Around 250 years ago in a small Derbyshire village called Cromford, a tooth puller and barber, called Richard Arkwright, decided it was time for a career change. It was in his transition into the budding cotton industry that the canny businessmen had an idea. He’d noticed the limitations of the hand-spun yarn spinning devices in use at the time and decided to make some fixes.
His new and improved mechanized spinning machine would be powered by flowing water. This meant that instead of getting his labour force to produce yarn by hand, he’d move production next to a River Derwent, so the flowing water wheel could keep his yarn spinning.
There was no need to let sleep or slack workers get in the way of manufacturing anymore. Overlapping 13-hour shifts for the teams of women (and children as young as 7) who worked there allowed him to keep an eye on staff who would usually be working in their own homes, increasing productivity. Production boomed; profits soared.
People, the aristocratic corporate type who *probably* wore silly hats, were justifiably jealous of Richard’s awesome new idea and wanted to get their own teams of poor to set to work. But with only so much river to go around human creativity had to do its thing. The idea developed into coal-burning steam-powered factories, which spread rapidly around Europe, and then the world, unleashing over the next 80 years, the industrial revolution.
For the majority of the world quality of life has increased dramatically since the 1770’s, but whilst it would be hard not to acknowledge the positive impact the revolution had, its consequences are proving quite sinister.
The air on our planet had a concentration of carbon dioxide (Co2) of about 280ppm (parts per million), in Richard Arkwright’s time, and it had only risen from 260ppm in the previous 7000 years. The air you breathe now, by contrast, has a concentration of Co2 of about 414ppm.
Never in human history has the concentration of Co2 been so high.
If you look at that table, there’s no nice way to dress it up; we have fucked it a bit. All that extra Co2 has caused the planet to start heating up at a rapid rate. So much so that the average temperature of the Earth's land has risen by 1.2 °C over the past 250 years. Which doesn’t seem like all that much to worry about, does it?
Well, unfortunately, the keyword is average. Statistics, especially averages, can be misleading. If you were to look midway between the North Pole and Norway, for example, you’d see the islands of Svalbard, where the global average doesn’t mean all that much. They’ve experienced a 4°C increase in their average temperatures over just 50 years, and for an area covered 60% with glacial ice, that spells trouble.
The average means little for people in far too many countries to count. And for those of you in the UK that might think we’re getting off lightly, I can tell you now that we are. Even the 38 highest-ever-recorded temperatures we’ve just seen this summer, while still pretty alarming, are nothing compared to the extreme weather seen recently in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where extreme flooding has affected over 30 million people, or Somalia, where droughts have forced over a million people to leave their homes.
The sad truth about the climate crisis is that the poorest people on the planet, in areas like south and east Asia, Central Africa, and the Pacific islands are living with the worst of the consequences of global heating. This is unfair, considering a study by Oxfam found that ‘around 50% of emissions can be attributed to the richest 10% of people around the world, who have average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population, and 60 times as high as the poorest 10%.’
It’s only luck that separates us from them.
It all sounds a bit dark and gloomy, I know. And before I started reading about the climate crisis I was worried the only way to fix the planet would be mass collective suicide. You know, get in there before some force of nature does, or something. Liberate planet earth of the Cancer that is Humanity. I remember feeling felt quite dark about it at times, and I avoided learning about it just in case it really scared me stiff. But that’s only because my assumptions were so bleak and ill-informed.
You might be pleased to hear, though, that I won’t be martyring myself for the planet any time soon. And you won’t have to, either, because the more I begin to understand the situation, the more optimistic I get.
If this sounds counter-intuitive, that’s because it kind of is— looking at the statistics isn’t fun, what’s being done currently isn’t enough and the threat of humanity not pulling it out of the bag is very real. But what I’ve realised is that the real issue isn’t with you and me, and it’s a case of cruel optimism to believe that it is.
Sure, we could; be a little more conscious about where we shopped, switch to electric cars, stop supporting fast fashion brands, stop using single-use plastic, conserve energy by turning lights off, lift-share, cut down on meat consumption, and we could even stop flying, these would all be noble endeavors and would certainly limit your contribution to planetary destruction, but it will all be in vain until corporations are pressured by governments to stop pillaging the planet’s resources for profit.
Taking on a huge personal responsibility for the climate seems quite silly when just 90 companies have been responsible for a full two-thirds of bad greenhouse gases that we’ve emitted since Richard Arkwright set the industrial wheels in motion all those years ago. You get no prizes for guessing that all of that nasty-ninety are oil, gas, coal, or cement companies.
Focusing just on oil companies gives you the best picture of how insane these planet-fucking companies are. Think about the last place you filled up your car. Esso? BP? Shell? You gave money to a company that will have historically spent millions of dollars on misinformation campaigns to convince people to doubt the science and attempt to shift the blame.
The idea of blaming you, the consumer, for giving money to these companies seems ludicrous. As it currently stands, being green is too expensive for normal citizens. And this is precisely because oil companies have been playing the role of the villain in this story for so long.
For example, in 2004 it was BP, not environmentalists, who introduced the ‘carbon footprint’ into public consciousness with a clever advertising campaign that basically asked ‘have you thought about how much YOU harm the planet’. If you were wondering, yes, this is the same BP that spilled 210,000,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
But these PR stunts are nothing compared to the $200 million spent each year on lobbying with policymakers with the intention of slowing down or canceling out climate-positive policies.
Lobbying is a lot like corruption and it looks like this…
And then, when you consider that companies like Exxon Mobile (ESSO in the UK) conducted their own research on climate change— that confirmed that the burning of fossil fuels has dangerous implications for the planet— way back in 1976, it’s baffling to see that they are still, 50 years on, spending $40million+ on lobbying each year.
So, whilst it might feel nice and noble to be a recycling junkie, eat your vegetables, and turn off lights everywhere you go, it’s doing very little to solve the problem. The idea that you have to be a pure and virtuous climate activist, is just a tactic deployed by deniers to invalidate the arguments of environmentalists, and further delay the onset of climate action.
The problem is a political one, and that’s why I feel quite optimistic. Because instead of killing ourselves to spare the planet of our carbon footprint, we can just vote for people who care about the planet. Seeing the rise of collective action taking place across the globe has given me a sense of optimism that doesn’t seem so cruel.
I could well be gaslighting myself by being optimistic, I know that. But I have spoken recently with Mark Maslin, a professor of Earth Systems Science at UCL, he said he feels far more optimistic now than he did 10 years ago— and considering he’s been studying this stuff since the 90s, I think he knows what he’s talking about.
You can listen to my chat with Mark Maslin on Apple or Spotify, if you want to hear some of the need-to-know facts about the climate crisis, climate deniers, the human impact on the planet, and some potential routes out of this mess.
Or if you want to read your way to understanding these 2 books should help; How To Save Our Planet: The Facts, By Mark Maslin, or Saving The Planet Without The Bullshit, by Assaad Razzouk. I’ve read quite a few books on the climate crisis now, and those two are the easiest to follow along with and offer the most important information on a broad array of subtopics (there are a lot of subtopics).
Love you, bye.
Ed
p.s. The book club is launching in October. More details will come out soon. You’ll need to be a paid subscriber before the end of this month to get involved. Looking forward to chatting about books with you xx