In the media and in activist circles, Climate Change is generally presented as a problem with one cause—carbon emissions—and one solution: a “green energy transition.” But this narrative is far too narrow, and unless we expand our collective perspective and responses, the already grievous consequences will worsen.

 

Many well-meaning people, some of whom dedicate much of their time and energy to the Climate Change cause, take part in disseminating this misleading narrative but I’m not throwing shade on them at all. The narrative is so dominant it’s basically exclusive, and most people are unaware of anything else. My goal here is to broaden the discourse—and the action we are taking—by pointing out what I see as the big blind spots: a) it’s not just carbon and b) a “green” energy transition is not the only response. A third blind spot that relates to both is that “green” energy is freighted with its own environmental impacts, some of which—it must be emphasized—are novel.

 

Blind Spot #1: It’s not just carbon

Carbon emissions are certainly significant. I’m not calling that into doubt. The greenhouse effect was first scientifically described in 1856 by Eunice Newton Foote. (Of course a man coming to the same conclusion later was given the credit, <eye roll>.) In the decades since then, we’ve only learned more.

However, carbon emissions are only part of the story. The “other leg” is land use.In the literature, you’ll see various terms “land disturbance,” “land cover changes,” “land conversion” and “land alteration.”

Just as describing the full picture of carbon emissions is beyond the scope of essay, so is this subject, but I will sketch out the broad strokes here.

The term, “other leg,” is a nod to atmospheric scientist Millan Millan, of Spain, who described “a ‘two-legged’ view of climate, with a leg for atmospheric carbon and the greenhouse effect, and a leg for land disturbance and hydrologic effects (water cycles.)” Here I’m quoting Rob Lewis, who wrote a three-part series Substack about Millan’s important work, which can be found here, here and here. Rob’s series is so good I don’t mind if you go there now and forget to return to my words. 🙂

A more detailed definition is offered by Mahmood, et al., in their 2013 Journal of Climatology paper, “Land cover changes and their biogeophysical effects on climate”:

Land cover changes (LCCs) play an important role in the climate system. Research over recent decades highlights the impacts of these changes on atmospheric temperature, humidity, cloud cover, circulation, and precipitation. These impacts range from the local- and regional-scale to sub-continental and global-scale. It has been found that the impacts of regional-scale LCC in one area may also be manifested in other parts of the world as a climatic teleconnection. In light of these findings, this article provides an overview and synthesis of some of the most notable types of LCC and their impacts on climate. These LCC types include agriculture, deforestation and afforestation, desertification, and urbanization.

That is, not only does climate affect agriculture, forests, deserts, cities, etc., as is commonly discussed, but the converse is also true: agriculture, forests, deserts and cities affect the climate as well. Human alterations of the planet’s surface, especially major conversions like cutting down trees or draining wetlands or plowing under grasslands for farms, influence the atmosphere and water cycles both locally and at a wider scale. Considering the fact that as little as 3% of the earth’s ecosystems have not been disturbed by human activity, this is a really big deal.

Millan was inspired to study these relationships because the reliable afternoon summer rains of his childhood in Spain had become erratic and he wanted to know why. Quoting Rob again:

“Land-use perturbations (mining, industrial and urban expansion, deforestation, paving) that accumulated over historical time and greatly accelerated in the last 30 years” had rendered the land incapable of supporting the region’s climate, he determined. The storms were vanishing because the life on the land was vanishing, with far reaching implications for our understanding of the human causes of climate change and what we should do about it. [my emphasis]

Millan died in January 2024, but he was not the only researcher pursuing these topics before or since. Also on Substack is Anastassia Makarieva, who runs “Biotic Regulation and Biotic Pump.” She also has a YouTube channel. She focuses on the relationship between ecosystems and water cycles, and hence climate. She writes:

In relation to the land’s water regime, biotic regulation takes the form of the biotic pump of atmospheric moisture. The biotic pump is a mechanism that operates in regions where forests are present… The biotic pump ensures a controlled inflow of atmospheric moisture onto land… Biotic regulation of moisture inflow occurs in various forms. During atmospheric moisture transport by cyclones, the intensity of the cyclone—meaning the strength of the upward air movement and precipitation—depends on the local concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn depends on transpiration from vegetation. Therefore, by maintaining optimal atmospheric moisture levels, forests can regulate precipitation, triggering rain at the right time, in the right place, and in the quantity needed. Forests also shape specific soil properties, ensuring proper infiltration of moisture and regulating the turnover time of modern groundwater.

She often emphasizes on the vital role played by forests, and the necessity of protecting what remains. As someone who speaks for the trees, I greatly appreciate it. Reading her articles requires attention because her topics can be technical, but I highly recommend giving it a try. One of her more accessible pieces is “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It.” (Spoiler: we must safeguard all intact forests and restore degraded ones.)

Though the work of both Millan and Makarieva is novel, it is not ground-breaking in the sense that they owe much to earlier researchers, something they both acknowledge. The study of how ecology affects weather and climate is not a new field, just an under-rated one.

Another relevant Substack is the “Climate Water Project” by Alpha Lo, who explains:

We hear a lot of how the carbon cycle impacts the climate, but the water cycle is just as important, if not more important in affecting the climate. How we use our land, what grows on it, how much our soils retain water, how much water the vegetation is transpiring into the air – these things all affect the amount of water of water vapor in the air, which in turn affects rain patterns, droughts, and floods. The evaporation of water from vegetation also cools the land, transferring heat from ground level up into the clouds. Water acts as a regulator of heat on our planet, and as such plays a role in whether our planet cools or heats up.

Furthermore, it’s possible that human alteration of the environment led to climatic changes even before the Industrial Age and the use of fossil fuels. See “Did land-use and land-cover change affect Holocene climate?” After all, as French philosopher François-René de Chateaubriand said, “Forests precede civilizations, and deserts follow them.” What has changed is the scale. For millennia, humans could just move on after imposing this transformation on a region, but now there’s nowhere else to go. (No. we can’t terraform Mars.)

Like I said, the “other leg” is a big subject, and there’s lots to get into. But unfortunately, it’s not currently getting the attention it deserves. Which raises the question:

Why don’t we hear much about “the other leg”?

My personal take: Because the techno-industrial system can adapt itself—or say it’s adapting itself—to taking carbon emissions into account without fundamentally changing business-as-usual. This is true whether the economic system is monopoly-capitalist (the US), social-democratic capitalist (some European countries), socialist (a scattering of countries around the world) or communist (China), all of which are forging ahead with their own “green” energy initiatives to some extent or another. Hence carbon credits and “green”/“clean” energy, which don’t threaten the status quo.

Not so with land use. Implementing the significant changes necessary to make a difference (reducing the footprint of agriculture, ceasing deforestation, restoring vegetation at mass scale, massive de-paving projects, etc.) would greatly reduce opportunities for “growth” in the capitalist countries and “development” in the socialist and Communist ones.

This is no small matter. Business-as-usual techno-industrialism is responsible for a multitude of other environmental issues besides Climate Change:

• habitat destruction (by far the leading cause of biological diversity loss), the majority of it driven by land use changes
• air, soil and water pollution (agricultural pesticides and nitrogen run-off, heavy metals, mine tailings, particulates from combustion, smog, oil spills, radioactive materials, microplastics, noise and light pollution and more) and the related topic of waste disposal (including e-waste)
• endangered species
• aquifer depletion and other freshwater loss
• topsoil depletion
• over-fishing

I remember when these issues were the mainstays of environmental advocacy. Over time, however, Climate Change has come to dominate environmental discourse in both media and activism even though all of these problems have continued to worsen. What’s ironic is that the one proposed solution—“green” or “clean” energy—will itself directly contribute to worsening some of them. Hence my use of quotation marks around “green” and “clean.”

Blind Spot #2: Renewable energy isn’t “green” or “clean”

Another big subject, worthy of multiple essays. Check out my “green” energy category and you can learn how Desert Tortoises are endangered by solar farms, Native American first foods and sacred sites are threatened by lithium mining, Amazonian national parks have been violated for balsa wood for windmill blades, and copper mining is a total shit show for the environment.

All techno-industrial activity negatively impacts living things and the natural world. “Green” energy is no exception. Serious environmental harm is caused by:

• the mining and processing of the raw materials
  Examples: lithium for batteries (for EVs and for storage); silicon, aluminum and silver for solar panels (sometimes gallium, boron and phosphorus); fiber glass, balsa wood and resin for windmill blades; steel and iron for the turbines; copper for transmission lines.
• the manufacturing of the components
  Factories are typically high energy consumers and polluters in their own right, utilizing solvents and other toxic ingredients. There’s not a “clean” way to manufacture “clean” energy components.
• the siting, construction and maintenance of the infrastructure
  Habitat destruction. Taking the example of a solar farm, the land is scraped of all vegetation and graded for construction. Countless animals and insects are killed or made homeless at that stage. After the panels are installed, the vegetation is mowed or sprayed with pesticides to keep it down. The promotional photos you see of wildflowers or grazing sheep are the exception, not the rule.

• the disposal of waste and eventual retirement of the infrastructure
  Windmill blades are notoriously difficult to recycle because they are made of composites that can’t be easily separated into their constituent parts. Lithium batteries contain reusable materials that it’s possible to recover, but due to expense and logistics, the practice is not widespread. Most solar panels are currently land-filled because of high costs and technical difficulties. With all these, yeah “they’re working on it” but so far progress is slow.

This list just skims the surface of the subject. Any one of these bullets could be expanded into several essays. None of it can be dismissed as trivial. Yet almost none of this is ever mentioned.

Personally, the part that upsets me the most is the habitat destruction. So much of the planet has already been marred by careless or malicious human activity. So I get really pissed off when—as is the case with solar farms in the Mojave Desert, or lithium mining in the Great Basin—an ecosystem that had managed to survive until this late date in history relatively intact is now under the gun. It’s infuriating that so many people who call themselves environmentalist are in favor of destroying ecosystems like these “because Climate Change.” Fuck that. We’ve gotta do something else. Which brings us to…

Blind Spot #3: A “green” energy transition is not the only response

Now for the fallacy that a “green” or “clean” energy transition is the only solution, or even the preferable one. What is another response to Climate Change, one that is virtually never mentioned?

An energy reduction transition.

Collectively, we are using far, far too much of everything: land, water, metals and minerals, lumber, living creatures, and more. We must decrease our use of all of it. It’s way past time to power down, and not just find another way to keep the machine running full speed ahead.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at cars as both an example and a metaphor.

 

We can all agree that we have far, far too many cars with internal combustion engines on the roads.

 

The “green” energy transition narrative focuses on replacing this fleet with EVs.

An energy reduction transition instead pushes for far, far fewer cars altogether.

Which is a good idea anyway because cars are profoundly problematic as a mode of transportation for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with how they’re powered.

I discuss this topics in-depth in my article: “Emissions Are SO Not the Only Problem with Cars.” In it, I quote from Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment, by Patrick Miner et al., which was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Transport Geography in February 2024:

Since their invention, cars and the system of automobility have killed an estimated 60–80 million people, injured at least 2 billion, created or exacerbated social inequities, and damaged ecosystems in every global region. Governments, corporations, and individuals continue to encourage automobility (e.g. through road expansion and electric vehicle subsidies) despite its status as the leading cause of death of children, a major contributor to climate change and pollution, and a system that forces the economically poor to pay for the convenience of the wealthy. The current status quo prioritises the movement and storage of cars above the safety, health, dignity, and well-being of people and the environment. It took just a few decades for nearly every city on Earth to be remade from a pedestrian-centric place to an automobile-centric place. Perhaps in a few more decades, interventions such as those listed above will have once again remade cities—this time into safer, healthier, and more just environments.

In other words, automobile-centrism is a form of tyranny. Sprawl forces people to drive whether they want to or not, and requires a substantial financial outlay, including legally-mandated insurance. Post WWII suburbs are atomizing by their very form, resulting in personal alienation and loss of community (and upending labor organizing). Cars are marketed as giving us freedom, but when we have only one choice—drive or starve—they are stealing our liberty. Swap out every conventional car for an EV and none of this changes.

 

How do we transform our society from an automobile-centric one to a pedestrian-centric one?

 

Urbanists are glad you asked because they’ve been working on that question for literally decades. Again, this is a big subject, but to summarize very briefly, they talk about:

• pleasant, reliable, low cost public transportation
• pleasant and safe pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure
• radically redesigning car dependent suburbs by rezoning from housing-only to multi-use, and renovating their stroads into streets with trams or dedicated busways
• eliminating minimum parking requirements (doesn’t sound like much, I know, but this one is huge; click on link for great video from Climate Town)
• replacing parking lots with real parks, new buildings or urban farms
• transforming urban freeways into new neighborhoods or even waterways

When implemented, the result of these changes will be lifestyles that are more pleasant, safe, equitable and affordable, in addition to using far, far less energy and causing much, much less environmental harm, including carbon emissions.

So, taking the example of cars as a metaphor, we can consider the subject of how to reduce our overall energy use.

We can all agree that we burning far too many fossil fuels.

The “green” energy transition narrative focuses on replacing as much fossil fuel as possible with renewables.

An energy reduction transition approach, by contrast, instead pushes for far, far less energy use altogether.

Which is a good idea anyway because techno-industrial society isprofoundly problematic as a mode of living for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with how it’s powered.

Back to Anastassia Makarieva. In her essay, “Who Will Lead the Global Ecocentrism Movement?” she contrasts

technocentrists—those who believe that all problems of civilization can be solved within the framework of technological progress, which has historically disregarded natural ecosystems—from the ecocentrists, who have realized that the complexity of living nature far exceeds that of modern civilization, and that further development of civilization, including scientific and technological progress, along the path of biospheric destruction is impossible. [her emphasis]

Like automobile-centrism, technocentrism is a form of tyranny. Its ubiquity forces people to participate in it whether they want to or not, and requires a substantial investment of their labor, time and energy. Its artificiality results in personal alienation and loss of community, not just from other humans but from the more-than-human world. Tech is marketed as “progress” but in practice it’s degeneration, socially and ecologically. Swap out fossil fuels for renewables and none of this changes.

How do we transform our society from a technocentric one to a ecocentric one?

The very many people have been working on this idea for a very long time are glad you asked. But this subject is much bigger than the shift from automobile-centric to pedestrian-centric cities, and I can’t attempt to summarize all the proposals here in even the briefest way.

That being said, personally I propose: Let’s start with the goal of no new energy infrastructure whatsoever from any source, make do with what we have now, and shut down infrastructure from there as we eliminate frivolous use. This is an attainable goal. What are examples of frivolous use? Here’s a few candidates: AI, next day shipping, cheap plastic shit from China, cut flowers imported from South America on airplanes, perishable food shipped halfway around the world, commercial air travel, weed-free mown lawns, streaming movies and music, fast fashion, video game consoles, big screen TVs, f’ing single-use coffee pods, and the list goes on and on and on.

Be assured that many lifeways, traditions and philosophies both historical and contemporaneous have prioritized the eco over the techno, so it’s not at all beyond our collective ability as a species to envision or implement. Indeed, I believe the techno to eco transition is the inevitable outcome for humanity, sooner or later, one way or another, even if it’s only for a small number of survivors in a global post-collapse scenario. It’s also conceivable that we manage to pull ourselves back from the brink before such a cataclysm. Another world is possible. No one knows what will happen, and I advise you to be wary of those who insist they do. Personally I’m in favor of bringing this whole thing down for a soft landing, consciously and carefully, rather than crashing it. That’s why I write about this stuff.

Regarding Climate Change discourse, my goal is to help widen the Overton window to include the concept of an energy reduction transition. Why? Because of my love for the more-than-human world and my desire to protect it from new forms of techno-industrial exploitation. I don’t want to see the McDermitt Caldera sacrificed to lithium mining, or the Desert Tortoise of the Mojave Desert to solar farms, or the sacred landscape of Oak Flat to copper mining. There is no “balance” between such permanent, irrevocable losses and “green” energy. Our choice really is between one or the other.

I’ll end with these words from Justin McAffee, from his recent anti-data center essay, “What We Burn to Speak to Machines”:

There comes a moment in every civilization when it must confront the question it has been running from: What are the limits? Not the limits of technology but the limits of the planet. Not the limits of imagination but the limits of extraction, of water, of soil, of energy, of communities that refuse to disappear quietly.
We are living in that moment now.