It can feel tempting to refer to “climate debt,” since we’ve dug our present hole over time, the payback has come due, and it will keep coming due for decades. But debt isn’t quite the right analogy for climate change.
That’s because monetary debt can be written off. Inflated away. Forgiven in a jubilee. Through a myriad financial accounting tricks, debt can be made manageable or erased—even if, on the surface, it appears unmanageable. Debt (at least when it’s large enough and embroils enough important counterparties) is best thought of as a financial construct rather than tangible reality. There are ways around it.
Climate change is different. We can’t inflate it away. We can’t negotiate with the planet like we can with bankers. We can’t write it off and carry on as if nothing happened, unless we accept that the planet will write us off in response.
Instead, a realistic path forward is twofold:
Accept that we have gotten ourselves into a truly difficult position; and
Mitigate damage to the best of our collective ability.
When crisis isn’t negotiable
One reason why acceptance feels so hard is that most things in our modern world are negotiable. There are exit doors and escape hatches if we can only figure out the right tricks, the magic words, get to know the right people. Climate change isn’t like that.
Another reason is that our culture and media often reinforce belief in miraculous intervention and last-second saves. The 2002 movie The Two Towers is one of countless examples: at Helm’s Deep when the battle is all but lost, Gandalf appears at dawn deus ex machina to save the righteous warriors.
You might think we can invent new technology that might save us, letting us metaphorically refinance our climate debt and pay lower penalties than we otherwise would. But this isn’t the right analogy, either. Refinancing, in traditional terms, means extending the life of a loan1 and immediately gaining a presumably lower interest rate for that lifespan.
On the other hand, if we invent new technology in the future to counter climate change, it will ideally reduce the number of years we spend dealing with harsh impacts—but the benefits will probably still take years or decades to manifest in meaningful ways. We should hope for and work toward technological breakthroughs, but they’re not some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.
And there’s no guarantee they will happen at all. Depending on a “Eureka!” moment is foolhardy. Breakthroughs can and do occur, but not on predictable schedules or with predictable impacts. So, telling people, “Don’t worry, new technology will save us,” at this point is either ignorant (increasingly less likely) or nefarious.
Just about the only financial analogy that makes some sense is this: what we’ve done with climate change is akin to what low-income homebuyers did in the mid-2000s: take on a mortgage with a low teaser rate that jumps much higher after a few years. Disaster is clearly on the horizon, yet we shrug if it’s not happening to us right this second. That approach didn’t end well for home buyers, and it won’t end well for humans as a species on this planet, either. But it will be even tougher, because bailouts can’t be engineered on bank ledgers this time.
So, what now?
For starters, deferring net zero to 2050 may be a pipe dream, even though that’s seen as an ambitious goal. Before 2050 arrives, if we continue on our present course, there will be fewer societies, economies, and lives to save. A 2020 assessment of the famous—and controversial—1972 Limits to Growth predictions showed that they’re tracking fairly closely to current data. Even with abundant resources, a business-as-usual model predicts overshoot and collapse in the not-too-distant future.
Instead, we have to move earlier, stronger, harder, our hand forced by the planet’s non-negotiable math. Our models said warming like 2022’s wouldn’t happen for another twenty-eight years in the UK? Well, it happened. How we react is up to us.
Tweaking the models won’t tweak the underlying planet. The tricks of financialization will not work, and our objective situation—what’s happening all around us—doesn’t care what models say. Nature takes its course.
Like a driver’s-side mirror: tipping points may be closer than they appear?
Yep. Complex feedbacks can interact to accelerate phenomena like glacial melting and sea level rise once they get rolling. And this snowball effect has not been fully accounted for or explored. In covering the September 2022 study on how close we are to various climate tipping points, The Guardian reporter Damian Carrington wrote, “Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others, producing cascades. But this is still being studied and was not included, meaning the analysis may present the minimum danger.”
If this new study represents the minimum danger, we are in even deeper trouble than we thought. And unlike during the Great Recession, financial maneuvers cannot re-order the natural universe. There is no climate jubilee coming. There is only acceptance and mitigation, and our willingness to walk that path in service to the world and each other.
-<>-<>-<>-
Extra, Extra!
Tangential extras for curious readers:
1. Greece’s Islands Are Zero-Waste Laboratories - by Sebastien Malo in Reasons to be Cheerful - a little optimism, which is still possible in tough situations.
2. The Club of Rome - the original organization that commissioned the Limits to Growth study in 1972, still going strong.
3. MISDOOM 2022 (Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media) - virtual conference hosted by Boise State University - open and free to register as an attendee.
What actually happens is that you get a new loan, but if you replace a 30-year loan that you’ve been paying off with a new 30-year loan, in practice you’ll have had a loan for longer in total.
Hello Stephanie --
I enjoyed reading this and liked your juxtaposition to debt was nice. I noted a like on one of my random posts ("Mass Extinction") and decided to take a look at your corner of Substack. My reading patterns are eclectic and it's fun to see a different angle. I have an upcoming post titled "Risky Business" that perhaps you might enjoy. I write in advance and schedule. Despite being retired, my roots in my old work has tentacles. I will look at a few more but as a first dip this was good.