I am afraid there are no “solutions” to the problems revolving around energy use and climate change. We are in the “consequence” phase of the industrial revolution and it’s payback time for the world’s climate system, which is very liable to shake humanity off the world’s back like a dog shakes off water.

Somebody, somewhere, has run the supercomputer models plugging in the numbers representing the burning the remainder of the world’s fossil fuels, which will be burned, make no mistake, and fairly quickly, too. It’s most unfortunate but most likely true that the results of that particular computer run are hardly worth publishing at all, and so they won’t be, most likely.

We can get a handle on that issue by asking what would be the present value for the prevention of some future human extinction. Under our current economic system, with its minute planning horizon, that PV has already been discounted to zero, which means that nothing will be done in our time to prevent any future disaster. It’s nothing personal, you understand, it’s just business.

Val