California Wildfires: Is Humanity Headed for Collapse?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. Recently, the California wildfires were in the news and I was reading about them and they have been quite devastating and probably for the first time, I'm seeing that climate change is actually knocking at the doors of the affluent ones.
As of now, I see that there are 12,000 homes that have been destroyed completely, around 2,00,000 people have been displaced and the damages are being expected to be around 275 billion USD. And at the same time, I also saw in the news that last year in 2024, we exceeded the 1.5 degree temperature limit, as the scientists were predicting for climate change, if you want to control it.
So looking at all this news and everything that is going around, I was just thinking about where we are heading and what's going to happen for the future of this?
Acharya Prashant: My guess is as good as yours. The writing is on the wall. I don't think any of us need any special assistance now in reading it. It's not just about the 1.5-degree centigrade threshold being breached; in fact, they are going to take at least one decade and a half more to officially admit that as a climate pattern.
Two or three successive years of average temperature rise do not suffice by meteorological definition to be called a trend. Statistically, it can still be called an exception, a fluke. So, it is only by 2035 or 2040 that it will be officially admitted that we have breached the 1.5° limit.
The problem is we do not have 15 more years. At some point between 1.5° and 2° as I have often said the feedback cycles, they get activated. By the time you come around to admitting that you have truly crossed the 1.5° barrier, you will find that you have already reached 3° or 4° or who knows 6°. There is so little discussion on feedback cycles in the climate discourse that it astonishes intelligence.
The Paris agreement stipulated that we will reduce carbon levels by 45° by 2030. And we will come to a net zero position by 2050. And if we are able to do this much, then we will be able to limit temperature rise to 1.5° or 2° centigrade. This was the ambitious target. Mind you, we were not targeting to reverse climate change. The target itself was quite low.
The target was to do something to limit the rise to just 1.5°. And even to limit the rise to that point, you need to cut down emissions by almost 50%, 43% to be exact by 2030. Now, if that is the macro target for 2030, then all countries are required to come with their own national deliverables.
Because if the entire planet's emissions are to be cut down, then each country has to come up with a plan for reducing their own emissions. So all countries prepared their own plans for 2030 and you know even if we stick to those plans, all that those plans would give us is a 2.6% reduction by 2030.
First of all, we set a very low target and then what we are doing to or what we propose to do with respect to that target would take us only to the extent of 2.6% compared to the 40% reduction that is needed. And that is needed just to halt the rise to 1.5°.
And the way we are today, as we enter 2025, we are all set to exceed the emission levels of 2010 and 2019. These are the two reference points that the Paris agreement uses.
Forget about reduction. Forget about a 43% reduction. Forget about even a 2% reduction. We are actually increasing our emissions and the increase will be even more substantial by 2030.
So I do not know how the future is anymore a surprise. I said the writing is on the wall — loud and clear.
Mankind has silently decided, voted in favor of a collective suicide. We are headed towards a mass extinction. And we don't want to talk about it because it's our own choice. Why talk about it? You talk about something when there is still something left to be decided. All that needed to be decided has been done and frozen and there is nothing to be thought of. Are you getting it?
1.5° is a very, very sensitive point. It's not that arbitrarily some figure was chosen — 1.5° was chosen. An important reason was this is the point after which the feedback cycles will set in. They'll start operating. We do not know exactly when? 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.1 but the risk substantially increases after 1.5°.
In fact, some feedback cycles start even before 1.5°. So those feedback cycles are there and once they start operating, there is no limit to temperature rise and it becomes irreversible and uncontrollable. Then carbon addition to the atmosphere does not depend on anthropogenic carbon emission.
You enter a situation where carbon will keep being added to the atmosphere, even if human beings through their activities are not emitting any carbon at all. Still the planet on its own would keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and therefore, there would be resultant temperature hike. We have come to that point.
Now don't be surprised by individual instances of wildfires etc. These are going to become daily occurrences, sometimes twice a day. Once in the US in the morning, in the evening you hear something from France or Australia.
What are these feedback cycles? I've repeatedly spoken about them because they are the most dangerous thing staring at us today. They pertain to ice, they pertain to water and they pertain to wood. You can classify them this way very simply in three.
What are the feedback cycles pertaining to ice? Ice being white in color is a great reflector of radiation. But when ice melts, it exposes the dark soil, stone or sediment beneath. And that being dark absorbs radiation. Since it absorbs radiation, its temperature rises. When its temperature rises, more ice melts. When more ice melts, more stone is exposed or soil. It absorbs more temperature, more radiation and more ice melts and that way a very troublesome, very dangerous cycle starts.
Similarly, the soil beneath the ice contains a lot of trapped carbon, that has remained historically trapped beneath the ice in the Arctic, in the Antarctic and other glaciers around the world — even in the tropics. When the ice is removed, then the carbon that was trapped in the soil, (the soil is organic matter, it contains carbon); that carbon is released. Often that carbon is not just carbon dioxide but methane. Why?
Because below the ice there is not sufficient oxygen available. So carbon does not turn into carbon dioxide. Instead there is an anaerobic reaction leading to formation of methane. And the global warming potential of methane, as you know, is 80 times more than that of carbon dioxide.
Then we know of permafrost. They are beyond the Arctic and the Antarctic. The soil is there but the water in the soil remains frozen. It's not as if there is a layer of ice. There is the soil but the temperatures are so low that the water in the soil, at least in the top layer, the top layer remains frozen. Since it remains frozen, it does not allow the carbon in the soil to escape.
But the permafrost is receding very rapidly and it is again releasing carbon dioxide, methane. And the more methane is released, the more temperature rises. The more the temperature rises, the more ice or permafrost melts. The more it melts, more methane is released. The more methane, the more temperature; the more temperature, the more melting; the more melting, the more methane. That's the cycle.
It's just that when the ice melts, mind you, it's not just carbon that you release. You also release very, very primitive kinds of virus. They were lying dormant beneath the thick ice sheets. Viruses, as you know, they do not die. Just by being dormant, they do not die. They are, in that sense, like chemicals. Water does not die in some sense; similarly, virus too does not die.
For thousands and millions of years, viruses can remain safely stored like a chemical beneath ice or just below surface soil, top soil. The ice is gone. What happens to the virus? Out! That doesn't have much to do with global warming. But just, you know, as a side — as an appetizer — I'm serving it.
Then comes the feedback cycles associated with water. Water vapor by itself is a greenhouse gas. You increase the temperature of the oceans and there is more evaporation and that water vapor traps more heat and that leads to more temperature and that leads to more evaporation and that leads to more water vapor. The oceans absorb 90% of atmospheric heat. They are the biggest sink.
So when you trap more heat in the atmosphere, it is the oceans that get heated up. The sea level rises on two counts. One, melting of ice. Second, thermal expansion of water. Warm water expands. So the sea level will rise. Additionally, ice is melting so sea level will rise.
Another phenomenon is that warm water absorbs less carbon dioxide compared to cold water. So the capacity of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide reduces. So more carbon dioxide remains in the air. This is what happens at the surface of the ocean.
You come to the belly of the ocean. What do you find there? You know of the coral reefs, right? They are very, very temperature sensitive and they are organic in nature. When the sea temperature rises, the reefs decompose and when they decompose, what do they emit? Again carbon dioxide. So, a big quantity of carbon dioxide that was lying trapped in the reefs is released into the atmosphere.
Again relating to water peatlands, the coastal areas or sometimes the inner areas that are always inundated. So there is soil but there is a column of water always above that soil. So that soil was never directly getting exposed to the air. When there is a temperature rise or due to human intervention the water is cleared away, then the soil, after hundreds and thousands of years, suddenly gets exposed to air and what does that soil release?
Methane because that soil was covered with water so it never got to react with oxygen. So again it turns into methane rather than carbon dioxide and then you clear the water because you want to build a township there or because the water is receding anyway. Again, tonnes of carbon dioxide gets released from there. And tonnes is a small number. You always measure it in tonnes. It's a figure of millions of tonnes.
Then you go to the bottom of the ocean, you have methane hydrates there, that are again very temperature sensitive. Now methane hydrate is not dangerous. But the moment it gets heated up, methane hydrate decomposes to give methane. And the more methane is liberated, the more the temperature rises, the more the methane hydrates decompose.
Then, there is wood. We talked about ice. We talked about water. Then, there is wood. Wood is a wonderful thing. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into something extremely beautiful called wood. Yeah. What is wood?
Carbon dioxide plus soil. You take soil from below and carbon dioxide from above and the result is wood. So wood is carbon sequestered. Carbon has been absorbed and turned into wood. What a beautiful way of reducing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!
But the same wood turns very dangerous when climate change intensifies because now there will be extreme weather events. More heat, more cyclones, more logging, more felling. And when wood falls then it becomes an emitter of carbon dioxide because wood is organic material.
When wood would decay, it would release carbon dioxide. Instead of becoming an absorber it becomes an emitter. And the more the trees are felled, the more the fallen trees emit carbon dioxide and that intensifies climate change and that leads to the falling of even more trees. Are you getting it?
Why talk of a localized event like the US wildfires? The symptoms might be local, the problem is planetary. Forget about meeting the problem effectively. Most of us avoid even looking at the problem because looking at the problem would involve questioning the very center humankind operates from.
What is carbon? Carbon is a result of the flawed life philosophy mankind has. As long as we are conditioned, trained, educated to believe that we exist to be happy and that happiness is a product of consumption, there would be carbon emission.
I often say, it's not emission, it's emotion. The more we are told that there is value in having pleasurable experiences and emotions, the more there would be emissions. Our happiness, our emotions. That's what emissions are.
The more prosperous you are, the more you emit; the more you chase happiness, the more you emit carbon. Unless we are educated to find the right avenues of joy, we will continue to hunt for pleasure. And this hunt for pleasure is the wildfire that you are seeing.
There can be no political, legal or technological solution to climate change. Climate change is the final crisis. It is the end game and it requires a final solution. A solution that cannot come by the cheap methods of tinkering with matter and creating new technologies. It is also not something that can come with political leaders parlaying and signing agreements.
If you want to address climate change really, you will have to inculcate wisdom in human beings. When I say that, a lot of people find that utopian and impractical. Might be utopian, might be impractical, but that's the only feasible solution. Call it impractical if you would, but that would not help your case. If it sounds impractical, make it practical. It depends on you.
Unless we are educated in the right philosophy of life, why will we stop being exploitative towards the planet? There is no reason.
