To avoid climate change catastrophe, civilization must collapse—Dr. Tim Garrett—Radio Ecoshock 2010

University of Utah Associate Prof. Tim Garrett says carbon burned = civilized wealth. We must either construct a nuclear reactor a day, or experience harsh economic collapse, to have a habitable climate. The growth economy and climate doom are inextricably linked.

Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. This is two interviews from 2010: February 5, and November 19. Episode details at

Transcript of the 2nd interview:

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SHOW EXCERPT
University of Utah Physics Professor Dr. Tim Garrett explains why fossil-based wealth leads to both hyper-inflation and a ruined climate. All from a published, peer-reviewed paper in Journal “Climatic Change”. According to our energy and wealth equation, only a sudden economic collapse could save us from 5 degrees Celsius global temperature rise (or more) by 2100. And we’ll get over 100% inflation along the way. One of the most important interviews of the year.“

His paper is titled “Are there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?”

The basic thesis, tested against past industrial development, is that neither population nor standard of living have to be included in modelling prediction of climate change. Garrett concludes that civilization, as measured by gross domestic product, is directly related to the amount of carbon burned. More emissions, more wealth. Fewer emissions, less economic production.

By applying his formula, Garrett says it would take a new nuclear plant built every single day to keep up our current standard of living. As that isn’t happening, and may be impossible, the only other solution is economic collapse. In our interview, Garrett suggests a horrible economic crash, which I imagine as diving perhaps to Medieval standards of life, is required just to reach 450 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

In the conclusion of that paper we find:

“Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter.

Because the current state of the system, by nature, is tied to its unchangeable past, it looks unlikely that there will
be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates. For predictions over the longer term, however, what is required is thermodynamically based models for how rates of carbonization and energy efficiency evolve. To this end, these rates are almost certainly constrained by the size and availability of environmental resource reservoirs.“

Garrett published a second paper in the journal “Climatic Change”. During our interview, he suggests one of my questions stimulated the new work. Namely, what would it take to keep emissions to the relatively safe 450 part per million CO2 level? The title of the second paper is: “No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change”.

The new paper not only suggests that isn’t going to happen, not with all the good will dreams and schemes in the world. It goes further. Using Hurricane Katrina as an example, Tim explains why the on-going pounding of our civilization by a disturbed climate will lead to horrible inflation. How does climate change lead to inflation? I asked, he answered.

Alex: Can you explain your formula for energy and wealth?

Tim: It started as a simple query as to where economic value comes from. Coming from a physics background, and being totally naive in economics, I thought "well maybe it has something to do with the rate of energy consumption by civilization.

In other words, perhaps the wealth of civilization has a direct link to how much energy we can consume. That seemed a reasonable assumption, because in order for us to do anything, which is perhaps a measure of our wealth, we need to consume energy.

That's a basic law of the physical universe. It's through energy transformations that anything happens.

I tried to look at this using available data. It turned out this relationship is constant, with about 10 miliwatts required to support every inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar of economic value.

That was the core result of my first paper. From there I wanted to see what this implied for global warming,

Alex: If we grow the economy, we'll put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But could we reach safe levels if the economy crashes?

Tim: I showed that if the GDP declines with time, which is normally what we would think of as a Depression, this would not in fact correspond to lower carbon dioxide emissions. For carbon dioxide emissions to go down, what would be required is effectively a complete collapse of the economy.

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