For more information about the author of this article, Alvin Urquhart, Emeritus Professor of Geography who was a founder and director of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon, click here.

Here is the link to part two of this article. Part two has all of the recommendations and it is amazing reading!

Are a visual? Review the ecological crisis facing humanity by Alvin Urquhart, Emeritus Professor and a founder of the Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon.

The timeframes for the most dangerous consequences of climate change will continue to evolve and change as humanity crosses more climate change tipping points, feedback loops, and points of no return.

In general, the timeframes below apply to individuals, families, and businesses:

a. If you and your loved ones want to live another 10 to 15 years in relative comfort and stability, start your emergency preparations, adaptations, and climate change resilience-building now!

b. If you and your loved ones want to live another 15 to 30 years in relative comfort and stability, build a climate change-resilient community with adequate emergency preparations, adaptations, and common defense strategies.

c. If you and your loved ones want to live another 30 to 50 years and beyond in relative comfort and stability, build a region of many climate change-resilient communities working together with adequate emergency preparations, adaptations, and mutual defense strategies.

Why the evolving climate change consequence timeframes are a genuine matter of avoiding unnecessary personal suffering and death

Many people today believe that a climate change-driven collapse and extinction cycle is highly probable for humanity's future. They see that humanity faces 12 major global crises described on this page and that climate change is worsening most of them.

They also believe it is a horse race to see which one of the 12 major global crises we'll destroy us first. While the above may be entirely true for many people, several far more critical extinction and collapse questions are seldom fully understood or addressed.

Those questions and their sub-questions are:

a. How much of humanity will go extinct, and how many of the world's economic, political, and social systems will collapse? Will we experience partial extinction, mass extinction, near total extinction, or total extinction? Will only the poorest countries collapse, or will some of the strongest nations also collapse?

b. How, in practical terms, will you, your family, your business, your local community, state, or nation survive this? Most people have either denied or discarded careful thought about the unbelievable pain, suffering, and loss that will engulf them, their businesses, and their communities. 

Most people believe they can survive what's coming but have not looked at the crucial details of what is coming. They never think that they or their loved ones could be turned into enslaved people, raped, and continually tortured until they die because of the other starving individuals who must steal and kill to survive and keep their loved ones alive.

No one who thinks about what the future will be like for their family and community should neglect reading the following two books as soon as possible. These two spellbinding fiction books describe in excruciating detail the horrible human physical and emotional consequences of climate change after individuals wait too long to prepare for it in time or migrate away from it.

These books are by an award-winning black female writer. They are:

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993. (This is part one of the two sequential novels. It is set in 2024.)

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Talents. Seven Stories Press, 1998. (This is part of two of the Parable duology. It is set in 2032.)

These two books are absolute must-reads to see the daily ordinary and extraordinary suffering that runaway global warming will impose on our future. These two books will educate you in detailed ways we at Job One for Humanity have not yet been able to do with the many climate facts and consequences found on our web pages. 

Our website lacks the finely detailed, phase-by-phase emotional power and astute psychological and character insights into what happens to and between people, families, and communities in deep crisis (the climate emergency) as things worsen.

Franky, we are baffled as to how Octavia Butler could so accurately depict the tortuous lives of individuals who waited too long to get prepared and migrate because of global warming and then suffered endless horrible consequences. She skillfully compels the reader scene by scene with a brilliantly written cast of families trying to migrate up the California coast through crisis after crisis. It is impossible not to be drawn into the painful personal lives and details of what happens to these decent, regular families when societies break down at every level because of the consequences of late-stage global warming.

Many people believe we are going to experience total human extinction and the complete collapse of modern civilization. That may become an excruciatingly painful position if the collapse level is significantly below total extinction and worldwide collapse. Some of the same people who believe in total extinction and total collapse are adapting by living out their bucket lists. Many of those bucket lists have a focus on kindness and meaning.

Unfortunately, suppose the total extinction and collapse believers are wrong. What if the extinction and collapse levels are significantly less than they believe? In that case, they will be utterly unprepared for the suffering they and their loved ones will experience, as described so elegantly and entirely in the above two books by Octavia Butler.

These additional documents will help you understand the ever-evolving climate change consequence timeframes and which locations will be hit the worst

Here are those articles:

Click here for the four extinction-driving climate tipping points, the first being crossed starting about 2025. This page will explain precisely why the 1% only have 3-9 years left to maintain some level of effective control over their climate future before the immutable laws of climate and atmospheric greenhouse gas physics take over. 

Click here for the climate-driven processes of global collapse and mass to near-total extinction. Here, you will see the cascade of almost 80 primary and secondary climate change consequences unfolding and interacting with humanity's 11 other major global crises. After reading this page, you will understand why the extinction of half of humanity by 2050 is already an unavoidable reality. All that remains now is to fight to prevent our near-total extinction. 

Click here for only this year's climate change consequence forecast.

Click here for the critical MIT and related studies on the timeframes for global collapse. This is essential reading if you think it is just our think tank discussing likely climate change-driven collapse scenarios and their time frames.

Click here for the most detailed information on the evolving timeframes of climate change consequences and locations in our Members Only section. You will need to become a member, so click here to see all the Members Only access to additional critical information and benefits you will receive. (Membership cost is very reasonable.)

How to prepare for these evolving climate change timeframes

1. Click here for the necessary climate change emergency preparations.

2. Click here for the necessary climate change adaptations.

3. Click here to build climate change-resilience and a climate-resilient community. Improve Your Climate Future: Be Part of a Visionary, Self-Sufficient, and Climate-Resilient community in a ClimateSave village.

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Last Updated 2.23.24

The insane financial costs of escalating climate change consequences will eventually destroy the world's economy. Here is why.

No banks, corporations or governments are planning for, budgeting for, and setting aside adequate reserves to cover the escalating losses and damages of accelerating the climate change nightmare.

Below is a partial list of of climate change and global warming consequences to help you visualize the  escalating financial costs of climate change consequences described in detail below.

Rising climate change consequences costs may be the greatest threat to the world economy

If temperatures continue to rise as they are doing now and rise only as over “optimistically” projected by current global warming authorities until the turn-of-the-century:

1. Average global income will shrink by 23%. (1)

2. Global warming will facilitate a massive transfer of value and wealth from the hotter parts of the earth to the cooler parts. At least initially, countries like Russia, Mongolia, Canada, and possibly the northernmost parts of the U.S. will see large economic benefits. Most of Europe will do slightly better even though parts of it will suffer severe droughts. The U.S. and China will do slightly worse, mostly because the southern and western parts of the United States will be in a heat and/or drought crisis. All of Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East will be economically ravaged.

3. U.S. gross domestic product per person will drop by 36%. (2)

4. Inflation will continually rise (reaching up to 100% in the final phases of the Climageddon Scenario) (3). This rising inflation is due to having to repair the ever-escalating, near continuous damage from ever-more global warming related natural disasters as they continue to expand across, local, regional, national and global areas. Repairing these continuous and escalating natural disasters will create an ever-increasing need for resources that will grow ever-scarcer. The needed repairs and the resource scarcity will continually push prices and inflation higher and higher.

The financial costs of global warming will go up with each rising degree of average global temperature. It is highly probable that global warming costs will not rise in a linear fashion, but more likely in a rapidly rising exponential curve. 

The estimated differences in total global warming costs are derived from different inputs, assumptions, and computer models. As you will soon discover, no matter what estimates you choose to use, the escalating costs of global warming will put an unbearable, steadily increasing burden on the citizens and nations of the world. When you read these cost estimates, keep in mind that none of these estimates places any dollar value on the massive predicted loss of human life. 

Obviously it will be horrendously costly to repair, rebuild, relocate, or construct for the first time both current and new infrastructure, homes, and businesses. The Stern Review done in 2006 estimated that the rising costs of escalating global warming will grow to 5% or more of the gross domestic product of all the nations on Earth. (Gross domestic product [GDP] is a monetary measure of the value of all goods and services produced in a given period of time [quarterly or yearly].) 

This means that 5% of the the world’s total gross domestic product will be lost to emergency recovery from global warming-related consequences. For an economic comparison and perspective, consider that the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States was the result of only a 4% loss in U.S. gross domestic product.

It gets FAR more costly as climate consequences accelerate over time

Newer studies from 2015 project that if the average global temperature increase reaches 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, the nations of the world will be spending from 10% up to a possible 30% of their total gross domestic product recovering from an endless stream of mega global warming-related consequences and catastrophes on the final road to extinction. The current GDP of the world is about $100 trillion a year; by 2100 it may double or triple that. This means we could be spending one-third of the world’s GDP in 2100—about $100 trillion a year—just to try to survive extinction from global warming. 

If we are able to avoid global warming extinction, the total estimated costs of all related global warming destruction could be in the range of $400-$600 trillion—about eight years of the current total gross domestic product for every nation on Earth. To put this in perspective, this means that if we fail to successfully resolve global warming now, farther down the road we will have to dedicate 5 to 8 times the total current value of all annual global human productivity to try to recover from the global warming consequences. 

Worse yet, that is only what we may have to pay if we are lucky. If we go into runaway, irreversible, or extinction-level climate change destabilization, what will the cost be then? 

Additionally, all of the related financial costs of global warming-related catastrophes and emergencies will rapidly diminish any existing national emergency recovery safety nets. This will cause unthinkable suffering among those who are not prepared and who will consequently have no governmental safety net.

It is clear that no person, corporation or nation will be able to cope with these ever-increasing levels of economic losses caused by climate change and global warming and remain economically viable with so much of their GDP going towards climate change costs and recovery.

Here is only a small sample of costs happening already with global warming-influenced extreme weather. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which tracks U.S. billion-dollar disaster events resulting from extreme weather, has found that severe storms caused losses of $8 billion in the 1980s, $26 billion in the 1990s, $43 billion in the 2000s, and $78 billion thus far in the 2010s. (4)  In the past few years, the United States has experienced nearly 50 climate-related disasters, each costing taxpayers over $1 billion.

A global financial catastrophe is coming if we do not fix climate change before we cross the carbon 450 ppm level

In 2017 alone, the total combined costs for only all US global warming aggravated disasters was about 500 billion dollars. Hurricane Harvey alone exceeded 300 billion and hurricanes Irma, and Marie and the many wildfires and mud slides in California made up the difference.) This 300 billion dollar cost was exactly what was predicted in the new Climageddon Scenario climate model in phase 2 (described in the new book Climageddon, The Global Warming Emergency and How To Survive It.)

The costs of climate change consequences will quickly reach insane levels

In the illustration below you can see the predicted future single incident increasing costs of global warming aggravated disasters through the six stages of the Climageddon Scenario climate model. You can also see how much worse our single incident global warming aggravated disaster costs will become as we move from phase to phase.

Click here to learn more about why we cannot cross the carbon 425 to 450 ppm threshold and tipping point. 

If we continue on the path of escalating global warming, we will soon be facing a new kind of superstorm, what can be called a millennial superstorm. Millennial superstorms are storms of such severity that they have not been present on Earth for thousands of years. These new millennial superstorms are important to consider because almost all of our infrastructure has been built on the basis of surviving the worst storm that occurs about once every 100 years. Our current infrastructure is in no way prepared to survive these 1,000-year millennial superstorms. For more data on increasingly extreme storms, read this article by Paul Douglas. (5)

Who are the biggest financial losers as global warming increases?

There will be very big financial losers as global warming escalates. A few of the biggest losers will be:

a. Home and business owners in global warming unsafe catastrophe zones. Those living near river or lake floodplains or close to oceans, or areas vulnerable to wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, or tornadoes will be subject to huge real estate valuation losses and insurance premium increases. Insurance companies will be forced to raise prices 1-5% per year for any customers in the escalating global warming high-danger zones, or they will cancel policies and offload the risks and the unpredictable costs onto national government relief programs and safety nets.

It would also not be unreasonable to estimate that real estate prices in affected global warming high-risk areas will soon begin dropping 1-3% per year as savvy buyers realize the risk and potential losses involved in such properties. In extremely high-risk areas, real estate prices could crash drastically, similar to the way the prices of homes and businesses crashed when toxic pollution was discovered in the water and soils at Love Canal, New York. (See this article on the new rules for buying real estate in the world of increasing global warming and the vast new global warming unsafe zones.)

b. Fossil fuel companies and related industries will not be able to hide or secretly offload the pollution and health costs onto unsuspecting taxpayers for the worst effects of their products. Fossil fuel subsidies that now total $5.3 trillion a year will soon disappear, and special global warming reduction carbon tax fees from $40-$100 a ton or more will be added to their operational costs. Fossil fuel companies will suffer massive stock divestment actions, massive numbers of individual and class-action lawsuits holding them responsible for global warming damages and they will be hindered by governments with new regulations and taxes on profits to further reduce fossil fuel use. 

On the other hand, green energy will become highly subsidized, and fossil fuel energy generation will become highly unprofitable by comparison. This does not take into consideration the momentum building behind the rapidly growing movement to divest from fossil fuel holdings.

c. Countries in the Southern hemisphere will be most affected by the worst of escalating global warming. They will experience soaring heat, the rapid spread of tropical diseases, as well as economic, social, and political instability. Needless to say, such countries whose economies are dependent on tourism will see those revenues steadily disappear. The irony here is that many of the undeveloped nations that have produced only a tiny fraction of total global warming will get poorer as northern countries responsible for most of the global warming will initially get richer and experience other benefits.

d. Millennials and the younger generations will be financially punished the most by escalating global warming. Click here to learn more for a shocking article about the trillions of dollars the younger generations will lose. (6)

e. Average individuals from every generation in global warming unsafe zones will watch their monthly budgets, reserves, and personal and business equity be destroyed. This is because global warming-related inflation and “natural” disasters and their recovery costs will continue rising as the temperature rises. Part of the reason for this loss of equity is that as the emergency worsens, individuals will not be able to find relief from either insurance or government emergency programs because eventually those funds will also be exhausted by the ever-widening drain in the bathtub of global warming costs. To add further hardship, these individuals will endure steadily increasing new taxes, which their governments will be forced to impose as insurance companies go bankrupt due to the continuous, worsening “natural” disasters caused by global warming. To learn more about global warming unsafe zones see the Migrating North or South of the 45 Parallel map and copy near the bottom of this page.

f. The poor and the middle class will be the first to suffer and they will suffer the most. In addition to the pain of dwindling personal equity and rapidly increasing taxes from ever-escalating global warming disasters, the poor and the middle class will also watch their government social security and safety net benefits continually cut back and finally disappear as their governments try to cope with dwindling and overburdened resources themselves (i.e. retirement and unemployment benefits, food assistance, assistance for the elderly or physically or mentally handicapped, worker’s compensation, etc.). Click here to see a small glimpse of how bad it will get for the poor. (7)

The worst financial losers will be 

The banks, corporations, and governments everywhere that did not plan for, budget for, or set aside adequate reserves for the ever-increasing costs of escalating climate change. They will be blindsided year after year with ever-increasing surprise liabilities and fewer resources to use for future productivity.

In the early to mid phases of the Climageddon Scenario described here, it is fair to say that almost everyone will begin watching the process of their personal wealth dwindling and disappearing. More will be said about the many costs of escalating global warming here.

End Notes

1. Ben Gruber. "Unmitigated climate change to shrink global economy by 23 percent, researchers find." Reuters. November 16, 2015.
2. Kenneth Rapoza. "Climate change will be disastrous for these economies." Forbes. October 26, 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/10/26/climate-change-will-be-disastrous-for-these-economies/#246817eb4052
3. Tim Garrett, interview by Alex Smith, Radio Ecoshock, October 19, 2011, transcript. http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2010/ES_Garrett_101119_LoFi.mp3
4. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. "U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters." NOAA.gov. 2016. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
5. Paul Douglas. "Meteorologists are seeing global warming's effect on the weather." The Guardian. May 27, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/may/27/meteorologists-are-seeing-global-warmings-effect-on-the-weather
6. Maria Gallucci. "Climate change could be worse than student debt, Great Recession for millennials' income." Mashable. August 22, 2016. http://mashable.com/2016/08/22/climate-change-cost-millennials-trillions/#MPVks6RnU8q6
7. Megan Darby. "Climate change could push 100m into extreme poverty." Climate Change News. August 11, 2015. http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/11/08/climate-change-could-push-100m-into-extreme-poverty/
8. Lawrence Wollersheim. Book Climageddon 2016.

“ExxonMobil has misled the public about climate change by telling the public one thing and then saying and doing the opposite behind closed doors..."

This is the first time our climate change think tank has ever issued a climate change consequence RED ALERT.

There is one climate change fact that will change everything you currently believe about climate change consequences, timetables, progress, and solutions.

Last Updated 3.7.24.

During the trial, the defense's jury consultant warned the defense attorney's law firm multiple times that they were losing the jury, even those jury members who believed that climate change was a hoax. Just before the defense was to put on its closing statement, the jury expert told the defense they had completely lost the jury and they had an ethical obligation to inform their client, the fossil fuel cartel, of her findings.

After the defense attorneys for the cartel informed the cartel leadership of the jury consultants' final pre-closing opinion, the cartel demanded that the defense law firm go out and find the best independent lawyer closer than money could buy. The defense law firm found a woman renowned for turning juries around at the last minute.

After this new attorney had reviewed:

a. the trial transcripts, and

b. how bad it had gone with the jury not believing the experts and documents presented by the defense.

The new closer attorney told the defense attorneys and cartel representatives that they had lost the trial's arguments on law and the facts. All they had left was to pound the table and move the jury's attention and feelings onto something else even more fearful to them.

She then demanded a $500,000 upfront fee and a $10 million bonus if she turned the trial around. The cartel eagerly agreed to such a tiny request compared to the losses it would face.

This new attorney then told the defense firm that she believed that the prosecution's witnesses and evidentiary documents were so compelling that the jury feared for their future lives, not just for themselves but also for their families, children, and grandchildren. The prosecution had done its job so well that the jury feared their local, state, and national communities would soon be ravaged and grow unstable as climate change worsened.

She tells the defense she will not waste time and defend many of the defense's now undefendable opening statements and positions. Finally, she tells the defense litigation team and the cartel's representatives that unless she breaks the fear that the prosecution put into the jury with an even greater fear that would happen far sooner, the case would be lost.

(In an action out of the jury's presence and to not affect the jury, the judge allowed this new defense attorney to be substituted in and deliver the closing statement.) 

Closing statement of the defense in the trial of the global fossil fuel cartel

The new female attorney introduces herself to the jury and begins the defense's closing statement. This new attorney went on for almost 40 minutes. 

In intimate detail, for those 40 minutes, she spoke about what would happen if the cartel was found guilty and, because of that, could no longer produce the fossil fuels the world needed every day. In excruciatingly painful detail, she spoke of how horrible and impossible daily life would be without these fossil fuels.

To disperse and deflect climate change damage responsibility, with new twists and stories, she returned to the defense's previous arguments and claimed "everybody's responsible, and nobody's responsible" for climate change damage if climate change actually causes damage. 

Finally, she brought fear closer to home. She spoke about family, friends, or acquaintances who would probably soon lose their jobs because of a guilty verdict and how that would harm their lives, their families, the economy, and ultimately, all that pain and economic suffering would trickle down to them and their families far faster than the alleged consequences of climate change. 

At the end of her closing for the defense, you could see some of the jury was very uncomfortable.  

Click Here Now if You Are Ready to Vote if the Global Fossil fuel Cartel is Guilty of Causing Climate change and Financially Responsible for all Climate change Loss and Damage.

Closing statement for the prosecution in the trial of global fossil fuel cartel

The prosecution's lead attorney steps forward and addresses the jury. 

"I need to make a few comments about the defense's closing statement. It was a bit like a drug dealer telling you not to quit buying the addictive drugs that they have intentionally and maliciously addicted you to --- by telling you the withdrawal will be horrible.

May I remind you that for decades, the cartel has been keeping you addicted to its toxic polluting products through a multi-billion dollar global disinformation campaign, criminal actions to stop the needed transition to green energy generation, and by stopping any new laws that would require true reductions in national or international fossil fuel use. It's no wonder why humanity has remained addicted to fossil fuels long after they should have been eliminated. 

Also, what you have heard over the last 40 minutes in the defense attorney's closing statement was a brash attempt to give you something bigger to fear that will happen to you sooner than the coming climate change consequences that you have heard about in this trial.

Well, here is what the defense closing statement did not tell you.

1. Climate change is here now and will continue to grow worse until the global fossil fuel cartel is stopped from selling more fossil fuels and is made to pay for all the damage and suffering it has caused.

2. Everything she said is going to happen to you if you do not find the cartel innocent is still going to happen to you if you do find the cartel innocent because of the rapidly escalating climate change that the cartel has created and is continuing to fuel.

In the rest of my closing statement, I will remind you how and what I just said is true, and that you have no other rational choice for yourself and your family, business, community, and nation but to find the cartel guilty on all Grand Jury charges. 

If you remember, in my opening statement, I said that by the time we got through our evidence and expert testimony, those of you who, at the beginning of the trial, believed that the global fossil fuel industry and its products were good would no longer do so. Judging by the concern on your faces during this trial, the cartel-created climate change disinformation illusion appears to have been lifted. even those of you who doubted climate change was real.

It is time for you to see the climate change extinction emergency for what it is --- a global crime scene with national and international perpetrators still on the loose and still engaged in an ongoing mass murder spree. The mass murders this time are not nations (and their leaders) but a corporate enterprise and cartel.

Someday, the whole world will know about the global fossil fuel cartel's many crimes against humanity that have been presented in this trial. Until then, it is up to you to render final judgment and help the world learn what has been done to them. 

It is very rare when something you do can benefit the whole of humanity. You, the jury, have been presented with that rare and special opportunity. Never forget that your guilty verdict will bring about many more worldwide cartel trials and the cause of climate justice everywhere.

To find the cartel and its members and leaders guilty, you do not have to discover precisely why the individuals running the cartel have committed these horrible crimes against humanity. It doesn't matter if they had a horrendous childhood, were poorly educated, or were hardened narcissists or sociopaths. Today, you are here only to render a powerful verdict that will act to help stop them from harming you, your loved ones, and more people worldwide.

You have the legal power to convict the cartel, its executives, and related or enabling companies and individuals on any one, combination, or all of the following civil or criminal charges.

Those civil and criminal charges are areas are:

a. product liability (for damages caused by the cartel's toxic polluting products.)

b. violations of consumer protection laws (for damages caused by a cartel's products or actions.)

c. Aiding and abetting the cartel's toxic pollution or other criminal activities. It's not just the cartel manufacturers of these deadly and destructive fossil fuel products being held liable anymore. A new precedent-setting case for widening the zone of cartel legal liability has just occurred. In the recent multi-billion dollar US opioid cases, it was not just Purdue Pharmaceutical, the manufacturer of the opioids, that was held liable. Big-name distributors of Perdue's opioid products, like Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS drugstores, were also held liable for damages. 

Additionally, McKinsey & Company in the US was forced to pay 78 million dollars for its role in promoting the deadly opioid epidemic in the US. They were convicted of supplying deceptive marketing plans to boost the sales of Perdue's dangerous product. McKinsey & Company's deceptive marketing actions mirror the cartel's decades-long global climate change disinformation campaigns.

(McKinsey & Company intentionally supplied disinformation to the public and others about the dangers of the Purdue Pharmaceutical-produced opioids. This 78 million dollar judgment opens the door to hold cartel lobbyists, PR firms, marketing firms, and funding banks or individuals legally responsible for cartel climate change damages for their co-conspiratorial aiding and abetting roles. Many firms were involved in creating, promoting, enabling, facilitating, or financing the cartel's climate change disinformation, deceptive marketing, or the cartel's other coercive and illegal actions, which prevented society and its politicians from enacting the required fossil fuel reductions decades ago and accelerating the transition to a green energy economy. Worse yet, the cartel and its enablers have worked tirelessly to stop those who could have prevented the current and past harms of climate change consequences.

d. False advertising and false marketing.

e. negligence and gross negligence resulting in death, bodily harm, or destruction and loss because of the cartel's toxic, polluting products or the negligent or grossly negligent actions of a cartel or cartel agents.

f. racketeering, possibly even the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in the US (These charges and a conviction on this charge can and should be brought because of the decades of conspiratorial cartel disinformation and the cartel's long-term pattern of hidden coercive actions to unduly influence and prevent effective global fossil fuel reduction laws which would threaten their profits. For decades, the cartel has also actively blocked laws and subsidies that could have improved or accelerated the global transition to green energy generation and green energy applications.

g. first-degree murder (millions of deaths have been caused annually by the cartel's toxic, polluting products and their coercive global actions to prevent fossil fuel regulation. For decades, the cartel conclusively knew its products would kill millions and yet continued to sell them and hide their dangerous health and other side effects, like global warming.)

h. crimes against humanity because of the carefully orchestrated decades of crimes against humanity and humanity's future well-being, the international 28 trillion dollars a year cartel should be treated as a rogue nation and also face crimes against humanity charges. In addition to national trials, it also should be tried in the International Criminal Court and other national courts.)

The cartel has already killed an estimated 300 million people since the 1800s from its toxic and deadly polluting fossil fuel products. Escalating climate change today is causing worldwide mass migrations and resulting in the deaths of millions more annually (mostly poor and disadvantaged people.) 

If allowed to continue unchecked, the cartel's total toxic product pollution and all of the primary and secondary climate change consequences of that toxic pollution will directly or indirectly kill about half of humanity by about 2050. (Click here to learn why such a massive climate change-driven human die-off is now all but unavoidable by 2050.)

i. Ecocide, if local law permits.

The crimes against humanity I just mentioned are not second-degree or third-degree murder because the cartel not only knew the deadly consequences of its products. With conscious intent, it continued those acts that caused deadly harm to others for the cartel's continuing profits.

For centuries, if someone is knowingly and maliciously killed through a slow process of conscious and intentional poisoning, juries have quickly convicted the perpetrators as common murderers. In this case, for 223 years, the fossil fuel cartel has poisoned the atmosphere for all human beings and killed hundreds of millions.

The cartel's slow-poisoning pollution has caused and continues to cause the slow and painful deaths of hundreds of millions of people, with billions soon to come. 

Do not forget that you also are also allowed to convict those senior executives, related companies, pension funds, hedge funds, government agencies, or anyone complicit in these ongoing deaths or that have failed to inform their clients, citizens, or investors of the known climate change risks and consequences that have resulted in any individual or business damages or client, citizen or investor damages (in binding contracts like insurance policies, mortgages, building permits, etc.)

In your calculations for also awarding punitive damages, you must once again carefully consider that for forty years, the cartel fully understood the slow pain and suffering its products and actions would cause before the eventual death of its victims occurred. 

It is necessary at this time to remind you your governments and the media have also been harmed and continuously subjected to decades of cartel-favorable global disinformation. This cartel-created disinformation also adversely affected the United Nations's climate summary reports and prevented or stopped your governments and politicians from enacting the correct global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

The ongoing cartel's massive global climate change disinformation campaigns have resulted in the cartel's horrible and proven ability to successfully cause the underestimation of the correct climate change facts, timeframes, and solutions by an estimated 30-60% over the last four decades!

The global fossil fuel cartel has gotten away with its ongoing crimes against humanity for decades because:

1. its products have not been correctly regulated, and

2. the cartel has not been held liable for the damages of its products.

This climate change injustice is solely because of the cartel's illegal behind-the-scenes actions to make proper fossil fuel regulation and cartel liability all but impossible.

As testified to by the many climate experts you have heard, you must also factor into your verdict in your recommendations for appropriate additional punishments that the cartel's actions over the past 40 years have acted as a global threat and consequence multiplier. Escalating climate change consequences also directly amplifies the consequences of many of the other 11 world's biggest problems. 

Today, you are here to be the final judges of:

1. the cumulative, synergetic, and disastrous consequences of the cartel's toxic, slow-poisoning, polluting products,

2. the cartel's ongoing and intentional disinformation campaigns and their coercive influence effectively prevented or delayed all meaningful governmental regulation of their products. (These 40-year effective regulation interference or delays have resulted in even worse ongoing global climate consequences, many of which have become unavoidable solely because of this 40-year delay in action.)

3. the guilt and complicity for crimes against humanity of fossil fuel industry senior executives, outside large investors, mutual funds, hedge funds, and other outside authorities who exerted substantive influence on the global fossil fuel cartel's myriad members to continue their toxic, slow-poisoning, and pollution actions or their efforts to stop all regulation. 

You may convict the cartel, its members, and anyone you judge to be complicit or involved under any one or combination of the previously listed laws and regulations. 

You have now seen all of the evidence and have heard the testimony concerning:

a. the climate change articles from worldwide professional investigative reporters,

b. the evidence used by justice departments from cities, states, and nations worldwide showing the cartel's actions and consequences for which those governments have found the cartel was responsible. And

c. you have had the time to review the published climate research papers and analyses by respected climate change scientists on the causes of climate change and the past, current, and future consequences of the cartel-caused accelerating climate change extinction emergency.

You are now nearly ready to decide the correct verdict. 

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, we already have correctly identified the cartel perpetrator(s) of these crimes, causing the ongoing consequences of today's climate change extinction emergency. 

Your next step is to determine the cartel's level of guilt for the 40 million lives that have been lost and stolen by their toxic products and the 40 years of their criminal actions to prevent all effective regulations that would have saved those lives and so many others. You can do this by examining the cartel's global acts as the purist acts of first-degree mass murder. Their acts must be considered first-degree mass murder by this jury because their acts meet the legal criteria of first-degree murder.

The criteria for first-degree murder are:

1. The acts of the global fossil fuel cartel must be intentional. (For 40 years, they have known about the massive destruction and death their products would cause.)

2. The acts of the global fossil fuel cartel must demonstrate extensive deliberation and premeditation over the last 40 years. (Their careful, detailed, and extensive planning and continuous disinformation actions ensured their toxic products would never be effectively regulated and that the public and politicians would never know the real climate change facts, risks, or consequences.) 

3. The acts must demonstrate extreme malice and aforethought. (The cartel has acted for 40 years with full knowledge of its product's effects and yet still forwarded, expanding the use of its products to painfully and slowly kill an estimated 200 million or more people since the 1980s and about 300 million since the early 1800s.

To put the cruelty of the cartel's behavior into perspective once again, other than an immediate, global thermonuclear war, because of the cartel's past actions, from today forward, the world also now faces the greatest extinction threat it has ever faced, with three and one-half billion people projected to die. 

The high-level perpetrators of the climate change extinction emergency are not innocent businessmen, low-level white-collar criminals, or innocent small business people. They are mass murders at a scale unparalleled before in human history.

These crimes against humanity are also not accidental or mere ignorance. They are carefully planned, intentional acts of pure evil. Someday, the International Criminal Court will also hold cartel members and facilitators trials similar to the Nurenberg trials after World War II. Until then, it is up to you to render the correct verdict.

From the evidence and testimony you have heard, to serve both national and global climate change justice, you must also act to expose and determine the guilt of each company also complicit in these mass killings, including the executive-level guilt of the cartel's enablers, the cartel's fossil fuel lobbyists, cartel sponsored think tanks, PR firms, cartel media, investment banks, key stockholders, and fossil fuel compromised politicians, etc.

When determining guilt, you are obliged to also carefully discriminate and hold innocent lower-level cartel and related company employees who were not responsible or knowledgable decision-makers in perpetrating these ongoing crimes against humanity. 

You must also hold personally responsible everyone and every company who acted to prevent the earlier adoption of alternative green energy generation 40 years ago. These new green energy sources also would have prevented much of the predicted three-plus billion additional climate consequence-related deaths by 2050 (had they been widely supported and subsidized by our governments 40 years ago.)

Unfortunately, because we have only conclusively proven the cartel knew about the dangers of its products since 1980, you can only convict the cartel companies and leaders today for the estimated 200 million deaths they have caused since the 1980s. You may not consider the estimated 100 million lost lives their products have caused from 1800 to the 1980s.

I would now like to summarize what we, the prosecution, have proven:

1. beyond a shadow of a doubt in documents from the cartel's internal scientists, the highest levels of the cartel knew what climate change-related suffering, death, losses, and other horrible consequences the ongoing use of their toxic products would cause since the 1980s.

2. that for the last 40+ years, the cartel has done everything in its power to act in extreme bad faith by doing everything within its power to prevent or delay all legitimate climate change-related global fossil fuel reductions. The cartel has also done everything in its power to prevent the critical transition to green energy generation. 

The fossil fuel cartel had extensive programs to stop or reduce green energy subsidies or stop or slow laws that would have made the global transition to green energy far easier and faster. Had it not been for the global fossil fuel cartel's anti-green energy actions, the world would be decades ahead in the green energy transition, and our current climate change consequences would be far less. (See this online trial for more information.)

3. that because of the primary and secondary consequences of the ongoing cartel acts, it means that in your verdict, you may also consider the tens of millions of individuals and families who have already been forced to migrate because of climate change consequences. You may also consider the hundreds of millions more who will have to relocate in the following decades. 

4. as the consequences of climate change intensify, current climate migration predictions are that 50-70+ million "migrate or die" survival-driven migrants will attempt to enter the US and Canada. Separately, another 50-70+ million will attempt to enter the European Union and Scandinavia by about 2035. Even larger numbers of migrants will attempt to flee into Ukraine and the fertile areas of southern Russia from China, Pakistan, and other undeveloped Asian countries.

Your final verdict must also strongly consider these climate consequence-forced desperate climate migrations. Because of climate change-caused food shortages and soaring costs, most climagees (climate migrants) will come from the undeveloped countries between the 35 Parallel North and the 35th Parallel South. (The red line below shows the 35th Parallel North, and the turquoise line below shows the 35 Parallel South.)

5. there have been, are, and will be massive worldwide farmer losses worldwide as they face the nightmare of increasing crop losses as climate change intensifies.

You must, in your verdict, establish and declare the correct 1980 date of cartel liability; otherwise, cartel members will immediately begin transferring their assets out of existing cartel institutions to prevent being held financially liable for the decades of damages they have inflicted on people, businesses, and nations. 

When you establish the date for when cartel liability began as 1980, after that date, anyone suing the cartel in the future will also be able to claw back any assets the cartel tries to move to other entities secretly. Additionally, you must give this 1980 time frame additional weighting and importance in your verdict because:

1. Long before the 1980s, scientists outside of the fossil fuel cartel's employment were publishing papers on the horrific dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuel. It is reasonable for the jury to conclude that internal cartel scientists had probably searched, acquired, and were familiar with these outside scientific studies long before publishing their internal fossil fuel dangers studies.

2. After 1980, hundreds more scientific papers on climate change causes and consequences were published and widely distributed within the scientific community and the public. These papers reverified and expanded upon the extinction-evoking damages that ongoing fossil fuel burning would produce. It is highly probable that the cartel's internal scientists, senior executives, and law firms were also obtaining concurrent copies of these post-1980 climate change studies published by credible outside scientists to meet their internal due diligence requirements.

3. Despite far more conclusive and supportive scientific evidence on the harms caused by the cartel's products becoming widely available to the cartel, its executives, lawyers, and scientists, with extreme premeditation and malice, intentionally continued and even accelerated their efforts to prevent or delay any effective fossil fuel reductions and regulations worldwide from 1980 forward that would have saved millions of lives.

3. Based on the best post-1980 and current climate science, humanity will soon cross dire climate change tipping points and feedbacks. These climate tipping points and feedbacks will amplify and multiply the primary and secondary climate change consequences to such a level that about 3 1/2 billion individuals (about 1/2 of humanity) will most certainly die by about 2050.

This additional post-2023 mass extinction will occur overwhelmingly because the global fossil fuel cartel intentionally and maliciously planned and then prevented or delayed the world's nations executing the required global fossil fuel reductions over the last 40 years. This intentional and ongoing massive die-off process is the very definition of a Climate Change Global Holocaust.

4. If the cartel had NOT engaged so effectively over the last 40 years with multiple well-proven tactics to prevent or delay the needed global fossil fuel reductions and regulations, the required global fossil fuel reductions would have started 40 years ago and would have been made by now. This alone would have directly saved the lives of millions of citizens from every nation --- and eventually billions. 

You may not consider the consequences of the cartel's actions before the cartel's internal scientists told them what would happen if they kept putting fossil fuel into the atmosphere around 1980. But, you must consider, and you are obligated by law to consider, all now unavoidable future consequences of climate change from 1980 forward that have or will result directly from the cartel's toxic products and that have been verified by the many qualified climate scientists who have testified at this trial.

Do not doubt that if you, the jury, do not determine the cartel and its leaders to be guilty and subject to penalties and punishments of sufficient severity to deter these ongoing Crimes Against Humanity, the cartel will use its great wealth and its greed-driven death machine will continue unchecked. They will continue to act precisely as they have acted for the last 40 years.

Today, in your verdict, you are being called to defend the well-being of all humanity from the insane greed of a few individuals and companies. Your guilty verdict will declare that the cartel and the senior cartel executives (and those who control them) are the greatest mass murderers in human history.

Your guilty verdict will also have a powerful side effect in that it will also benefit all future litigation against the cartel for climate change damages. Once senior executives in the cartel member companies or cartel lobbying firms, public relations firms, or marketing firms realize that they personally and their firms can also be held criminally and financially liable for cartel actions and conspiracies, they quickly will begin turning into whistleblowers and witnesses. Not because they have had a real change of heart or have developed genuine empathy for the victims of their greed, but because they want to quickly trade their testimony for criminal immunity (or protection where needed,) and they want to swiftly distance their firms from the cartel's growing public relations and litigation nightmare. 

Your guilty verdict will also help the world's citizens affected by the cartel's disinformation campaigns see the cartel and its leaders for what they are --- the real target and cause of humanity's global climate change nightmare. 

Your guilty verdict will also help stop the cartel's ability to continue to blind the public and our politicians. It will loudly tell the world we will "never again" allow any group or cartel to cause the deaths of millions of people or to have the massive, unrestrained, destructive global power that we see unfolding in the many escalating consequences of climate change. 

Today, over 200 million lost lives and victims of the cartel's despicable actions are calling to you from their graves. They are demanding a long overdue and long denied climate justice for ALL cartel victims over the last four decades. 

Your guilty verdict will not only make your own life safer and help secure your children's and grandchildren's lives and future, but it will also make everyone else's life on Earth safer.

In your final process of coming to your verdict, do not forget to imagine how the world would immediately come together to stop any rogue nation secretly running global geoengineering experiments that would adversely change that nation's weather, growing seasons, crop and food viability, flood their cities, or cause unprecedented firestorms. Now imagine that this rogue nation was not a nation but a single cartel composed of numerous aligned and coordinated for-profit fossil fuel-related companies and businesses.

Today, you are being asked to look at how all of the cartel's actions have transformed our whole world radically for the worse and that many of the dire consequences of their products will last for centuries to millennia.

Your guilty verdict will resoundingly tell the cartel that causing the deaths of tens of millions of people from the toxic nature of their products and their twisted actions over the last 40 years will "never again" be tolerated or ever be considered as "doing business as usual." Your guilty verdict will stop the fossil fuel cartel's lawyers, PR people, and lobbyists from continuing their global efforts to deflect ALL climate change responsibility onto everyone else but the cartel itself.

With your guilty verdict, you also will inspire and empower many others who have been harmed so they can also begin to collect their just restitution for the cartel-caused harms they, their families, and businesses have suffered in new court actions worldwide. What you do today with a guilty verdict will be a powerful signal accelerating global climate justice worldwide. 

As the cartel is forced to pay for more and more damages worldwide, it will be forced to cut its fossil fuel production to reduce future damage liability. Furthermore, because of growing restitution payouts, it will be less able to finance the exploration and production of more fossil fuels.

The necessary increase in worldwide cartel damages litigation ultimately means less fossil fuel being produced and less toxic, slow-poisoning pollution going into our atmosphere, killing more people. Nothing will likely reduce global fossil fuel production faster than lawsuits removing all ill-gotten profit from it by forcing the cartel to pay for every global harm it has caused or is causing currently.

If you do not hold the cartel guilty and help stop its insane actions, humanity will cross the third climate change extinction-triggering tipping point within several decades. This climate catastrophe will quickly bring about the fourth stage of runaway global warming. This is the final stage of global warming, where the Earth continues its runaway global heating until our atmosphere boils off into space, just like what our scientists believe happened on Venus.

When rendering your critical verdict, never lose sight of the truth that humanity would not even be in this climate change extinction emergency nightmare if it were not for the continuous decades-long consequence-ignoring and obscene greed of those running the cartel.

Never before have so few individuals been able to save the lives of so many while at the same time protecting the future of ALL humanity. It is time for you, the jury, to put the long-delayed and long-denied climate justice of cartel victims with your correct guilty verdict.

I hope that our legal team has done a good job of helping you understand this unprecedented cartel-caused climate change extinction emergency. The climate change doomsday clock is ticking. Only you can slow and stop the coming climate change global holocaust with your guilty verdict.

And finally, When you render your verdict, do not forget what I asked you to keep in mind as you heard the evidence at the beginning of this trial. The perpetrators of climate change did not only know that they would kill hundreds of millions of people, but for decades, they also continued to do everything within their power to prevent anyone from regulating their deadly products to prevent such vast suffering and death. The cartel did this through their continuous well-financed global disinformation campaigns and coercive influence programs to compromise your politicians or anyone trying to regulate them. 

As I promised you in my opening statement, I would ask you again if the cartel actions are a perfect definition of pure human evil. It is not at a scale of death and suffering never before seen in human history? Can you now see the truth which demands severe punishment? 

Yet even the deaths of hundreds of millions, which they have already caused, are nothing compared to the billions of deaths the cartel will cause unless they are stopped. The way you, the jury, stop them is by taking all profit out of their wrongdoing by making them pay for every harm they have caused since the day their internal documents proved they knew the death and suffering their products did cause and would cause.

Before you cast your jury vote, please carefully consider the massive scale of the cartel's death machine and the millions of people harmed and killed in the past. Do not forget those billions of people who also will be harmed, suffer slowly, and die in the future because of the cumulative and synergetic climate-heating effects caused by the cartel's decades of criminal and sociopathic actions. 

The eventual total suffering, deaths, and destructiveness from ALL effects of the cartel's crimes against humanity are even greater than the total deaths and destructiveness of the last 200 years of war.

Shortly, the court will give you a form before you enter the jury deliberation room. It contains all of the charges to vote guilty or innocent. Please vote for the global fossil fuel cartel guilty of being the greatest mass murderers in history and guilty on all other charges.

What is the verdict, guilty or not guilty?

The jury comes back with its decision after one day of deliberation. The jury leader reads the verdict, and it is unanimous. The cartel is guilty of:

1. Causing the climate change emergency and continuing to this day to prevent its resolution.

2. The cartel must pay for all climate change damages and other damages that it has caused.

3. The senior executives of the cartel and its related enabling or facilitating companies are also individually guilty of mass murder, crimes against humanity, and other criminal felonies named in the Grand Jury indictment.

As the reader, you also are a jury member and can vote

Please vote using our online survey form. Click here to personally vote guilty or not guilty 

Click here now to vote guilty or not guilty.

Dragging the cartel into courts worldwide will also make them pay for every harm they have caused and will likely end the climate change extinction emergency far faster than the many unsuccessful decades of massive street protests, international conferences, and toothless international treaties.

After you have voted guilty or not guilty in the link above, there are only two remaining questions. 

1. What will you do to stop the global deaths, suffering, and financial losses this cartel has caused and will continue to cause unless YOU also do your part to help stop their actions? Click here to see the recommended actions.

2. Will you act before it is too late to save at least the other half of humanity?

The future of humanity and much of the biological world is in each of your hands.

Here is the Vote of the Job One for Humanity Climate Change Think Tank

In case you are interested in our vote. We vote as follows:

1. the global fossil fuel cartel is guilty on all accounts and for crimes against humanity.

2. the cartel must pay for all worldwide climate change damages from their income, assets, and clawbacks of assets they may try to transfer or hide.

3. All cartel executives in senior positions are to be held individually and financially responsible for paying for cartel damages.

4. All lobbyists, PR firms, investment banks, and bankers are also legally responsible for cartel climate change damages for their role in creating, promoting, or financing climate change disinformation or other activities, which prevented society and its politicians from enacting the required fossil fuel reductions starting six decades ago. (There is another new precedent for this wider zone of legal liability now. Just recently, McKinsey & Company in the US was forced to pay 78 million dollars for its role in promoting the deadly opioid epidemic in the US. They supplied disinformation to the public and others about the dangers of opioids. They were convicted of supplying deceptive marketing plans to boost the sales this dangerous product.)

5. All key decision makers in the global fossil fuel cartel and its affiliated entities and hired companies must also stand trial for their criminal acts and crimes against humanity in criminal courts around the world. If these leaders are not punished with severe criminal penalties, the world will not learn this lesson of massive corporate abuse, and victims of their actions will not get the full justice they deserve. It is time for new Nurenberg-like tribunals to bring the sociopaths who are committing such heinous acts against their fellow humans to justice.

Below are links to the three parts of the Climate Justice Now program

The Climate Justice Action Page 1: 

This page is Part 1, which is an online public trial of the perpetrators of climate change and their shocking crimes against humanity over the last 4-6 decades. It is a must-read for even hardened climate change activists and researchers because it lays out the full spectrum of serious crimes committed by the perpetrators of climate change, many of which have never been seen before.

The Climate Justice Corrective Action Page 2:

Click here for the three most critical actions needed to stop the ongoing crimes of the global fossil fuel cartel from destroying humanity and achieve climate change justice.

The Climate Change Trial Evidence Page 2a:

Click here for the master list of evidence and documentation for the global fossil fuel cartel jury trial and for ongoing litigation against the global fossil fuel cartel. We just moved this page because it is expanding quickly.

The Climate Change Law Firm Listing and Law suit Tips Page 3:

Click here for a list of law firms that may be able to help the many worldwide victims of climate change. Simply because it directly and immediately starts removing all profit from cartel wrongdoing. Eventually and hopefully soon, successful court judgments and big damage awards against the global fossil fuel cartel, related companies, senior executives, and associated enablers may prove to become more effective in ending the climate change extinction emergency than previous public protests, the previous 27 international climate conferences, and current climate educational efforts.

Please share this article everywhere!

Feel free to translate it into any language to reach as many nations and people as possible. 

Click Here to Get Free Alerts When We Receive New Anti-Cartel Evidence or Adverse Cartel Judgments or New Law Firms or Governmental Agents Who Have New Climate Change Damage Litigation Against the Global Fossil Fuel Cartel or its Members. You will Also Receive Free Climate Change Consequence Alerts and Climate Science Updates!

We also promised you the following action strategies to protect your family and business.

Emergency Preparation and Adaption Strategies for Escalating Climate Change:

Click here if you are looking for our emergency preparation and adaptation strategies for protecting your family and business from the next escalating wave of climate change consequences.

Never forget, suing the global fossil fuel cartel members for your climate damages or telling others to sue will help to save humanity from mass extinction by helping to prevent humanity's crossing the last chance atmospheric carbon 450 ppm (parts per million) tipping point. (This page thoroughly explains the last chance for humanity at the carbon 450 ppm tipping point.)

Please share your comments and opinions at the bottom of this article. After reading it, you may feel compelled to do something to help fix the ongoing climate change injustice described in detail below. You also will find "What can I do" action links at the end of the article.

The above opinion page is provided by the Job One Research and Analysis team.

When you're done reading the trial, please don't forget to vote guilty or not guilty at this link.

Last updated 2.26.24.

Let's look at the true motivations of the cartel, and then we will take a look at the cartel's death totals. At some point, the jury must ask why the cartel is committing these unconscionable Crimes Against Humanity and all biological life on Earth.

We believe the evidence we have submitted and our expert's testimony prove that the global fossil fuel cartel is using global climate change disinformation and other previously mentioned tactics because:

1. of sheer and simple greed. The 28 trillion dollar-a-year cartel is the largest for-profit conglomerate on Earth, and hundreds of trillions of dollars in income are at stake over the next few decades.

2. if the citizens of the world knew the actual climate change facts and understood that the fossil fuel cartel had deliberately deceived them for decades, putting their lives and resources at extreme risk, they would:

a. angrily demand that their politicians radically cut global fossil fuel use immediately to meet the 2025 targets and at least save some of humanity post-2050. And,

b. demand their politicians make the global fossil fuel cartel pay for ALL of the climate change consequence damages that its products and behind-the-scenes actions have caused.

It is beyond painful when you also realize the global fossil fuel cartel is entirely willing to sacrifice the assets (and lives) of billions of people and your children to satisfy their unquenchable and insane greed for more profit (more super-yachts, more palaces, even more mansions in Aspen or Davos, and more ridiculously luxurious lifestyles for key fossil fuel cartel owners, executives, controllers, and investors, etc.)

Thus far, I have referred to humanity's climate problems as the climate change emergency. For the rest of this trial, because of the climate change double dilemma and the global holocaust it will cause, I will call the climate change emergency the climate change extinction emergency. That is exactly what the actions of the cartel have created for you and your family.

Let me explain the cartel's far bigger death machine. The cartel's death machine is much worse than I told you earlier in this trial.

It is again time to consider the cartel's crimes against humanity. This time, we will examine the obscene scale of ALL the other deaths and suffering the cartel has caused and that they will continue to cause if they are not stopped. 

Earlier in this trial, we and our medical experts proved to you that at least 10 million people a year are suffering and dying annually because of toxic fossil fuel air pollution. Get ready for some additional shocking death totals.

Over the last 40 years, the period of time which this litigation covers, experts have estimated that, at the minimum, at least 200 million innocent people have died from and because of fossil fuel's known debilitating and deadly air pollution health effects. (10 million deaths a year  x 40 years - with lowering adjustments for prior lower population levels each of the 40 previous years.) 

If you add this estimated 200 million people who have died over the last 40 years to the number of additional people who have died ONLY from fossil fuel health effects since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (around 1800 until about 1980, about 180 total years), it gets much worse. Compensating for the additional lowered pre-1980 population factors, you get another conservative calculation for about an additional 100 million cartel-caused lost lives from about 1800 to 1980 from ONLY the health-related effects of burning fossil fuels.

That means that the global fossil fuel cartel has thus far stolen, destroyed, and tortured the lives of about 300 million people worldwide—an estimated 200 million since 1980 plus 100 million before 1980. 

Let's now consider the additional sheer scale of these massive personal greed-driven crimes against humanity. These 300 million deaths are more than the deaths of all the soldiers and civilians killed in all of the wars that have occurred since about 1800. 

If you thought the 10 million toxic air pollution deaths a year totals mentioned above for the cartel's death machine were shocking, prepare yourself.

The 300 million deaths are only toxic air pollution deaths. The 300 million total does not include all of the additional non-air pollution-related deaths caused by the many other adverse primary and secondary consequences of climate change, like record-breaking weather extremes causing crop failures, low crop yields, starvation, mass migration, and millions of additional annual deaths.

Remember what our experts explained earlier to you about the climate change double dilemma. These climate change experts predicted the death rates for when humanity crosses more climate change tipping points and feedbacks.

They predicted that the next wave of climate change consequences would be monstrous because of the growing cumulative and synergetic effects of the cartel's 223 total years of spewing toxic, poisonous pollution into our shared atmosphere.

When we cross the next wave of currently predicted climate tipping points and feedbacks, global fossil fuel use-related deaths from ALL cartel-caused climate change consequences will rise steadily from the current ten million-plus annual deaths in 2024 to quickly scale up toward 20-40 million deaths yearly as we approach about 2031.

Then, from 2031 to 2040, deaths will scale up to 40-70 million deaths annually. Global climate change-related deaths will eventually grow from about 40-70 million deaths per year and then eventually scale up toward several hundred million deaths per year.

From 2040 to 2050, whatever remains of the first half of humanity will also likely die. This means that the cartel's greed drive for more profit will intentionally cause a total number of deaths from 2025 to 2050 - 2060 of nearly 3 1/2 billion people.

Even if you use only the most conservative and proven death totals of 10+ million a year for the past six decades and over the next three decades, the total suffering of death will still amount to the greatest global Holocaust in humanity's history.

In the graph below, notice that the curve of carbon from fossil fuel burning increasing in the atmosphere proceeds from about 1880 to 1950 in a gradual linear progression. From 1950 to 2000 and beyond, the carbon increase in the atmosphere is a far steeper, more exponential curve. The atmospheric carbon dioxide trend line from 2000 to 2023 is even worse, steeper, and near exponential. Climate change consequences will eventually rise exponentially just as fossil fuel pollution is rising exponentially.

The loss of 300 million lives due to the past and ongoing activities of one cartel puts the fossil fuel cartel beyond any mass murderer's death toll from any war (or even multiple wars.) But when you look at the deaths of 3 1/2 billion people over the next 25 years from the same causes that killed 300 million over the previous 223 years, there is almost no way to grasp that such ongoing "death machine" horror and crime against humanity is still going unconfronted, unstopped and unpenalized!

What you are looking at in the senior executives of the global fossil fuel cartel over the last 40- 60 years are individuals who are, in essence, white-collar corporate mass murderers. They and their organizations, at the minimum, have failed to perform the most minimal of due diligence standards for knowing the harm, damage, and death their products would create. 

White-collar and corporate mass murderers who kill hundreds of millions of people slowly should be treated no differently than the war criminal mass murderers who kill millions of people quickly.

Our elders aggressively hunted down and put the war criminals from the Second World War to death after the Nuremberg trials for creating far less death, destruction, and human suffering. How can we allow those individuals or corporations who knowingly approve, facilitate, are complicit, or are intentionally ignorant of the consequences of their actions and products in the above-described ongoing crimes against humanity to not pay for their evil actions? It is unfathomable. 

I have faith that you, the jury, will change this intolerable injustice, and soon, the cartel causing these millions of deaths will be brought to justice.

The prosecution is now submitting to the court and the jury for their inspection:

a. all of the worldwide articles from professional investigative reporters on decades of the cartel's efforts to stop anyone or anything that means less sales and profits, 

b. all of the other evidence used by justice departments from cities, states, and nations worldwide that show the actions and consequences they have found the cartel was responsible for, which we have been discussing in our presentations to the jury.

c. There is now growing evidence surfacing that the global fossil fuel cartel has known about the many deadly results of its toxic products as early as 1950. See this article for a detailed discovery of the long history of fossil fuel internal warnings about the dangers of climate change.) 

The judge gives us a jury a 15-minute break because he can see the jury is visibly shaken by what they have just heard.

After the break, the prosecutor continues. We will now continue with more expert testimony with qualified climate change researchers and other professionals to refute the remaining untrue and ridiculous defense claims of immunity from their opening statement.

1. Expert climate testimony for the prosecution has clearly proven that today's climate change is not a natural Earth climate cycle. 98% of all climate scientists worldwide agree that the increased burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution is the cause of global warming and climate change.

Furthermore, when the prosecution cross-examined the defense's expert climate witnesses, it was discovered that the defense's climate experts were not climate scientists but scientists from other non-climate fields who made their living almost exclusively by being expert witnesses for the cartel. Other defense expert climate witnesses were from think tanks 100% funded by the cartel. One of the defense's climate experts was discovered to be a proponent of a widely debunked conspiracy theory and made their living selling books about this debunked theory.

Additionally, some highly respected climate scientists could not make it to testify during this trial. Therefore, for the jury, we have also included their many published climate papers and analyses on the actual cause of climate change (fossil fuel burning) and the past, current, and future consequences of our accelerating climate change extinction emergency.

2. Various business experts for the prosecution testified that knowing that your product will kill many people and harm many bio-systems and then acting to defeat or slow any actions to regulate that harm or creating disinformation about the true harm is not business as usual, nor a standard, ethical, or acceptable business practice

3. Experts from the insurance industry stated that current climate change is not a normal weather variation, an act of God, or an accident or a natural disaster. Climate change damages is not something they normally cover unless a specific policy is written just for climate change. Additionally, this expert testifies insurance companies are rapidly eliminating all older policies that could be affected by climate change consequences. (Click here for details.)

4. You have heard the prosecution's experts from numerous respected medical fields tell you about the slow, painful deaths and medical harm to infants, children, and adults caused by the toxic, slow poisoning of fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere. You have also seen the many respected worldwide medical journal studies showing how fossil fuel pollution is killing and crippling millions.

5. You have heard government agency senior executives and government experts tell you that it is nonsense to hold politicians and the government solely or primarily responsible for not regulating a product that the cartel knew to be deadly and harmful to the general population. 

The defense argument that the government is responsible for not regulating them becomes even more ridiculous in light of the prosecution evidence and expert testimony that the global fossil fuel cartel has been doing everything within its wealth and power for the last 40 years to prevent politicians and governments from creating any effective regulations with known and meaningful verification and punishment procedures.

6. The cartel's defense argument that every citizen who did not conserve energy is responsible for all climate change damages is insulting to the jury and every human being alive today. This tired "blame the victim" strategy is similar to blaming a rape victim for being raped. 

The global fossil fuel industry has raped the planet of its fossil fuel reserves nearly exclusively for the obscene profit and benefit of a few individuals who own or control the many corporate and national tentacles of the global fossil fuel cartel. The cartel has for 40 years been so successful with its international climate change disinformation campaigns that the public was unable to know and understand how much danger they were and are in from the escalating climate change emergency.

The cartel was also so successful in selling the message "We're making progress on climate change, don't worry" through its global media holdings that the public has been lulled to sleep. Then, to put the final nail in the coffin for creating false climate hope and false climate change progress illusions, the global fossil fuel cartel revved up its global media disinformation programs on how "new technologies" like carbon capture will save humanity at the last minute.

In these false hope and progress messages, the public is repeatedly and invisibly being told that "there's no reason to worry about climate change now because dire climate consequences will not happen until 2100, if ever. Just keep living your life exactly as you are now. You don't really have to conserve fossil fuels currently. Carbon capture or some other new technology will pull all of that nasty carbon out of the atmosphere at a later date."

Not knowing the real climate change danger the public is in prevents the public from feeling any sense of urgency or demand to get its politicians and governments to do something that "the public doesn't even think is a problem." The cartel's defense argues that after it has intentionally made it impossible for the public to know that the public urgently needs to radically conserve energy and demand governmental conservation regulations, the public is now somehow 100% responsible for paying for climate change damages.

Though not explicitly said, the cartel wants the very victims of its products and actions to be responsible for paying all climate change damages through increased taxes. (This increased taxation will occur as our governments pay for ever-increasing climate change damages and the world's insurance companies drop all climate-related coverages to prevent bankruptcy.)

The defense's vile argument that you or the government are responsible for their product's damages insults the jury's intelligence, judgment, and common sense, especially after the jury has itself been continuously subjected to the "perfect storm" of cartel climate change disinformation.

7. You have heard evidence and testimony from the prosecution that fossil fuel products are not causing more good than harm. You have heard:

A. testimony about the 200 million slow and painful deaths in the last 40 years attributed to toxic fossil fuel pollution.

B. extensive testimony from experts about the estimated number of people who have died since using fossil fuels in the 1800s at the start of the Industrial Revolution. At the minimum, from 1800 to 1980, the experts estimate about another 100 million people died.

C. from climate experts that if we do not make radical global fossil fuel cuts immediately, hundreds of millions and eventually billions more people will suffer and die both slow, painful deaths before 2050 due to the intensifying primary climate consequences and quicker deaths due to the secondary consequences of climate change.

D. from the experts that between 2050 and 2070, if we do not make radical global fossil fuel cuts, we also could lose almost all of the rest of humanity that survived up to 2050 in a runaway global warming scenario.

e. testimony about the massive spread of deadly cancers due to tiny micro-plastic particles from the slow degradation of fossil fuel-derived plastic products. These micro-plastic particles have entered every biological system and region on Earth, including the Arctic and Antarctica, and they are constantly being ingested by all humans and animals alike.

Some researchers are already predicting that the rise of these micro-plastics in our environment and food chain will be the next gigantic global problem arising from fossil fuel use that also lasts hundreds to thousands of years, killing over time, potentially even more people than fossil fuel products kill through their health and climate change consequences.

f. No theoretical or actual good from fossil fuel products or that the global fossil fuel cartel is doing today (or has done) could outweigh the killing of hundreds of millions of people and soon-to-be billions of people. Maybe at one point many, many decades ago, the defense could argue that the global fossil fuel cartel was doing as much good as it was doing harm, but those days are many, many decades behind us and closer to the turn of the 20th century.

g. Probably no argument of the defense has raised is as boldly dishonest as their claim that the fossil fuel cartel did not know about the harm in death its products caused until recently. The prosecution has presented numerous former employees as witnesses whom cartel legal departments ordered to destroy all documents, memos, reports, etc., showing that the fossil fuel cartel knew anything about its products caused harm or death. The prosecution has also presented numerous internal cartel documents that were not destroyed that prove the cartel knew how harmful its products were as early as 1980.

The prosecution has produced witnesses from cartel public relations firms, advertising firms, and insurance companies where the harms and deaths caused by their products were freely and openly discussed concerning how the various firms would handle those negative PR and promotional issues. The defense's claim that the cartel and its senior executives did not know about the dangers of their products is not credible because it also means that their senior executives and their in-house lawyers failed to do the most basic and standard due diligence practices.

These "we didn't know" cartel defense claims to avoid all liability strain the very possibility of any reasonable truth behind them and are but just another part of the ongoing global disinformation campaigns of this evil cartel now being perpetrated by their defense attorneys.

And finally, there is now also growing evidence surfacing that the global fossil fuel cartel has known about the many deadly results of its toxic products as early as 1950. See this article for a detailed discovery of the very long history of warnings about the dangers of climate change."

Click here for the last page of the trial of the fossil fuel cartel: The prosecution presents its closing statement for the global fossil fuel cartel.

For the first page of the online cartel trial, click here.

When you're done reading the trial, don't forget to vote guilty or not guilty at this link.

Click Here Now if You Are Ready to Vote if the Global Fossil fuel Cartel is Guilty of Causing Climate change and Financially Responsible for all Climate change Loss and Damage.

Last updated 3.7.24.

Humanity has and will experience many dire consequences because of escalating climate change. Rather than going one by one over about 70 different consequences, it is crucial to your verdict to cover only the three worst climate change consequences that have directly resulted from the cartel's 40 years of intentional, nefarious actions.

(In the prosecution's evidence submission here, the jury can read about all 70+ significant climate change consequences.)

Worst Consequence One 

The Climate Change Double Dilemma is the worst and most deadly climate consequence to date. It has two parts.

This is Dilemma One of the climate change double dilemma

1. Because we have lost 40 years due to the fossil fuel cartel's dark disinformation tactics (listed above) and their ongoing efforts to prevent the world's governments from gradually beginning to reduce global fossil fuel use 40 years ago, humanity now faces the highly likely, near-certain extinction of about half of its population by 2050. Yes, you heard me correctly. 

This will occur in part, but not exclusively because of what is known as Garrett's Climate Change Dilemma.

Professor Garrett, in his paper, provided the very complex climate change math and physics to conclusively demonstrate that because humanity had not previously made the correct gradually sequenced required global fossil fuel reductions beginning in 1980 when it still had a chance to save itself before the time he did his study in 2012 --- if humanity now tried to "make up for those lost and squandered four decades" with today's correct and adjusted global fossil fuel reductions, the immediate and steep drop in global fossil fuel use required would of itself, kill off about half of humanity by about 2050 or sooner.

2. The deaths of half of humanity would occur not so much because of increasing climate change consequences by themselves but because the correctly adjusted new fossil fuel reductions were so radical and sudden that global agribusiness could only be allocated enough fuels, fertilizer, and final food crop distribution energy to provide food for about half of humanity.

3. Although Professor Garrett did not discuss it, the first climate change dilemma is even worse. This is because half of humanity will still die by about 2050, even if our politicians do nothing to immediately begin radically cutting global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets.

This second part of the double "dammed if we do and dammed if we don't" die-off dilemma is caused by the next wave of climate change-driven extreme global weather and other climate consequences.

By 2025-2031, the severity, frequency, and scale of climate change-driven extreme weather events will increase dramatically and will be far beyond where it is today!

These now unavoidable climate change-driven extreme weather events are defined, in part, as heatwaves, heat domes, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, floods, flooding, sea level rise, rain bombs, wind storms [Derechos], dust storms, wildfire smoke events, unseasonable cold spells, and other abnormal, unseasonal, or record-breaking weather related to rapidly accelerating climate change.

This devastating next wave of extreme weather events will ALSO of itself dramatically lower global food production and cause widespread crop failures. This dramatic drop in food production will cause soaring food prices, mass starvation, and mass migrations from the areas hardest hit.

These unstoppable "migrate or die of starvation" mass migrations of hundreds of millions to billions of individuals will cause ever more intensifying global conflicts. The total accumulation of all of the primary and secondary climate consequences in this worsening chain of climate change consequences will most certainly result in the deaths of about half of humanity by 2050. 

The unavoidable next wave of climate change-intensified extreme weather will be triggered primarily by crossing more and larger climate change tipping points and climate feedbacks. These are already "baked into" the existing momentum of the overall climate system and are, unfortunately, now unavoidable. 

It is the cumulative and synergetic effects of both the past and the additional soon-to-be crossed climate change tipping points and feedbacks that will accelerate the primary and secondary climate change consequences so intensely that it will result in the deaths of about half of humanity.

The prosecution calls one of its climate change experts to explain the following documents and climate issues to the jury.

(Click here to read a short, more detailed summary article of the basic ideas behind Garrett's Climate Change Dilemma, which also links to Garrett's original research paper.)

(Click here for a detailed explanation of tipping points and climate change tipping points.)

(Click here to see the step-by-step processes for how this mass extinction will occur and decide if this is not a reasonable, well-grounded prediction.) 

(If you still believe that humanity will likely wake up in time to fix this nightmare by itself, click here and see the 28 challenges it must overcome to act in time to prevent half of humanity from dying.)

This coming nightmare of mass extinction was wholly unnecessary and was entirely avoidable if the global fossil fuel cartel had not intentionally planned and executed its 40 years of behind-the-scenes criminal actions designed solely to prevent or delay the required extinction-preventing global fossil fuel regulations and reductions.

4. Carefully unwinding the climate change double dilemma means that because of the lost 40 years of gradual fuel reductions because of cartel dirty deeds, if our politicians do or do not make the radical global fossil fuel cuts that are now required by 2025, half of humankind will still perish either way by about 2050 or sooner.

Please note that Professor Garret also published a new paper in 2020 with similar arguments, but his 2020 paper does not imply there is no hope for any form of mitigation. 

"What seems to be required is a peculiar dance between reducing the production efficiency of civilization while simultaneously innovating new technologies that move us away from combustion." Garrett's paper

In Garret's newest 2020 paper, to be effective, mitigation has had to be a radical economic transformation away from energy use and consumption for expansion, luxuries, and vanities to consumption-focused near-exclusively on global metabolic necessities. This revolutionary movement away from energy use and consumption for expansion, luxuries, and vanities is what Garrett means by "reducing production efficiency."

His good news is that if we made radical and immediate global mass consumption reductions and simultaneously innovate new technologies that keep moving us away from fossil fuel energy combustion, humanity still has a survival chance. 

Unfortunately, capitalistic societies hate this "we need to immediately and radically reduce mass consumption for expansion, (growth) luxuries, and vanities message" so much they will give it no place in official government communications or the media, even if it means the eventual death and destruction of those same capitalistic systems. 

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) blindly (or intentionally) also ignores Garret's 2012 and 2020 papers and recommendations. The IPCC proposes or assumes the following climate change solution utter nonsense:

a. All IPCC climate solution scenarios assume continued economic growth at today's standard unlimited consumption.

b. The IPCC's long-term mitigation survival calculations have always assumed that a massive and successful CO2 removal technology will save humanity at some point about 2050, despite no proven system existing to do such things. 

c. IPCC science and climate policy assumes mitigation will not ever get "near zero" emissions for all long-lived GHGs (IPCC AR5) and, for several reasons, cannot prevent the collapse of the biosphere, world agriculture, civilization, and the human population. 

If you thought the first Garett's climate change dilemma was horrible, the second climate change dilemma of this double dilemma is much worse! 

Worst Consequence Two

This is Dilemma Two of the climate change double dilemma

1. If our politicians do or do not make the radical global fossil fuel cuts required by about 2025, half of humanity will still die by about 2050. (As mentioned previously, this is caused by either Garrett's Climate Change Dilemma or because so many catastrophic climate change consequences and crossed climate tipping points and feedbacks are already "baked" into the momentum of the climate system and that is, unfortunately, now unavoidable.)

If that sounded horrible, wait until you hear dilemma two...

2. But, if our politicians do not make the required radical global fossil fuel cuts by 2025, much of the remaining post-2050 surviving other 50% of humanity will also perish. This additional post-2050 die-off, beyond the unavoidable pre-2050 50% die-off, is also "baked in" because many more and more severe additional primary and secondary climate change-related consequences and other new crossed climate tipping points and feedbacks will also still occur and become unavoidable.

This also means that if our politicians do not act and get humanity close to the 2025 required global fossil fuel reductions, humanity may be lucky to have 5%-30% of its current population level alive after 2060-2070. 

This second climate change dilemma demands that today's politicians make the horrendous decision to knowingly sacrifice about half of humanity now to save as much as possible of the other half of humanity after 2050.

But will our global politicians make the tough decisions to enact the required 2025 global fossil fuel reductions to save at least as much of post-2050 humanity as possible? The research team at Job One doubts it. Politicians know that with such an unpopular and hated decision, their time in office would be over quickly.

Do you begin to see how deeply humanity is trapped in this cartel-created, continuously reinforced climate change double dilemma?

A climate change global holocaust is coming unless...

This nightmare of extinction-level destruction is unfolding because the global fossil fuel cartel was and IS so dominantly effective in preventing or compromising our politicians and governments (and their citizens) from acting on the science-verified climate change extinction threat for the last 40+ years. 

What the multiple consequences of the Climate Change Double Dilemma create is nothing less than an unavoidable Climate Change Global Holocaust where 1/2 of humanity will be dead by 2050. And, if we do not act on the radical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, most of the post-2050 survivors will also die by 2060-2070.

In this trial, I am using the words global holocaust with the complete and deepest respect for the massive importance of the Jewish Holocaust, the deep pain it evokes, and its historical context to Jews worldwide.

I have intentionally used the words climate change global holocaust because:

1. What is happening with the global climate change extinction emergency squarely meets the first standard dictionary definition of the word holocaust, "death and destruction on a massive scale."

2. It is also the correct word for the unprecedented scale of climate change-related mass death already happening, and that will happen to much or most of humanity and the biological life of Earth. 

3. The phrase "Never Again" also means and includes the idea of no more holocausts ever occurring for anyone, not just Jews, much less most of humanity and biological life. 

4. We need to prevent the next global holocaust by using accurate language that speaks to the true seriousness of the threat to the existence of ALL life that we now face.

If the eventual mass global deaths of 1/2 or more of humanity due to the intentional, continuous actions of a few evil individuals does not constitute a new and original form and level of a global holocaust, what does? 

We understand how difficult it may be to accept the new climate change reality of half of humanity or more dying off by 2050 to 2070. Consequently, we have called another one of our climate change experts to explain this and answer any questions. We have also provided the following links to see the science and analysis behind this horrible climate reality.

Click here for how the four climate change extinction-accelerating tipping points and feedbacks will push us toward the unavoidable deaths of about 1/2 of humanity by about 2050.

Click here for how the four extinction-accelerating climate change tipping points and feedbacks will, through a series of unfolding, sequenced primary and secondary climate change consequences, interact with and amplify humanity's other 11 major global crises to the point of near-total extinction, but only if we do not wake up and act in time to prevent this chain of events from proceeding.

Click here to see why it is highly improbable that all of humanity will go extinct if we do just a few small things before it is too late. This link explains in great detail what will happen if we do not wake up in time to the climate change extinction emergency in which we are already deeply embedded and the surprising natural and human forces that will finally save at least a tiny fraction of humanity.)  

Click here for a deep dive into the numerous dangers of crossing tipping points and more information on the most critical climate change tipping points. 

(The defense's jury consultant goes over to the lead attorneys for the defense after the prosecution's climate change experts have finished. She tells them she is very concerned that the jury is being lost.

The prosecution's experts are making complex ideas from the climate change emergency simple, and they are answering the jury's questions in plain language. I see the jury having many ah-ha moments as these experts talk. It now appears that the jury truly understands and believes what the prosecution says is going to happen if they don't stop the global fossil fuel cartel.)

Click Here Now if You Are Ready to Vote if the Global Fossil fuel Cartel is Guilty of Causing Climate change and Financially Responsible for all Climate change Loss and Damage.

Worst Consequence Three

The world's population still does not know how bad the next wave of climate change consequences will get or when they will occur.

Humanity is woefully unprepared for what is coming! 

The world is grossly unprepared for the massive climate catastrophes and the coming chaos.

This second worst outcome also occurs because the world's population has been cartel-fed decades of climate change disinformation. The facts, consequences, timetables, and solutions they have been fed by the cartel are routinely underestimated by about 30-60% for the last 40 years. 

This continual 40-year cartel deception means that most global citizens, businesses, and nations are entirely unprepared for surviving and adapting to the now unavoidable coming climate change catastrophes. The world's population falsely believes that big climate change catastrophes won't occur for many decades near 2100. 

These intentionally manufactured cartel illusions have put humanity in a deadly corner. Humanity has so little time left to prepare itself and execute critical adaptations before climate change consequences dramatically increase in severity, frequency, and scale as humanity crosses major climate tipping points starting about 2025 and accelerating through to 2031. 

At a time when most people, businesses, and nations do not believe there is a climate change emergency for which they must prepare, ironically, the world must prepare and build extensive climate change resilience and adaptability into their homes, businesses, and nations. The deaths of millions of people who will die because they do not believe they have to prepare and adapt is also squarely on the shoulders of the cartel.

Worse yet, the required climate change resilience-building is not likely to happen any time soon. Our worldwide global climate change denial is a perfect and fatal recipe for endless, ever-larger global climate change catastrophes with unprepared people.

"Denial is what you add to pain to make it last longer and hurt more." Errol Strieder

For the jury's benefit, here is a refresher illustration of only a few of the soon-to-be-crossed climate change tipping points and feedbacks. Earlier, one of our climate change experts covered each item listed below.

Worst Consequence 4

The currently rising and future global climate change damage costs will be insane!

The very conservative World Economic Forum has estimated the global cost of climate change damage to be between $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion per year by 2050. This includes the cost of damage to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health. This cost is expected to increase over time as the impacts of climate change become more severe. (Please note that the World Economic Forum uses the IPCC summary reports as the base of its calculations and predictions, which are known to be underestimated by 30-60%.)

Various other organizations have estimated that the total global economic costs of the Climate Change Double Dilemma due only to the work productivity losses, mass migrations, and the physical damages caused by the many climate change consequences will exceed 300+ trillion dollars by about 2050. But, that doesn't include any financial restitution for the loss of millions then billions of lives.

Because worldwide insurance and reinsurance companies are aggressively engaged in dropping all medium to high-risk climate-related coverages, these climate change damage costs will continue to be imposed upon you and your local, state, and national governments. With your guilty verdict, these costs will be paid by the cartel.

At this time, the prosecution submitted the following illustration for the jury to visualize what is coming for all of humanity because of the global fossil fuel cartel's decades of criminal actions.

(The illustration is read from the bottom up. Fossil fuel burning causes global warming at the bottom of the illustration, which then causes all of the other problems as you go up level by level in the illustration. As each lower worsens, it worsens the consequences of the next higher level until humanity is facing widespread human system collapses and chaos.)

The prosecution continues. If we do not stop it now, it is not an overstatement to say that the rapidly escalating costs of climate change consequences globally will eventually bring down the global economy and many of the world governments.

Next, the prosecution calls its experts on finance and climate change costs to the witness stand to address and verify the issues and statements raised by the prosecution attorneys above. The prosecution attorneys and the expert witness also supply more evidence exhibits for the jury to review relating to the financial arguments and claims made thus far by the prosecution.

Next, the prosecution's experts then explain the various cost estimate reports mentioned and found below.

A quick overview of the total climate change costs until 2070 is discussed here.

An early summary of the cost of climate change by the Stern Report is found here.

The prosecution also reminds the jury of the previously submitted evidence the master list of primary and secondary climate change consequences describing the problems and damages the cartel is causing worldwide.

Click here for the next page of this online trial: The prosecution presents the despicable motivation of the global fossil fuel cartel for creating the climate change emergency.

For the first page of the online cartel trial, click here.

Click Here Now if You Are Ready to Vote if the Global Fossil fuel Cartel is Guilty of Causing Climate change and Financially Responsible for all Climate change Loss and Damage.