We can't throw away our shot
I know the action in the street is excitin'
But Jesus, between all the bleedin' 'n fightin'
I've been readin' 'n writin'
We need to handle our financial situation
Are we a nation of states? What's the state of our nation?
I'm past patiently waitin'. I'm passionately
Smashin' every expectation
Every action's an act of creation!I am not throwing away my shot!1
Source: "My Shot". From "Hamilton: An American Musical". Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Click on the title to hear the song)
How did Alexander Hamilton save the United States from “throwing away its shot”?
History books tells us that in 1787 the new nation needed to replace its governing framework after its first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, almost led to ruin. Over the next eight years, Hamilton led the way, co-authoring U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers, and then, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, elaborating and then putting into place its economic and financial systems.2
Dry words! What this really meant was charting a new course for the brand-new ship of state, to avert the many icebergs in its path. At each stage, he came up with durable novel rules for dealing with each difficulty, explained clearly the rationale for his innovative approach, and won approval from the country.
Source: Buyenlarge. Getty Images.
For each crisis, Hamilton analyzed how the existing system was failing, and showed clearly how existing and possible new elements could be structured to work together to produce success. He invoked history, marshaled data, and developed new models. These guided his countrymen to pursue their individual projects within commonly agreed frameworks, which harmonized personal freedom and the general good.
Where are the Hamiltons for our crises? Who is explaining our climate predicament in ways that ordinary people can understand—and organize around? Isn’t that the job of educators?
An illuminating analysis
Most established educational institutions seem asleep at the switch. However, it’s surprising how much can be done with even a few minutes of video presentation, as shown by German design firm, Kurzgesagt3. In this posting I will simply follow their video, “Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it's Complicated.”4, which has attracted over six million views on YouTube since September, 2020, and I’ll note the practical and educational implications that flow from its analysis. (Click on the title to see the video on YouTube.)
Kurzgesagt explains that our carbon emissions problem can be expressed as a product of four factors and their relations with each other: population size, economic growth, energy intensity, and emissions per energy unit.
Source: This graphic, and all successive ones, are from the video, “Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it's Complicated.”
Do we want to fight global heating? We can each address whichever factor on the Kurzgesagt list suits us best, based on our interests, capabilities, prior commitments, etc.
The first is population size. People need food, home and clothing. And they demand luxury goods from iPhones to $1 cheeseburgers… More people [means] higher CO2 emissions. ..The global population…will level off at about 11 billion in 2100… So the global population will keep growing for the foreseeable future and global CO2 emissions will rise as an inevitable consequence. The only way to slow down this growth is investment in health care, and access to contraception and education in developing countries.
As population size contributes to climate change, reducing the former will also reduce the latter. This suggests that one way to fight global warming is by contributing to non-governmental organizations (NGOs”) like Doctors Without Borders, or other NGOs backing women’s rights to education and contraception in Africa or Latin America.
#2 is economic growth, or getting richer The richer and more developed we are, the more emissions our lifestyle produces… Growth has become the dominant mantra of the worlds’ economies. For billions of people, the end of growth would probably mean staying poor, so developing countries are not willing to stop growing their economies….More countries and their citizens around the world will continue to grow and become richer while the rich economies will continue to grow their wealth…As a consequence…CO2 emissions will rise. There are some signs that growth can be decoupled from CO2 emissions, but we’re not close to that yet…
Clearly, rising income per person also contributes to global warming, and to ask anyone to forego additional income or spending seems a fools’ errand. This is almost certainly right about the global poor, but a case can be made that this would be a good time for the global rich to examine our lifestyles and consider ways to increase the quality of our lives at the same time as we reduce the carbon emissions associated with our increasing wealth. For example, by replacing our gas-powered car by an electric vehicle, or our oil-powered heating by a geothermal unit.
#3 is energy intensity, how efficiently we produce energy. The more efficient something is, the less energy we use in making it… This could mean everything from reducing power consumption with AI, the electrification of the transportation and industrial sectors or sustainable concrete production.
Here too, the Kurzgesagt analysis points us to practical ways to improve our lives at the same time as we promote lower-carbon-emitting ways of doing things. One of these is the “electrification of everything”.5 Wind and solar cell technologies have driven the cost of power generation per kilowatt-hour so low that devices powered by electricity produced by these technologies will soon be clearly more efficient, and cheaper than fossil-fuel-based alternatives. Those of us who can afford it should avoid committing long-term to new gas heaters, lawnmowers and the like, and this too, is something people should know—especially young people.
But sometimes greater efficiency does not automatically make humans use less of a resource but more of it, or of another high-carbon-emitting resource. For example, lower car gas prices may lead a driver to drive her car much more frequently than before, or to use the savings to jet off to an island vacation for a week.
“Thus, in the end you might emit more CO2 despite getting a more efficient car.” These are called direct or indirect rebound effects. “In the end, efficiency alone won’t create a zero-carbon world.” Which brings us to the last of Kurzgesagt’s factors.
#4, CO2 emissions per energy unit used….For example, coal plants release much more CO2 than solar power per unit of energy…The more fossil fuels we burn, the higher our CO2 output. Fossil fuels are the greatest lever humanity has right now.
Could we then eliminate our global heating problem by shutting down all coal and oil plants overnight? No, not without throwing humanity into chaos! We so overwhelmingly depend on these fuels that another name for the global heating challenge is the “energy transition”: Our need to transition from fossil fuels to renewables.6 Kurzgesagt’s analysis continues:
But the reality is that we’re not doing nearly enough to keep fossil fuels in the ground and use lower-carbon alternatives. We need to do two things to speed the transition away from fossil fuels.
First we need to use the real leverage we have today with today’s technologies. There are a lot of things we can do extremely quickly.
We can leave nuclear power plants online longer.
We can cut subsidies to the fossil-fuel industries and flow them into renewables.
We can price carbon emissions harshly, and increase the price each year to provide strong incentives for the world’s industries to transition.
We can enforce strict standards for energy efficiency and for any type of new construction.
We can phase out fossil fuel vehicles.
Clearly, with this step in the analysis, we receive a rich set of prescriptions to consider. Actions that could taken as soon as possible, applying technologies available today. All are controversial, which does not mean we should not do them, but rather, that we should begin serious debates to explore thoroughly their pluses and minuses as soon as possible. This an agenda for much consideration, at the educational level, and much action, at the practical level.
Next we also need to invent better and new technologies. Without new technologies and innovation it will be impossible to achieve a zero-CO2 emission world, be it from technologies like carbon capture or a new generation of nuclear power plants, to new batteries that revolutionize the energy storage from renewables.
This step too, introduces a rich agenda, for scientists, technologists, businessmen and government policymakers. But their actions would need to take place within a favorable political climate, which provides supportive taxation, regulatory and financing policies. So here too we see a need for educational initiatives, to inform the citizens of today and tomorrow.
But innovation takes time years, and decades. And we don’t have this time. Every year we keep adding more carbon into the atmosphere This means we can’t keep relying on innovation alone. We need to find ways to reduce emissions today while we invent what we will need in the future.
The less fossil fuels we burn over the next few years, the more time we give innovation to catch up.
The more low-carbon energy infrastructure we build today, the more we can compensate for economic growth and the people born today.
The more coal-powered plants in construction we stop from being finished the more CO2 we save.
Neither innovation or the alternatives we are using today alone can solve rapid climate change.But Innovation together with a decisive move away from fossil fuels where it is possible today could do it.
Kurzgesagt’s analysis ends soberly but with some hope:
Solving climate change will be complicated. We have to account for the needs of billions of people and the reality that right now society runs mostly on fossil fuels. This will not change overnight but it needs to change as quickly as possible.
And it’s still very much possible.
Analyze, debate…act!
Too often, our educational discussions about extreme climate change remain stuck on the obsolete issue of whether human-induced global heating is real. There are real debates to be had about climate change, and it’s time to move to those. Kurzgesagt does a brilliant job of providing a simple, actionable analysis of the social and economic forces interacting to generate carbon emissions, and how each can be addressed to take us to a zero-carbon world.
Like Hamilton, Kurzgesagt’s video analyzes how the existing system is failing, and shows clearly how existing and possible new elements could be structured to work together to produce success. It invokes history, marshals data, and develops new models for how to organize our economies. It offers us ways to reconceive how to pursue our individual projects within a new commonly agreed framework which harmonizes personal freedom and the general good.
Not everyone agreed with Hamilton’s analyses or with his prescriptions. Famously, Jefferson disagreed vehemently.7 Likewise, we do not have to agree 100% with Kurzgesagt to recognize the value of its analysis as a way to focus us on genuinely pressing issues, central to how we respond to the climate crisis.
It’s past time that those among us who call ourselves leaders and educators explain how climate change interacts with the other main issues in our world, and with the different policies offered in response. Kurzgesagt gets us part of the way there. Let’s recap what we can learn from its prescriptions:
Increasing population growth will drive higher carbon emissions. But there are ways to reduce population growth rates, and educators should be teaching about these.
Growing incomes will drive higher carbon emissions. But higher quality of life does not necessarily require higher emissions and educators should encourage discussions about this.
Energy intensity increases carbon emissions. We should increase energy efficiencies like the “electrification of everything”, but watch out for rebound effects.
The main ways to reduce carbon emissions are to use existing technologies to ramp down carbon emissions wherever possible now, and to encourage the invention of new zero-carbon technologies. Educators should advance the discussion of controversial proposals about how to achieve this.
Hamilton did not throw away his shot: “Readin' 'n writin'“, he guided his country through a maze of multiple threats. The world needs many more leaders like him and Kurzgesagt, to guide us through our own maze of climate confusions.
And then we need to act.
"My Shot". From "Hamilton: An American Musical", the soundtrack.
France’s foremost statesman of the early 19th century, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, called Alexander Hamilton “the greatest man of our epoch”—even in comparison with Napoleon and Washington. “Alexander Hamilton, legacy”. Wikipedia. Consulted on November 8, 2021.
German, for “in short”.
“Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it's Complicated.” Kurzgesagt. YouTube. September 20, 2020. Video.
Here’s how that could work in Australia: “Electrify everything and go renewable. Turns out it’s much cheaper than thought” By Giles Parkinson. Renew Economy. 4 October 2021
“The Energy Challenge: the Transition to a New Energy Model” By Ignacio Mártil de la Plaza. Open Mind, BBVA. 12 April 12, 2021.
“How the Rivalry Between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton Changed History” By John Ferling via Time on February 15, 2016.