"I think you're being unbelievably unrealistic or naive."I think...

"I think you're being unbelievably unrealistic or naive."

I think my position is the opposite. I'm not naive. I don't believe the promises of the energy transition will be fulfilled soon enough to stave off the worst effects of the climate disaster. And it's going to get a lot lot worse. The raw climate science untainted by politics and economics supports this view. It's not certain, and I hope to be proved wrong. But science is about probabilities.

The alternative is to phase out fossil fuels before the energy transition reaches all those milestones. I'm realistic about the prospects of that happening. Very low. There is no social licence for it to happen, it means a kind of austerity which people won't accept yet. It remains to be seen what level of climate change will alter that view. For me it happened in 2023. A crazy year - temperature records, intense wildfires, sea ice disappearing. I wasn't a doomist last year.

I've been reading about the work of environmental sociologist William Catton recently. He concluded that the overuse of resources is a kind of biological imperative for humans, and we actually don't have any choice about causing an ecosystem collapse at this stage, the trajectory has been set and we can't turn around the mindset and behaviour of basically the whole human race. That doesn't mean mitigation shouldn't happen, it can still be meaningful, especially when the same measures are also useful for adaptation. Adaptation is now where it's at for me.