The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - COP 28 and the Smoke Under the Door | Frankly #50

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

In this week's Frankly, we join Nate in a fascinating thought experiment imagining participants in this week's COP 28 in Dubai are liberated from the usual social sorting mechanisms which constrain real, forthright, challenging conversation around solving our most dire issues.  What questions might participants ask at COP28 if there were no fear of losing social status and how might this liberation change the conversation around global heating?   As social primates, there is a stainless steel ceiling on how much we can say in large groups of other humans -especially high status ones.  Like the famous "smoke under the door" experiment of the 1970s, as the events of our world get more complex and more threatening, our first reality filter is observing the response of contemporaries. If they are unconcerned, we too tend to be.  Unlike the one-room controlled college experiment, we now live in a smoke filled world, and the stakes couldn't be higher. If you were sitting in Dubai at the convening of COP 28, what question would you ask given the state of the world right now?? For Show Notes and to learn more: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/50-cop-28-and-the-smoke-under-the-door To Watch on YouTube 

Greetings. It is December 6th, halfway around the world in the United Arab Emirates, is COP28, which is the 36th international meeting about climate change in the last 44 years. If there were a benevolent, pro-social alien observer landed on Earth, and he looked at when these meetings were, and he looked at the same, CO2 in the atmosphere, he could plausibly conclude that it was these meetings themselves that were causing emissions to rise. What's going on? We are social primates.

We're also predators. And we can only state things that are socially acceptable to the higher status people around us for risk of losing our jobs, our reputation. the social influence that we have. There was a famous study called a smoke under the door that 75% of people would notice if there was smoke coming from under the door for good reason because dying in a fire is terrible. However, if they were with two Confederates and the other two people

looked at the smoke and were unconcerned, 90% of the smoke, 90% of humans would not report that there was smoke coming from under the door. We are that conscious and aware of social conformity. The problem with these climate meetings is that we can't say our truths under a structure where the highest status silverback gorilla male or female has a different view and the narrative is different. So in effect, we, as a species, are using social sorting mechanisms to solve physical world problems.

What if, what if there was some technology that was able to allow all these high status humans in Dubai, ask the questions that they really wanted to ask without any recourse to their status or reputation? It was a total anonymous technology. That's going to be the thought experiment of this, frankly. Okay, so we're in Dubai. We've conferred to the delegates that please submit your questions, pass them down the aisle. We know that your names are not on them and no one is going to know who wrote these things.

Let's see what people really. really have to say, caring about climate, sitting in the audience here in the United Arab Emirates. I've come up with 20 questions to contribute to this thought experiment. Okay, first, let's get right to it. Can we all first agree that we have failed in these 36 meetings to limit global carbon emissions? and can we discuss why that is before we go any further? Here's another question. Does anyone else feel like they're at Burning Man?

What is the difference actually? Okay. Oh, here's a long one. The world currently uses 19 terawatts of power continuously. Due to our focus on climate, we're now adding one gigawatt of solar PV capacity per day. Yay! However, to reach 19 terawatts at this pace would take 270 years, even if we could ramp up our current rate by a factor of 10 to 10 gigawatts per day, it would still take 27 years, which is also the expected lifetime of the solar equipment. So we would have to do this continuously forever for replacement.

Said differently, our current one gigawatt a day rate of solar PV expansion manages to do this continuously forever for replacement. of solar PV expansion manages to get 1.9 terawatt average power installed in 27 years, so we could support 10% of our current energy demand at the current breakneck rate of installation. Even were this possible, it would perpetuate a tailspin in materials and ecological consequences. Not going to. When can we state this aloud and start realistic plans? reasonable question. Number four, are we here to solve the climate situation or have these meetings evolved to maintain our social power and bootstrap our preferred cultural strategies? Here's another question. Our climate strategies are fossil fuels bad, renewables, energy, good.

But since our most impressive agreement at the Paris Accord in 2015, we've grown renewable energy faster than we imagined, but we've also grown coal capacity by over 200 gigawatts globally. Can we have an honest conversation on why this is happening? Brian. We didn't need to have our names on this, Brian. Next question. What is our exit strategy? Is that for the delegates? Is that for the concept of UN convening of parties? Is that for earthlings? I'm not clear. Next question.

Why can't we just talk straight about demand and consumption levels as a variable? It is implied and woven into analytically sound bites, but it is taboo to say it. A reasonable question. Oh, boy, here's another long one. Some of the world's most honored ecologists and scientists have suggested that climate change is a symptom of a deeper problem, specifically overshoot. The ecological term for when a species or population consumes more from its habitat than the habitat can replenish or produces a waste stream that the habitat cannot metabolize or process. The drivers of ecological overshoot in all known cases, wolves in a

watershed, algae in a lake, etc. are one, population size and growth rate, two, consumption quantity, and growth rate, three, waste stream content and growth rate, four, ecosystem interface technologies, biological or mechanical, and five, systems feedbacks. From the perspective of these drivers of overshoot, what changes can we propose human societies make to mitigate these dangerous trends, of which global heating from CO2 loading in the atmosphere is merely one? Here's another question. it's clear that the last nation's alliances with oil and military power will effectively be the last ones with world power. Would it not make sense for oil exporting nations to drastically cut back sales now rather than waiting for rationing? Or is it just a matter of the elites being able to bug out then?

I don't fully understand the second part of that question. What if every time reducing emissions was mentioned in the 4,900-page IPCC climate report, we replaced it with reducing energy and material use? Would that change our impact? Or would it end our funding? Interesting question. Number 11. This is my ninth COP. I begin to wonder, how are these conferences different than arguing with a forest fire?

but with good food. Next question. Can we really simultaneously optimize for CO2 emissions, equality within and between nations, and economic growth? Or do we have to pick two? Or do we have to pick one? Or do we have no choice at all? Number 13 of this sample of anonymous questions.

After we return to 350 parts per million in our atmosphere with CCS, electric cars, and a tripling of efficiency, this august and brilliant group of humans should set our sights on even higher goals, bootstrapping AI into mining asteroids and terraforming other planets. I've written a book on this, C. Montgomery Burns. Okay. Next question. Would it be possible for everyone before they speak at the, this plenary in the next 10 days to preface their contribution by sharing one profound personal

experience they've had in nature. Number 15. The inflection point of all-time oil availability is right around now. WTF do you propose to do when things start unwinding? Globalization deconstructs. There are waves of financial failure internationally and hydrocarbons become more of us. strategic substance than a free market commodity? Or is that the actual plan? Number 16. I'm going to skip that one. Number 17. Are we the right people to be at this meeting? Climate is part of a much larger socioeconomic system. Is it time to move from convening of parties to converging of systems? A few more questions. And then I'll think I'll have made my point. is a vast difference between climate effects to occur this century and the long-term Earth system

effects. James Hanson and others are predicting P.E.T.M. level temperatures, which would effectively erase large complex life from most of the planet. Are we willing to adopt accords based on avoiding a literally apocalyptic thermal maximum analogous to the one 55 million years ago, but far faster. Is anyone else embarrassed to be here? Last question. Sultan al-Jabbar has said without fossil fuels, humanity would be back to living in caves.

Isn't it true that when our ancestors lived in caves, they slept there securely for eight hours and the other 16 hours per day of free life socializing, harvesting, hunting, and playing? Modern humans spend eight hours per day in a sleeping cave, one hour in a metal transport cave, nine hours in an office cave, five hours projecting shadows onto a screen, and maybe one to two hours socializing. Is there a middle ground between our ancestors' caves and our current ones? The point of this, frankly, is to point out that we are social primates and there is a glass ceiling or a stainless steel ceiling on how much we can say in large groups of high status humans. And as the events of our world get more complex and more threatening, the delta between our real description of what's going on and what can be said at these meetings is going to get wider. The problem, of course, is this is no longer an academic smoke under the door situation.

We now live in a smoke-filled world, and the stakes couldn't be higher. So I honestly do think this was a playful exercise, but at meetings like this and other high impact, high risk, high status meetings, maybe there could be some sort of technology where people could start the meeting by expanding the Overton window by asking questions without any personal attribution to them. I wonder if those meetings would be more effective. If you were at one of those meetings, what sort of question would you ask, given the state of the world right now? If you were sitting in Dubai at the convening of Part 828, what question would you ask? Thank you. I will see you next week.