On the way to nowhere
10 Years After the Paris Agreement, we need to adjust our understanding of ambition, and of efficient value-creation, to prevent further climate breakdown, for the sake of all.
We must choose between the road to nowhere and a living Earth.
We are blessed beyond description to live on this planet. All of the collisions and creative destruction of cosmic history have led to the miraculous state of a world that is fit for not only life itself, but for advanced, intelligent life.
For us to come along and have a chance at our complicated 21st century lives, billions of years of history had to play out in just the right way, to allow an uninterrupted chain of evolution, allowing chemical cellular life to evolve into complex organisms capable of thought, inquiry, culture, agriculture, science, and engineering. We do not often enough start conversations about our best possible future or the next steps we should take with this background, but it should drive our thinking.
Right now, we are facing a crisis of our own making. In the 19th century, it was understood that carbon compounds trap heat and could have a “greenhouse effect” in an enclosed space. Emitting too much heat-trapping gas into Earth’s atmosphere would alter the atmosphere and cause it to trap more heat. for more than 50 years, we have understood with great precision how much is too much and have watched the planet heat up, as we cross threshold after threshold of excess pollution.
We must, as a species, as nations, and as communities, come to grips with the horror of the senseless cost and damage being generated by global heating pollution. Below, a run-through from the Active Value Trust Ratings report on pollution subsidies.
The International Monetary Fund has found that global subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $7 trillion, equivalent to 7.1% of all economic activity, in the year 2022. Subsidies have continued growing, even as all countries are making commitments to reduce climate pollution.
The costs of this massive investment are widespread pollution of air and water, disruption of Earth’s climate system, which further disrupts watersheds, ecosystems, and the habitability of both rural and urban areas. The $7 trillion figure does count some of the underpricing of real-world costs, which result in public expenditures, but it does not count all of the costs of climate destabilization, or embedded costs of unsustainable practices, including use of fossil fuels, throughout our food systems.
For reference:
The 2022 Global Turning Point report found unchecked climate disruption would cost $178 trillion by 2070.
The Food System Economics Commission has tracked $147.78 trillion spent on the costs of unsustainable food systems, since April 2016—about $40 billion per day. (Only the US and China have national economies larger than that.)
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission found in 2020 that unchecked climate change would destabilize the financial system and undermine its ability to support the everyday economy.
In 2021, the Financial Stability Oversight Council issued a similar finding, warning “Climate change is an emerging threat to the financial stability of the United States.”
In just four months, between September 2024 and January 2025, the U.S. experienced two extreme weather events fueled by global heating that are projected to cost more than $250 billion each (Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles fires), over the coming years and decades, as aftermath and rebuilding play out.
The total cost of 403 disasters in the U.S. costing $1 billion or more since 1980 is reported to be $2.945 trillion. 17% of that cost over 45 years has been generated in the last 12 months.
Meanwhile, disaster costs in 2025 have already hit record levels. Record costs are putting pressure on insurers, who are raising prices or eliminating coverage altogether, across whole regions. As the Climate Value Exchange reported in October:
everyday activities are able to happen only because businesses, institutions, and individuals, are able to buy insurance of one kind or another. Without that, underlying costs and risks would already make it impossible to afford many things we take for granted. As the pressure on insurers intensifies, the risk of everyday systems coming apart grows.
The current state of energy systems has us, collectively, on the way to nowhere—toward a world in which Nature is depleted, biodiversity collapsing, vital ecosystems and watersheds catastrophically disrupted, and everyday human experience unthinkably more difficult than today.
The 2023 State of the Climate report found that:
By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals — approximately one-third to one-half of the global population — might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change…
Uncomforable as it is to think about this, we must. What does a world look like where billions of people cannot survive where they are?
Assessing the ethical and practical implications of climate disruption:
No nation has ever dealt with mass migration on that scale—even if we break down the total number into shares of refugee resettlement proportional to population. For instance, if the number is on the low end (3.3 billion) and the population reaches 10 billion by that time, that is a rate of 33%.
For the United States, with a population of roughly 343 million: A 33% share would amount to around 114 million people that would need to be absorbed; If we consider the U.S. has 4% of the world’s population, that could mean 132 million new arrivals; Using greenhouse gas emissions, where the U.S. is responsible for 12.6% of the global total, would equate to a refugee inflow of 415.8 million—far more than the total population of the country.
All of these are clearly unmanageable numbers, so the only sensible course of action is fast-moving, widespread decarbonization, starting immediately.
Now, there is talk about intentionally polluting the stratosphere “to block out the Sun”, in hopes of reversing or slowing global heating. And it is more than just talk. Venture capitalists are backing start-ups that intend to do this, even while there is a global prohibition on such activities.
It is clear that the same reckless strategy, whereby investors seek to profit from pollution, without taking responsibility for the harmful effects of their activities, will drive decisions about this idea. No one proposing to alter our planet’s atmosphere in this way is proposing to pay for all of the costs and ramifications of the disruptions they will cause to Nature and to human security and experience. The economic and financial logic of polluting industries is to require society and Nature to foot the bill, however devastating that cost might be.
Even if carbon removal and cooling are needed, it is infinitely more sensible to pursue restoration of carbon-rich ecosystems and healthy watersheds, to build the needed cooling effect from those stabilizing planetary systems that make a stable climate possible in the first place. The European Union’s announcement this week that member states have agreed to reduce global heating emissions by 90% below 1990 levels by 2040 is a signal that economy-wide transformation is feasible.
We must ask where we are heading, what kind of world we want to be our legacy, whether we think it is rational, or just, to create conditions in which billions of people must fight against prohibitive conditions just to keep existing day to day. We are blessed beyond description to live on this planet; we must prioritize—in all areas—investments that honor that foundational value, as the foundation for all other value creation.
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