Tyndall Center Director Anderson: Rapid Emissions Reduction Hard: 4-6C Far, Far Worse

[NoOneMan]

28. That is civilization's driving goal

To grow infinitely, with no bounds or road map in sight. Nothing has ever been pre-defined as "enough". Production cannot end without collapsing civilization and its economic system.

On a very basic scale, for every few joules of work you do, you are issued a note of debt. In order to redeem this note of debt, an equal reciprocal amount of work must be done to honor it somewhere in the world (or you would have fewer products to buy, leading to inflation).

Hence, up until this point in civilization, all previously work must be matched with an equal amount of work done at sometime in the future. As we have more energy and technology, we can match previous work fast and faster. So at that future point, we then must match all previous work plus that reciprocal work again (resulting in 4X the work done to honor it all). This ingrained system demands perpetual exponential growth forever or it will lead to a collapse.

There can be no end, no satisfaction, no roadmap because very basically, the mathematic fundamentals of our economy do not allow us to say: "alright, we are done producing and advancing. Take all your money and go home."