Time and action

Adam McKay recently published an essay in Current Affairs magazine and on Substack. It is titled, “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate.”

Specifically, the lie is,

when it comes to climate change... we have more time.

We don’t have more time. Global heating is an ongoing event, but critical heating events and thresholds are already in the past. This is the opposite of more time. This summer has already seen thousands of heat deaths in the so-called developed world. We already knew that Indians and Bangladeshis were dying of heat, and we’ve - the developed world, aka white people - already accepted that. However, it’s against the rules for Spaniards and French people to die of heat. Americans probably are too, but nobody here will admit it. That’d be bad for business.

Mostly, aside from the Richmond (MO) News, I get my news from the headlines in Google News and from my Substack algorithm. I realize this isn’t a broad spectrum, but American media has become a wholly owned propaganda system for the oligarchy. I get my climate news by spending most of every day year round outside on a small plot of northwest Missouri where I have been for over half my long life. I don’t need to know what’s happening all over the world. I can see what’s happening here, and I pay attention.

We don’t have any time. In real terms, what does that mean?

What it probably means is that nobody is going to take any meaningful action, but we could. What it absolutely means is that any action which doesn’t result in immediate reductions in energy use will have no benefit.

What it means to me is that, if we wish to in any way alleviate the damage we are doing, the very first thing we have to do is find meaningful ways to demand less energy today. Not someday. Not in 2050. Not even in 2030. Now. Today. No later than tomorrow.

Over the years I have, a few times, asked readers how they think we could reduce fossil fuel use today. Not someday. Today. Now as I perceive it.

A common response I have received is for people to stop eating meat. Needless to say, others suggest population reduction. The usual blather about “clean energy” features in my replies too.

I have come to wonder what the words “today” and “now” mean in the English language.

Today, Wednesday, the 12th of August, 2026, is almost over. It’s 4:03 PM, Central Daylight Time. In seven hours and fifty-seven minutes this day, this “today,” will be gone forever. Since today is fast disappearing, I‘m willing to settle for tomorrow. How do we reduce emissions tomorrow? Does anyone seriously believe that “Persuade or force 5 to 7 billion people to stop eating meat” will result in less fuel burned or any other emissions reduction tomorrow?

I’ve got nothing against persuading people to quit eating meat. I eat meat, but I rarely eat a pound a month and I could live without it. I’m also willing to get my meat from the bluegills in the pond and the squirrels in the woods. I’m not saying Eat meat. I’m saying, what constitutes now? When is today? We don’t have time. Next year isn’t good enough.

I read a post recently saying that we had attained 3 terawatts of solar power, whoever we are and wherever that covers. This writer was triumphant.

When does adding terawatts of solar power cause us to burn less fossil fuels? It definitely hasn’t so far. It didn’t today and it’s not going to tomorrow. There are people doing accounting magic claiming that without all these renoobles we’d be burning enough coal, gas, and diesel to generate the whole three terawatts. so we’re burning less, but in real numbers, worldwide, we’re burning more fossil fuels than we were last year. We are accumulating new greenhouse gases in the atmosphere faster than we were last year. It is a clear numeric fact that nothing being done in the world today is reducing emissions, and we don’t even discuss reducing habitat destruction or pollution, both of which are as important as greenhouse gases in terms of ecosystem degradation.

If we want to burn less fossil fuels today there is one, and only one, way to do so. Slow down. Do less. Virtually every activity done in the developed world today is powered, wholly or in part, by fossil fuels. The largest demand comes from industry, from mining, manufacturing, and building things. If concrete were a country it would be the world’s third largest emitter.

To burn less fossil fuels today, mine less today. Manufacture less today. Pave less today. Build less today.

The second largest consumption of fossil fuels is in transportation. Over half of all the fossil fuels burned on Earth in any day are burned to power industrial activity. Of the less-than-half that is left, over half of that goes to transporting ourselves and the stuff we mine and manufacture from place to place at high rates of speed.

Over three quarters of all the energy used in the world in any year goes to industry and transportation.

If we mined less, we would have less to transport.

If we transported more slowly, we would not be able to mine as much.

One way or the other, industry and transportation are the lynch pin. To burn less fossil fuels today, we can slow either.

Slowing industry is hard to visualize. There are mines all over the world, but the peoples of the developed world can’t see them out the car window in their daily lives. There are factories all over the world, but mostly there aren’t that many houses nearby and nobody sees what they do. Virtually everything built in developed societies is built out of concrete, steel, and some other stuff. Concrete and steel are made from mines and hot fossil fuel fires.

If governments wanted to alleviate climate change our options would be different. Unfortunately, they don’t. Governments could force actions or inactions that are largely out of the reach of individuals or groups of individuals. Unfortunately, what governments want to do is to stay in power. I think it would be safe to say that the primary objective of every government in the world is to stay in power.

Nixon established two things when he signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act in January of 1974. One thing he established was that a 55 mile per hour national speed limit saves thousands of barrels of oil per day. Unfortunately, the other thing he established was that Americans prefer driving fast to almost anything else, and nothing is going to piss them off faster than making them drive slower.

No national government since, and few if any states, have ever required, or even requested, their people to slow down. The nations of the world have held 30 annual meetings to wring their hands about climate change while doing nothing, and to the best of my knowledge the idea of slowing surface speeds has never been on the agenda. This in spite of the United States having once proved that just one nation could save several thousand barrels of oil per day, each day, every year.

In point of fact, they don’t want to. They don’t want to save thousands of barrels of oil a day. It’s all fiction. Every barrel of oil burned is a positive number added to GDP. Slowing surface speeds will inevitably slow economic activity, and the governments of the world live or die on economic growth, which in turn lives or dies on burning more fossil fuel.

Right now two of the biggest industries on Earth are solar panel and wind turbine construction. There is no way to get real numbers as to how much energy they consume in mining, smelting, manufacturing, shipping, site preparation, and installing, but there are simple laws of physics which explain that the bigger the thing made, the more materials it takes to make it. The bigger the thing made the more energy it takes to extract, refine, and shape those materials. The bigger a thing which is shipped, the more energy it takes to ship it. The bigger a thing we stick up in the wind, the more concrete it takes to keep it from blowing over. Typically each wind turbine can require as much as a thousand tons of concrete in its base to keep it from blowing over. All of it adds to GDP; the more of it we do the faster GDP grows.

It is likely that, in a hypothethical case where governments actually wanted to reduce fossil fuel burning, the largest single reduction they could get tomorrow, or today, would be an immediate halt to all utility scale renoobles construction.

Any serious attempt to reduce emissions would begin with an acceptance that we don’t need more of anything tomorrow than we had today. In the long run we need less, but in terms of immediate reductions in emissions we definitely don’t need more. We don’t need AI. We don’t need digital money. We don’t need more highways. We don’t need more electricity than we had today. We got through today just fine, aside from the obvious fact that we spent it wildly degrading the ecosystem which makes our lives possible.

Every new highway, every new street, every new parking lot, every new shopping center, is new fossil fuel emissions. Every new dam is. Every new data center is. Every new factory is new fossil fuel emissions.

Of all the emissions we create today, the least of our problems is our houses. After half of all the energy goes to industry, after half of all the energy that’s left goes to transportation, houses demand about half of the remaining trifle. The least of our problems come from our stoves, our furnaces, our light bulbs or our washing machines. One new furnace, one new heat pump, is more emissions the day it goes in than the one it replaced would have been in a year. Every new electric car is worse than that.

On a society-wide basis it’s clear that the biggest improvements available today would come from things we didn’t build. Things not built don’t have to be mined. Metals not used don’t have to be smelted. Steel towers not built don’t have to be hauled or erected; wind turbine blades not made don’t require custom trailers on diesel semi trailer trucks running a mile a minute up and down highways. Wind turbines not erected don’t require a thousand tons of concrete to keep them from blowing down.

The same goes for everything else. The bigger the object and the farther it travels between manufacturer and end user, the more energy that goes into it.

Part of industry is industrial agriculture. In the United States the biggest products made by industrial agriculture are corn and soybeans, neither of which are significant contributors to human feeding or nutrition. Both are fed to animals which otherwise could have lived, matured, and been eaten without a single kernel of corn ever run through them. If we produce cattle slower on grass, people will find themselves eating less beef, to the direct benefit of Earth and their bodies. Hogs once lived on farm waste, and could again. Chickens can always use a little corn, but they can live just as well on bugs and weed seeds.

Some large percentage of all the fuel and fertilizer used in global industrial agriculture is simply there for somebody’s profit and has no function in feeding the 8 billion. Nobody eats ethanol motor fuel. Nobody eats soy biodiesel.

We could live forever without another car ever being manufactured. It would be several years before we really noticed the lack.

All of the above options would require government actions. I believe we have established that the governments of the world flatly do not care about global heating or mass extinction. Some governments care about talking about it, but none care about ameliorating it.

Every change I recommended above could be implemented on any one day, including today. Humans could reduce emissions immediately on any day and every day to come. If the governments of the world wanted to reduce emissions today they could. They don’t.

So now what? Given that governments refuse to take any action, what can we do without them? Returning to our starting point, which is that we can reduce emissions today by burning less fuel today, and that the number one and two uses of fuel are industry and transportation, what we have left is transportation.

All of the energy used in transportation is used to add speed. Humans were transporting goods worldwide powered by food and wind, walking humans, walking animals, and wind in sails. All, one hundred percent, of the fossil energy used in transportation on any day is used to add speed. Worse, energy put in and the resulting speed do not rise in parallel. Each small increase in speed requires a larger increase in energy. Therefore, any slowing returns more gain in energy not consumed than it loses in speed.

Although industry is the largest energy user worldwide, in the United States transportation is our number one energy sink, with industry coming a fairly close second, probably largely via industrial agriculture. The United States is also the second greatest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, after only China. Our government isn’t going to do anything about it and, since Nixon, never has. What are our other options?

Drivers could slow down. It is reported that roughly two-thirds of the American people are concerned about the climate. Presumably that means about two-thirds of American drivers are concerned about climate.

On the 16th of July, 2026, the Journal of Communications Sustainability published a study which showed that American drivers of light duty vehicles - passenger cars and pickup trucks - could save more than 6 million gallons of fuel PER DAY, save over 50,000 metric tonnes of CO2 PER DAY, and save over 18 million US dollars, also per day, simply by slowing to the posted speed limit.

Due to the physics of speed, energy, and air resistance, the greatest savings always come at reductions from the highest speeds. The above statistics are based on driving in a country where highway speed limits commonly reach or exceed 70 miles per hour. The 6 million gallon savings come from merely slowing to 70. If drivers would universally reduce, instead, to 55 miles per hour, it is likely they could more than double the above savings. Think of an America which burned 12 million fewer gallons of fuel per day and emitted 100,000 metric tons less CO2 per day. This is a significant difference.

This entire savings is available if nobody in America participates except self-identified climate concerned people. The government doesn’t have to do anything. fossil fuel companies can’t prevent it. It doesn’t matter what oil billionaires say, climate concerned people already know they’re lying.

Climate deniers can’t prevent us from slowing. Fox News can’t stop it. Rupert Murdoch can’t stop it. Eel On Musk can’t stop it.

The posted minimum speeds on the US Interstate System are typically 45 miles per hour. We could start out slowing to 55, then next year slow again to 50, and the year after that slow to 45, before we even had to learn a new way to work.

In the long run the only way to retain a livable Earth is for all speeds to slow to a walk, all manufacturing to slow to needs only, all agriculture to slow to varied diets produced from healthy soils and waters, and all humans to live as though we had evolved here.

Which we did.

But that’s all someday. That’s all based on people figuring out that slower is pleasant, that nature is beautiful, that walking brings health.

Many feel certain that first we have to change our minds, and only then can we do the necessary actions (or in this case inactions.) However, William E. Rees recently pointed out in an essay that

there is evidence that behavioral change (even if forced by circumstance) often comes first. Change a person’s behavior and compatible values and beliefs will follow.

(Emphasis added by me.)

We don’t have more time. Things are already out of hand.

It appears that to many, that means there’s no reason to change our ways. We’re doomed anyway. And we may be.

We know that we’re adding heat energy to the atmosphere faster every day. We also know that the added heat is killing people faster this summer than ever before. Whenever I suggest using less fuel to go less fast, people wave their arms and tell me that would kill people.

Not doing it is killing people. We can see it happening every day. Burning less fossil fuel won’t cost anyone a penny. In fact it will save everyone money.

Burning less fossil fuel, going less fast, manufacturing less stuff, will reduce emissions immediately. The day we start. Immediately.

We don’t have more time.