CLIMATE CHANGE &
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The focus on carbon emissions is misleading
Pesticides, fertilisers and chemical waste
Separating the good and the bad
Climate change and environmental pollution is our destiny
- Introduction
Our society and culture has changed over the centuries from living in harmony with nature, being part of the ecosystem, to now dominating nature, carving, shaping and harvesting the earth as if human beings were above any other form of life. The disregard for Mother Earth in our society is pushing the limits of planetary self-regeneration.
Much is said about climate change, carbon emissions and rapidly rising temperatures. The scientific evidence is now irrefutable, no one can argue against the fact that our consumption and man-made pollution are affecting the planet. Our overshoot in resource consumption and waste generation is much faster than what the planet can regenerate and recover.
7 of the 9 planetary boundaries within which humanity can safely operate, defined by Johan Rockström and 28 scientists in 2009, have already been breached by 2024, the latest one being ocean acidification in 2025:
- Climate change
- Change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction)
- Ocean acidification
- Biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles)
- Land-system change (for example deforestation)
- Freshwater use
- Introduction of novel entities
The only 2 remaining unbreached planetary boundaries are:
- Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms)
- Stratospheric ozone depletion
Note in Figure 1 below that only ozone depletion and aerosol deposition are still 'safe', while ocean acidification has been passed this year in 2025.
Figure 1: The nine planetary boundaries
Climate change: Greenhouse gases increase temperatures and alter climate patterns.
- Global warming
A lot can be found online and in the general media, so I won't repeat the well-known facts and our trajectory. The Paris Agreement of 2015 to keep the temperature below +1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels is already breached and +2°C seems highly unattainable. Since the 1970s, global temperatures have been going up significantly, as shown on figures 2A and 2B below. In 2024 we are already at the long term trend of +1.4°C and rising every year, +2°C is very likely by 2050, the trend is 2.5°C or 3°C in the second half of the century, with catastrophic consequences. In the year 2024, +1.5°C has been measured for the first time, the highest carbon emissions on record and the highest total consumption of fossil fuels in the world.
- Carbon emissions
- The focus on carbon emission is misleading
- Climate change
Climate change will lead to more violence, protests, criminality and civil wars around the world. Some public services will deteriorate in some places due to climate impacts: food security, fresh water supply, sewage and waste management, electricity supply for regions with a lot of hydro and nuclear power.
And when public services deteriorate, people tend to protest against governments for not doing what is necessary to protect the population, even though the root cause is climate change, not government policy.
- Impact on oceans
The ocean produces 50% of the oxygen we need, absorbs 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions via phytoplankton, and captures 90% of the excess heat generated by these emissions. Plants are responsible for about 30% of carbon absorption through photosynthesis.
The rest of our human carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere for centuries, acting as a greenhouse gas and trapping heat from the sun on the Earth's surface.
More carbon in the atmosphere means more carbon being absorbed by the oceans, leading to warmer water temperatures and more acidification, which affects marine life.
Just a +1°C rise can destroy ocean's lifeThe AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), the major water current that runs through the oceans and is responsible for our fish and climate, is being affected. The potential slowdown or collapse of the AMOC will affect fish and bird migration, as well as the monsoon, which could impact our food production for 2 billion people.
Figure 5B: The AMOC water current
The life and health of the ocean may seem insignificant to most of us, but it is actually the foundation of the food chain for fish and birds, responsible for the wind and rain that replenish our freshwater reserves, and plays a significant role in CO2 absorption. It also endangers half of humanity who live on the coast if sea level rises. The health of the ocean and how it is altered due to climate change will have a tremendous negative impact on human life this century.
At our current rate of sea level rise of 4mm per year and the current acceleration trend, we expect sea levels to rise 1 to 2 metres by 2100 and up to 4 to 7 metres by 2300, putting crowded cities like Bangkok, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh, Manila and Lagos under sea level by the end of the century.
The Artic is melting, and whatever we do now, it will continue to melt, and this phenomenon will accelerate over time, even if we completely stopped all emissions tomorrow. Now it is a matter of speed and time when it will melt completely. it could be between 2100 and 2300. it will cause up to 7 metres or sea level rise, which will put Bangladesh, Amsterdam, Lagos and other big cities completely under water. Think of it this way: one way or another, cities that have existed for a millennium will be submerged and disappear latest in 300 years, for sure, no matter what humans do from now on. More than a billion people will be climate refugees just because of sea levels, not to mention all the other climate refugees because of arid and infertile soils, tidal waves, water shortages and recurring hurricane and flood disasters.
How on earth will we manage to support and sustain an entire population moving to a new location?
- Plastics and microplastics
Although plastic was invented in the early 1900s, mass production only became widespread in the 1950s and 1960s. It is extremely cheap and convenient because it is lightweight and can be moulded into any shape, making it perfect for use in devices and home appliances. Plastic is made from oil and gas, and the world currently has an oversupply of these hydrocarbons, making plastic very affordable to produce.
Plastic production has grown steadily 8-fold from 50 million tonnes per year in 1980 to 400 million tonnes per year by 2023. The total weight of plastic now exceeds that of all land and sea animals combined. Just think about it...
Every minute, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic is dumped into the world's oceans.
Figure 6A: Global plastic production
World plastic production is projected to grow by a further 50% between 2025 and 2040, or doubling from 2020 to 2050, as shown on figure 6B below.
Figure 6B: Projections of plastic production
We create more plastic every year. There is no viable alternative for bottles, packaging, toys and household appliances, hospital supplies such as gloves and everyday items. There are no clean alternatives to plastic that can compete either in terms of price nor in volume, including recycled plastic.
As early as the 1970s, the public was concerned about plastic pollution, and the initial response was to ban plastic. However, because plastic had become so useful and irreplaceable, and because it had become a huge business for the petrochemical industry, the focus shifted towards recycling. Campaigns started claiming that plastic was not an issue because it would be recycled, in an attempt to convince the general public to continue consuming. However, this was a lie and an act of deception, as no more than 10% of plastic is recycled today.
Figure 6C: Plastic waste
As shown of Figure 6C above, only about 10% of the world's plastic is recycled. The rest is simply dumped in landfills, incinerated or ends up in our soil, rivers and oceans. The other 90% ends up in our ecosystems in one form or another, in various sizes, most of them microplastics, invisible to the human eye, which remain in our ecosystems for decades or centuries.
Plastic takes over 100 years to break down in the environment. Because plastic do not degrade in the environment, they simply shatter into smaller pieces, known as microplastics. Most plastic tends to break down into microplastics, tiny invisible pieces of plastic. These microplastics end up in our clean water supplies and in the fish food chain that we eat, so they end up in our bodies. It is estimated that every person in the western world ingest the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every month.
These microplastics literaly end up everywhere: in soils, clouds and rain droplets, rivers, oceans, fresh water reserves, food crops, animals, in our food, our bodies and our brains. Microplastics can be found in abandoned or remote areas like the tropical rain forest Amazonas or Greenland and the North Pole. Plastics contain more than 1000 chemicals, and when plastic is produced, used or disposed of, it leaches these toxic chemicals onto plants, animals, soils and our bodies. Some of those chemicals are endocrine disrupting chemicals that affect our hormones, fertility and metabolism, provoking serious health diseases. It definitely affects our health, causing inflammation, stress, metabolic disorders and neurotoxicity. As microplastics are literally everywhere, it is not possible to compare their effect on a population or area that does not contain and ingest microplastics. Also, as it contains thousands of chemicals, no study is able to directly link one chemical to an impact on human health, meaning that no chemical can be proven to be responsible for any health impact. Very few of these thousands of chemicals have been tested but the ones we do know cause health problems such as fertility loss, diabetes, obesity, neurobehavioural disorders such as autism and ADHD.
The impact of plastic and its chemical pollution could be more dangerous than climate change. I believe that chemical pollution from plastic is at least as threatening to humanity as climate change, because every person on earth is injecting toxic chemicals from microplastics into their bodies, and our health is being seriously compromised, especially in an era of ageing populations, while global warming is only affecting some parts of the world.
- Biodiversity
Since 1970, we have lost 70% of wild animal species and almost 80% of insects. This statistic alone is enough to quantify the impact of humans on life and biodiversity on Earth. Since 1980, we have lost between 66% and 75% of all flying insects on Earth. We are losing 1–2% of total insect biomass per year, which is an unsustainable pace for the biosphere and endangers humans, given that a third of our food comes from insect pollination.
Figure 7A: Evolution of the biomass
As you can see in Figure 7A above, for every 1kg of human body there is almost 2kg of livestock, a captive animal that we deliberately breed for meat and milk. This is a very recent phenomenon. 3 centuries ago, humans represented 1% of the world's living biomass. Now, due to a combination of the artificialisation of our environment for human purposes, climate change, chemical pollution from the massive use of fertilisers and pesticides, intensive farming and monoculture, and our high food consumption, humans and livestock (the animals we deliberately breed for meat and milk) make up 96% of the total, with only 4% being wild animals. The planet's entire biodiversity has been wiped out, and several species are on the verge of extinction.
The average population of vertebrates declined by an estimated 73% between 1970 and 2020. Over the last 40 years, the insect population has decreased by 45%, primarily due to pesticides, which has impacted bird populations and biodiversity. In some countries, insect populations have declined by 70% in just a few decades.
In terms of productivity and efficiency, agriculture has made unbelievable progress over the last 50 years. As shown in Figure 7B below, we now harvest three times more cereal crops per unit area than 50 years ago, thanks to the abundant use of fertilisers, pesticides, machinery such as tractors, and specifically engineered seeds or grains that maximise production.
Figure 7B: Cereal crop productivity increase
Permaculture and regenerative agriculture are more efficient and productive than traditional agriculture, which relies on pesticides and fertilisers. However, because the latter two are big businesses with significant lobbying power, and because we lack the human labour required to implement regenerative agriculture and permaculture, we continue to consume calories without essential nutrients, ingesting chemicals and toxic substances that are present in virtually all food.
- Animal agriculture
Livestock is the biggest driver of land use in terms of size, and when we consider the full lifecycle and impact of livestock, it is most probably the biggest driver of climate change!
20% of the Earth's total land area, or the equivalent of 40% of the total arable land area used by humans, also equivalent to 50% of the world's agricultural area, is devoted either to raising animals to feed us, or to growing crops to feed those animals. That's a huge amount of land!
This part of land has currently no trees, so livestock farming severely limits the natural ability of soils to sequester CO2 via trees. Animal agriculture consumes a huge proportion of our fresh food reserves, and these animals also breathe, fart and poop, releasing greenhouse gases. Overall, animal agriculture is officially responsible for about 20% of our GHG emmissions, a huge part, and still nobody pays attention to it, people only focus on fossil fuel emmissions as if that were the only reason for climate change.
Figure 7C: Greenhouse gas emissions by sector
The 22% shown above in Figure 7C does not take into account the natural emissions of animals (breathing, farting and pooping), does not take into account the emissions associated with the production of the crops needed to feed the animals (fertilisers, pesticides, tractors, etc.), and does not take into account the missing CO2 absorption of the 40% of total land area used for livestock puropose today that could be replaced by trees and forests if we stopped eating meat and dairy products. When the full cycle is taken into account, animal agriculture is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions beyond transportation, industry, and energy supply. Yes, animal agriculture contributes more to the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere and to global warming than the burning of fossil fuels.
60% of the world agricultural land is used to raise livestock or produce feedstock for them, and ultimately, meat and dairy products account for only 5% of the total calories ingested by humans. This is a huge waste of resources and destroys biodiversity and the capacity of trees and forests to capture carbon. This could be reduced simply by changing our diet, which does not require much effort.
Global meat production increased 5-fold between 1960 and 2023. Meanwhile, the world population grew only 2.6-fold over the same period. This means that meat consumption per person has roughly doubled over the last 65 years. As shown in Figure 7D below, there is a disparity between regions, with Europe and North America growing by a factor of 2 and 2.5 respectively, but Asia, and China in particular, growing by a factor of 15.
Figure 7D: Global meat production
For every 80 kg of human on the planet, there is about double that weight — 160 kg — of livestock: animals in captivity whose only purpose is to provide meat or milk. That's an astonishing ratio when you consider all the food, water, breathing, burping, farting, urinating and excreting involved.
Following the Second World War, peace and prosperity triggered a boom in animal agriculture. People started consuming more and more dairy products, such as milk and cheese, as well as meat, including the middle classes and lower-wage earners. Meat became affordable for everyday consumption, even for those on lower incomes. Nowadays, it seems that everyone in the industrial world eats meat and dairy products every day. Like bread and water, dairy products and meat have become a staple of our diet rather than a luxury once a week for special occasion.
The rapid rise of animal agriculture caused massive deforestation, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, as forests were cleared to make way for pasture. Vast areas of forest were cut down to make room for farming, to grow livestock or to grow food for livestock. Today, 40% of all agricultural land is dedicated to animal agriculture, either directly or indirectly.
About 70% of the CO₂ in the air is absorbed by trees, and 90% of temperature warming is absorbed by the oceans. Nature does a tremendous job of regulating the climate and absorbing our excess emissions, provided we step aside and let nature take its course. Since 1950, trees have sequestered 4000 billion tons of CO2, which is about 70% of all our carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Only 30% of emissions from fossil fuels are not absorbed by nature and remain in the atmosphere, affecting the global climate. If we eliminated animal agriculture, almost half of the agricultural land on Earth could be left to nature, which would greatly help to capture the remaining 30% of carbon emissions.
Overall, when you account for deforestation and burning of this wood, the missing future ability of natural carbon sequestration, and the burning of plants and when soil is prepared for agriculture, as well as natural methane emissions from animals, and emissions from farming activities such as the use of tractors, fertilisers, and pesticides, it is estimated that animal agriculture is responsible for 60% of the excess carbon in the atmosphere, rather than the 15% or 20% commonly believed or publicly and falsly indicated. The wrong number is due to calculations that do not take into account the missing carbon sequestration from the original trees that were present before animal agriculture began in a given area. We like to blame carbon emissions from fossil fuels, but animal agriculture is by far the primary human cause of climate change, not burning fossil fuels. The food industry has spread a huge amount of misinformation to make the fossil fuel industry the scapegoat, simply because it is an easier message to convey and more people can understand it. It also allows policymakers and businesses to sell people clean tech and renewable energy solutions so that we can continue to grow as usual, while stopping animal agriculture would result in massive degrowth and job losses at many levels of the supply chain. That's the sad reality. It is easier to sell a fake solution that generates profit and allows us to continue business as usual than it is to sell constraints, restrictions, job losses and reduced government spending.
Also, most of us love meat and cheese too much for there to be enough support for a ban on animal agriculture, or even a reduction of 90%. However, the reality is that reducing our fossil fuel consumption will not be achieved through clean technology and renewable energies. Furthermore, if we were to reduce our fossil fuel consumption, it would lead to immediate mass poverty, suffering and social unrest. In contrast, reducing meat and dairy consumption would be much easier for humanity to accept and would be less restrictive.
Finally, the solution to stop animal agriculture and replant trees on agricultural land won't happen. It would take 20–30 years for a tree to grow big enough to capture a significant amount of carbon, so we would not see immediate results in terms of positive climate change reversal. Then, who would pay the farmers to do that and cancel their agricultural business? There is no revenue in letting a tree grow; only losses for farmers who can no longer exploit reconverted agricultural land for forestry. Once land has been used for animal agriculture, I can't see any pragmatic or realistic incentive to stop it and plant trees instead, or to let nature recover.
Going vegan is a non-violent, non-coercive, simple and realistic way to reduce and reverse greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change, but because of cultural traditions, the lobbying of food giants and too many jobs involved, nobody takes it seriously and the focus is diverted to fossil fuel sources, which is foolish and utopian because we are not going away from fossil fuels, as the consumption of the last 20 years proves.
Animal agriculture is also extremely inefficient. It takes 38 kg of crops to feed an animal that will produce just 1 kg of meat. Of the 100 calories of food produced to feed animals, only 13 calories of chicken meat, 9 calories of pork meat and 2 calories of beef meat are produced at the end of the chain. Consider the deforestation of the area and the pesticides and fertilisers needed to produce about 20 calories of food, which we then harvest, process and transport to feed the animals that will eventually be killed and processed to produce only 1 calorie of meat. It's an inefficient system at every level. If we were to eat the original feedstock intended for animals, we would save millions of hectares of agricultural land, as well as chemicals, trees and fresh water.
If we all went vegetarian it would make a huge difference not only to our CO2 emissions but also to chemical pollution from fertilisers and pesticides, animal waste, loss of biodiversity due to loss of habitat. The sad reality is that big business and governments will not let this happen because there are too many jobs associated with animal agriculture: crop farming, fertiliser, animal breeding, food processing...etc. Reducing meat consumption by 80% to 90% would be disastrous for the agriculture industry, the fertiliser and pesticide industry, tractor manufacturers, shipping companies, associated jobs and the tax revenue. On top of that, people would be reluctant to give up sausages, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers and other cheap meat products. Restrictions and reductions do not sell well, whereas wind, solar, EVs, batteries, the hope of climate solutions can sell lots of new products and make money while fossil fuels are still being used as much and not affected. More options and additions sell much better. Politicians and the mainstream media point on the issue of fossil fuels as a scapegoat for climate change because they can promote green technology growth as a solution, which is a pipedream but a money maker. However, stopping animal agriculture would lead to significant economic decline, so there is little incentive for this approach, despite it being an easy, feasible and relatively painless solution. Unfortunately, people want to save the planet without sacrificing the economy or giving up cheeseburgers and sausages.
- Pesticides, fertilisers and chemical waste
All the antibiotics, growth hormones and industrial food we give to animals to grow faster and produce more meat enter the food chain and we end up consuming those antibiotics in the meat and fish we eat. Bacteria are evolving to resist antibiotics, increasing the risk of a major pandemic spreading to humans and forcing industrial farmers to use even more toxic chemicals.
Fertilisers and pesticides used in agriculture to increase production not only degrade the quality of soil nutrients and kill insects, but also end up in our bodies when we eat fruits, vegetables and grains. Fertilisers and pesticides can affect the nervous system, skin and hormones and are overall endocrine disruptors, affecting our physical and mental health and reducing our fertility.
Many chemicals are used in industry, from paints and coatings to raw materials processing, food processing, etc. One example is PFAS, a family of synthetic chemicals used in food packaging, waterproof fabrics and fire-fighting foams. If you wear a raincoat, you probably have PFAS on you. PFAS molecules have a chain of carbon and fluorine atoms linked together. Because the carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest, these chemicals do not break down in the environment. That's why we call PFAS the "forever chemicals", because they remain in the environment forever. PFAS have been found in uninhabited parts of the world, probably carried by wind, rain and groundwater. PFAS are a serious health hazard, causing cancer, infertility, toxicity to the liver and kidneys, and weakening our immune systems. It is estimated that we would need €100 billion a year to decontaminate Europe's soil and water from the PFAS toxic chemical pollution that industry has caused since the 1960s. These toxic chemicals are in the soil, water and clouds, they spread around the world and do not break down over time. You end up with contaminated areas with hundreds of thousands of people, like Dordrecht in the Netherlands, where exposed residents are not allowed to eat food grown in their gardens, children are not allowed to play outside, tap water is not drinkable and they have to wash their hands whenever they touch soil, grass, trees or plants. There is nothing we can do to remove PFAS contamination from nature. PFAS are just one type of chemical among thousands found in nature, some of which are very toxic to humans.
- Access to fresh water
Less than 1% of the world's water is fresh, potable water. The remaining 99% is salty, frozen, or polluted. In terms of consumption, the world's reserves of fresh water (non-salty and accessible) have decreased by 60% since 1962. According to the OECD, the world's demand for fresh water is expected to increase by 55% between 2025 and 2050. How can this scenario have a positive outcome? Fresh water has always been a necessity, but it has also become a geopolitical issue and an environmental challenge. Today, a quarter of the global population lives under water stress levels, and it is expected that a third of the world's GDP will be affected by lack of access to fresh water in 2050. The capture, transport, purification, distribution and treatment of water is a $1.5 trillion business worldwide. It is absolutely essential for our food and energy supplies and for social peace.
One of the greatest risks facing humanity, and a lesser talked about issue, is access to fresh water. Our society, with its new technologies, its complexity, its electrification, tends to consume more and more fresh (non-salty) water per capita.
The water cycle is well known: water evaporates from the ocean and trees, gathers in the clouds, and falls as precipitation (rain). What most people don't know is that the vast majority of rain either lands in the ocean, where it becomes salty and unfit for human consumption, or lands in areas where the droplets penetrate the soil and end up in groundwater areas that are inaccessible to humans, either because they are too remote (e.g. mountains) or because they are too deep. That's why even if we take the oceans out of the picture, only 3% of the fresh water coming from rain is accessible to humans. You can now see that, to fulfil all household, agricultural and industrial demand, we are draining water reserves faster than they can replenish themselves, and that's because rain mostly lands outside accessible fresh water sources. In europe, households consume an average of about 120 litres directly, but if we take into account the agricultural and industrial footprint of our water consumption through goods and services, that figure rises to 7,200 litres per person per day on average – yikes!
It is estimated that the total volume of groundwater reserves has decreased by 20% over the last 20 years. Do the maths and you will see where we are heading. A civil war over access to fresh water this century.
Drinking water, one of our basic needs, is not abundantly available from the tap in most countries, as shown in Figure 8A below. The majority of people in the world depend on plastic bottles imported into their community or the communal well in the village for access to drinking water, which makes these people dependent on the cleanliness of the underground water tables or the upstream river stream, or on the supply of bottles from private companies or public services.
Figure 8A: Where tap water is potable
Most of our freshwater consumption is used for sanitation, agriculture and industry. Projections to 2050, taking into account climate change and extensive freshwater use, show that many countries are at risk of freshwater scarcity, particularly in the Middle East, the Mediterranean region and the lowest latitude countries of the southern hemisphere, as shown in Figure 8B below.
Figure 8B: Projected water scarcity by 2050
Fresh water resources declined by 60% between 1962 and 2018. Meanwhile, according to the United Nations, global demand for fresh water is expected to increase by 50% between 2017 and 2030. you can see where this crossroads is leading: In the coming decades, we may face the risk of entire regions of the world losing access to fresh water or having to make a tough choice about water use: agriculture VS industry VS domestic use. We have already recently seen massive restrictions on freshwater availability in Barcelona, Ko Samui and Montevideo. This trend is likely to become more severe and widespread in the coming decades.
Only 3% of the world's water is fresh (non-salty), and about 1% of the world's water is fresh and geographically accessible to humans.
Demand for fresh water will accelerate with the growth of electronics, semiconductors, batteries, cooling AI data centres, electrification of things that require more material footprint overall, fracking shale oil, etc. Industry will require more water and chemicals to be refined per capita over the years.
The Caspian Sea, which covers a vast area of 370,000 km² and connects five countries, has seen its water level drop by two metres and its surface area by about 10% over the past 20 years. This has put the ports and major trade routes between China and Europe at risk of being cut off in the near future.
Figure 8C below shows how the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, once the world's fourth largest lake, has lost about 85% of its water in the last 60 years.
In 1959, officials in the Soviet Union decided to divert river flows feeding the Aral Sea to the deserts of Central Asia, where the water irrigated farms supplying a growing cotton industry. As the cotton blossomed, the lake's level dropped. Today, only slivers remain of what was once the world's fourth largest lake.
Figure 8C: The shrinking Aral Sea
10% of industrial water use is related to concrete production. Cement used in concrete also accounts for 8% of total global CO2 emissions, which is a staggering number, more than all aviation and deforestation combined.
Tesla's new lithium processing plant in Texas, which will purify lithium from ore concentrate to battery grade, is expected to consume up to 2000 tonnes of water per day in a drought area (Corpus Christi) with water supply problems and restrictions already in place for residential use. This can only end badly, either for the residents or for the Tesla factory, probably both.
Tesla's new car factory in Grünheide, Germany, uses 1,200 tonnes of fresh water from the groundwater underneath the surface every day. This equates to a cube of water measuring 10 metres on each side, which is no longer available for trees, plants, agriculture and other industrial needs. In a decade or two, the entire area will be deprived of water. While Tesla will simply relocate its factory, the surrounding people, businesses and trees will suffer in silence.
I have nothing against Tesla. Any other company would be in the same position. Any industry dealing with the processing of raw materials (e.g. electrical batteries) simply consumes tonnes of fresh water.
Without fresh water, you don't have crops, you don't have agriculture, you don't have livestock, meat or milk, you can't make semiconductors, you can't make electric batteries, you can't make data centres and the Internet... There will be really tough choices to make in the arbitrage of fresh water use. Also, generating electricity from solar panels and windmills is much more water-intensive than gas-fired, coal-fired or nuclear power plants. The same goes for an EV compared to a classic ICE car.
AI data centres and GPUs (the microchip or processing unit responsible for computation) consume 10 times more energy than cloud data centres. Around 40% of the energy supply for AI data centres is used for cooling chips and equipment. Cloud computing data centres consume between 0.05 and 0.30 GW, whereas modern AI data centres consume between 1 and 2.5 GW. We expect technological improvements to GPUs that will increase the power consumption of AI data centres to around 10 GW by 2030.
Figure 8D: AI data centers energy consumption growth
The demand for electricity and water for cooling is growing fast. Modern GPUs are so powerful that the air fans or air conditioning systems used in cloud computing data centres are insufficient to cool down powerful AI data centres. They require liquid cooling via water. Large hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and X AI have reported consuming 55 billion litres of water for cooling US data centres in 2023, a figure expected to grow two to fourfold by 2030. This water is sometimes sourced from regions experiencing water stress, which can lead to water depletion or scarcity, as seen in drought-prone states such as Arizona or Texas.
We cannot avoid AI consuming electricity and fresh water for cooling. A simple Google search, which provides a list of web pages as an answer, consumes 10 times less energy than an AI answer and is no longer accessible as every Google search is now automatically answered by the Gemini AI bot. AI will spread across social media, software and industries — it's a race and nothing can stop it. Even the additional electricity supply required by AI data centres requires water to operate, like coal- and gas-fired power stations and nuclear power stations.
The rise of AI data centres will exacerbate this trend of fresh water scarcity in the coming years. Microsoft has doubled its datacenter water consumption between 2020 and 2023, to around 8 million tonnes per year in 2023. Google consumed 21 million tonnes of water in 2023. Imagine that: That's 50 cubes of water, each 10m x 10m x 10m, consumed every day in evaporation to cool Google's data centres. And the trend is expected to explode in the coming years with the use of AI.
I believe that access to freshwater will become a much bigger issue than carbon emissions, global warming or natural disasters, with a much faster impact.
- Separating the good and the bad
With all the mess and danger of pollution, our natural inclination is to fight to stop all chemical pollution and carbon emissions. The reality is that nothing we do, eat, consume and enjoy in our modern world is possible without the side effects of pollution. You can't have the final goods and services you enjoy without the industrial waste. People may feel better about themselves and give themselves a good conscience by believing that they are consuming only the good things in life and causing no harm or degradation, and that they are caring for the planet, but all people indirectly and ineluctably produce the things they dislike. You cannot have an iPhone without mining cobalt in the Congo. You cannot drive a car without emitting CO2 from the steelworks. You cannot fly to Bali without burning kerosene. It may feel comfortable to think that there are good things and bad things in the world to give us a sense of value and worth. But in reality the goods and services that we like, that make us feel good, are directly linked to consequences that we dislike and feel bad about. We cannot avoid them.
If you like your smartphone, you have to embrace and accept the whole supply chain that goes with it. If you like the convenience of food in your supermarket, you need to accept the asphalt that makes the roads convenient for trucks and cars. If you like your car, you have to appreciate steel production and plastics. My point is that it is wrong to divide everything into two categories: the good and the bad. One always goes with the other. We cannot have our comfortable lifestyle without all the chemical pollution and carbon emissions.
It's like a knife in the kitchen: Is it a good tool because it cuts vegetables, or is it a bad tool because you can stab and kill someone with it? Well, it's both, it's ambivalent, it depends on how we use it.
Figure 9: Likes and dislikes are connected
See Figure 9 above for a typical list of likes and dislikes and how they are actually related. Likes and dislikes are inseparable, like Yin and Yang or the 2 sides of a coin, you cannot have the likes without the dislikes. If you enjoy the "likes", train yourself to accept the "dislikes". Or, if you really hate the dislikes, you should hate all the likes that go with them.
The point is to be aware of the impact of your daily consumption, to be a conscious consumer. We cannot have all the good things and conveniences in our lives without harming the planet. The good and the bad go together. Trying to eliminate the bad without abandoning the good, without sacrificing our lifestyle, is simply impossible and against every law of nature. That's why all the narratives of net-zero, 'clean' technology, zero-emission vehicles, 'renewable' energy, a dematerialised economy based on services, these narratives are pure lies that feed our consciousness so that we continue to consume in the belief that our impact on the Earth is neutral. But everything has a negative impact. If we want to be planet neutral, we have to live like in the Middle Ages. There is no in-between, no world of convenience, comfort and abundance without massive pollution.
We're the only species trying to repair the world. The other species on the planet are focused on surviving, reproducing and making the most of their short lives. What exactly are we trying to repair? Perhaps the urge to fix our already ultra-convenient life says more about us humans than it does about the world itself.
Perhaps this is a sign that we need to copy the other species: Make drastic sacrifices, impose a simple, near-poverty lifestyle, cut off all these luxuries and conveniences, reduce the social support system, live minimalistically, return to a survival mentality, return to reproduction. Perhaps we should go back to behaving like other species.
We want to be strong and fast like a lion, but we don't want the tragic reality that we have to eat the gazelles as a physical necessity before we can be strong and fast. We shall simply accept that we will always pollute, destroy, think selfishly, and harm the environment, the gazelles of our world, by loving our convenient and machine-assisted powerful lives like lions.
- Climate change and environmental pollution is our destiny
Many people assume that climate change and environmental pollution are direct consequences of population growth. While this is true, population growth over the last 200 years is not the primary driver of climate change. It is our high level of consumerism and overshoot — our way of living — that is most responsible for the impact on the climate and degradation of the biosphere. There is a simple way to understand this: There are about 8 billion people on Earth today. If we were all Africans living like the average African, we would consume and pollute 6 times less. However, if we were all European and living like the average European, we would consume and pollute 4 times more. The issue is not the global population, but industrial living standards and modern lifestyles. Yes, the coming population collapse will have a slightly positive effect on climate change, but only marginally and after 2050, once the adult population has declined significantly in the industrialised world, and will be minimized and counterbalanced by the improving living standards of Africans and people in other developing countries in Asia and the Middle East over the next decades. By 2050, many irreversible thresholds and feedback loops will have been triggered (e.g. permafrost and polar ice melting, rainforests turning into savannah, and coral reefs dying due to ocean warming), regardless of the total population on Earth.
Climate change is our inevitable, carved-in-stone destiny. Climate change is a very bad outcome, everyone knows that, but the alternatives are worse.
People genuinely want to stop the polar ice caps from melting, but not at the cost of living in poverty. Everyone wants to stop water pollution, but not at the expense of affordable food. People want more trees and flowers, but not if it means stopping travelling, eating meat and using cars. Everyone is against soil pollution, but no one would sacrifice the internet to get there.
You can take any of today's environmental symptoms and they are always linked to causes that people are unwilling to give up, whatever the consequences.
Climate change and pollution are the result of a system and a way of life that people are not prepared to give up at any price. That's why global warming and chemical pollution have continued to increase over the last few decades, despite all the scientific reports, despite people's awareness and even willingness to do something about it. We have not slowed down our environmental impact in the last 2 decades and we will not slow down in the next 2.
In short: Human nature and human psychology hasn't changed in centuries and won't change any time soon. Our instincts drive us towards more comfort, more consumption, more accumulation of stuff, better lifestyle and never being satisfied with our standard of living. As long as fossil fuels are the most dense, cheap and convenient to transport and use, we will continue to use fossil fuels to satisfy our psychological needs and our human nature, with all the consequences for global warming and environmental pollution.
Figure 10A below is showing the world consumption of fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas combined) over the last 60 years until 2024 included.
Figure 10A: World consumption of fossil fuels
Can you see any signs of an energy transition? Has there been any slowdown recently since 2020? Can you observe any changes in the trend? No! We keep consuming more and more fossil fuels. If solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, COP summits and 'green' investments were having an impact, we would see the curve flattening or going down. But it's not even flattening, it's still growing. Where is the "transition" ?
Some people claim that fossil fuel consumption is growing only because the total population is growing. This is false, as the growth in fossil fuel consumption outpaces population growth: On a global scale, fossil fuel consumption has grown by 265% since 1965, while the world population has grown by only 145%. Since 2000, fossil fuel consumption has grown by 50%, while the population has grown by 31%. Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, when electric technologies were mature and the deployment of 'green' technology was in full swing, fossil fuel consumption has grown by 8%, while the population has grown by the same amount. This shows that 'green' technologies do not impact our hydrocarbon consumption per capita on a global scale.
Figure 10B below shows that the growth of low-carbon sources (nuclear, wind, solar and hydroelectric power) over the last 40 years has been completely insignificant and irrelevant compared to the volume and growth in fossil fuel consumption. This includes the last 5 or 10 years, during which time the narrative has been that the supposed transition away from fossil fuels has begun thanks to "renewable" energy and electrification. This is nonsense and a big lie.
Figure 10B: Low-carbon sources are insignificant and irrelevant
As a result, despite claims of decoupling or replacing fossil fuels with renewables, global CO2 emissions continue to increase as a result of burning more fossil fuels every year, as shown in Figure 29 below. The impact of global warming on issues such as fresh water scarcity, ocean acidification, biodiversity, melting ice, wild forest fires and more frequent and violent natural disasters such as floods, droughts and hurricanes will intensify in the coming decades.
Figure 10C: Global CO2 emissions
Anyone who believes in the energy transition and electrical technology as solutions to decarbonisation and climate change is simply a fool, a blind optimist and a utopian. Climate change will continue and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We should invest in adapting our lives to the environmental impact rather than promoting technologies that won't save the planet, not even affect our trajectory. The green transition is simply a waste of money and a change of dependency in terms of suppliers, moving from reliance on oil- and gas-rich countries such as the USA and Qatar to reliance on countries that dominate the processing of raw materials, such as Chile, Australia and China, as well as electronic and electric technology superpowers such as China.
Moreover, everything we have, use or consume is made of material and energy. You need to mine the material with its environmental impact, and you need energy to refine, process, manufacture, transport, assemble and operate all the infrastructure and stuff we use, and chemical pollution is the side effect that is unavoidable. That's why chemical contamination and global warming are inevitable as long as humans live on this planet and until we run out of fossil fuels.
Earth, fauna and flora living in harmony...
and then there are us, Homo sapiens
The sad reality is that any country or region that attempts to reduce its environmental impact will become significantly poorer. More intermittent wind and solar power on the grid makes electricity bills more expensive for consumers, reducing their purchasing power. Strict environmental regulations simply make businesses less competitive and force them to move to countries with lighter regulations, resulting in job losses and loss of tax revenue for countries with high environmental standards.
Turning simple fossil-burning machines and factories into complex electric ones might reduce direct carbon emissions, but increases chemical pollution and raw material extraction, resulting in pollution elsewhere in a different form. Imposing a carbon tax simply increases consumer prices, reducing our purchasing power. Put simply, less energy consumption means less transformation, transport and added value of goods and services, making society poorer. Less energy consumed means less goods and services available. The fundamentals of physics are simple. Humanity has increased its living standards and purchasing power by a factor of 100 since industrial pollution began, and this was only possible through increased water and energy consumption, material extraction, as well as the increase in production of waste and chemical tailings. Reducing our environmental impact on a global scale would mean returning closer to the Middle Ages: poverty and the end of material abundance and physical convenience.
Unfortunately, becoming climate neutral — not only achieving net zero emissions, but also stopping the pollution of water and soil by chemical products — will simply not happen. Humans used to be climate neutral in the 18th century. 70% of the population worked in agriculture, and the working week was 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. There was no public healthcare, no public pensions, no paid holidays or sick leave, no cars or smartphones, etc.
People chose to change from an environment neutral and sustainable lifestyle to a environment detrimental lifestyle, on purpose, in order to have a more convenient life with better living standards, and we started consuming fossil fuels, extracting and using more raw materials, and, in the process, consuming more fresh water and releasing more toxic chemicals. We all want better lives, but this comes at the cost of more pollution. We can't have the best of both worlds. Everything we do, use or consume causes air, water and soil pollution: our streets, our electrical appliances, our means of transport, the modern food in grocery stores... All the goods and services we consume are produced at the expense of air, water and soil pollution.
Any technology or process that seems to reduce air pollution in one place increases water and soil pollution elsewhere. Solar energy, wind energy, eFuels, electric vehicles (EVs) and artificial intelligence (AI) are just swapping one problem for another. The idea that we have the governmental or technological ability to stop polluting is simply false and ignores how things are made and the bigger picture. We pollute because we want a better lifestyle. We have polluted more every decade for the last 200 years, and we will continue to pollute more in the coming decades. Fighting climate change and environmental pollution goes against human nature — it simply won't happen, because we all want better lifestyles, more conveniance and strive for better life standards.
The idea that climate change is caused by overpopulation is partially wrong. Obviously, when there were only 2.5 billion people in 1950, the human species emitted less than it does today with 8 billion people today, but the total population misses the key point:
Even if 80 billion people lived in sub-Saharan Africa today and no one else lived anywhere else, we would emit half as much CO₂ and pollute the environment half as fast as we do now. The problem is not necessarily the 8 billion people; it's the 2 billion in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia who have a lifestyle and approach to consumerism that generates 80% of emissions. The other six billion people barely affect climate change with their simple way of living. On average, a European emits about 10 to 20 times more CO2 than an average Sub-Saharan African. It's not the total population that's the problem, but our Western standard of living.
We have seen that the use of 'renewable' energy only adds to the energy mix and does not reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, which still power 80% of our world today. We are currently consuming valuable fossil fuel resources at an increasing rate until we simply run out of them. Oil is the least abundant of the three fossil fuels and its production is expected to start declining between 2030 and 2050. Natural gas and LNG, which are more abundant than oil, will have to replace oil for use in heating, electricity production and transport. However, natural gas resources and production are also expected to decline by the end of the century, meaning we will ultimately have to return to coal, the most abundant fossil fuel.
Figure 10D: The carbon pulse
- Conclusion
All the research on climate change and environmental impact points to the same conclusion: We are simply living in overshoot: We are consuming faster than ecosystems can regenerate, and producing waste faster than the Earth can absorb. The world has been in ecological overshoot since the early 1970s. 'Overshoot' means that the demand for biophysical resources exceeds what is available. Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is estimated to fall on July 24th in 2025. This means that, from July 25th onwards, humanity has already consumed all the resources that the planet can supply and all the waste that the planet can absorb in a year. As shown in Figure 11 below, this equates to humans currently consuming and polluting 1.75 times what the planet Earth can supply or absorb. In other words, we would need 1.75 planets to sustain our current living standards and consumption. Keep in mind that when the world average is 1.75, it is likely that Europeans and North Americans are overshooting by a factor of 10 rather than 1.75.
Figure 11: The world is in ecological overshoot since the early 1970s
Our target global warming limits of +1.5°C or +2°C by 2050 is already in the rear-view mirror. We are on course for +3°C average global warming and climate chaos this century.
Think about this fact: The weight of man-made things (cars, houses, etc...) in the world is now greater than the total weight of the living biomass, including plants, trees, animals, etc... We are an absolutely devastating strain on the planet.
Our society operates as a silo: we look for a solution to a given problem without considering the interaction with its ecosystem and how other parts of the society might suffer from that solution.
One example: In the UK in the 19th century, we were cutting down too many trees in the forest, and coal was seen as the solution to save the forest. But it had unintended consequences for the atmosphere.
Another example: We used to put asbest in building insulation to solve a thermal problem, but as a side-effect it gave cancer to people who sniffed it.
Another example: We used to put lead in petrol to solve a mechanical problem in the car engine, but it provoked health hazard to our nervous systems and bodies, and to the soil. All in all, it was a disastrous solution.
Nowadays, if our only environmental concern is CO2 emissions, we can implement solutions such as windmills, solar panels, electric batteries and electric cars to reduce carbon emissions, but these solutions will exacerbate some other environmental and biodiversity issues: it will negatively affect fresh water consumption and soil contamination.
The overwhelming focus on CO2 emissions overshadows other pollution problems such as chemical residues in the soil, fresh water consumption and loss of biodiversity.
The inconvenient truth is that any large-scale attempt by a country to drastically reduce carbon emissions and environmental impact leads to an increase in emissions and environmental degradation elsewhere, as well as a rise in the cost of living for the population attempting to reduce climate change, making people poorer. For example, the cost of electricity for end consumers increases when solar and wind penetration is high. Europe is witnessing this truth unfold since 2015. I wish it were otherwise; I wish we had working solutions involving carbon capture, hydrogen and the electrification of everything that were economical and had a low environmental impact throughout the entire life cycle. Unfortunately, however, most solutions to climate change at large scale are making local people poorer and simply polluting elsewhere. This is the painful reality on a global or European scale.
Our society, based on growth, corporations and profit, sees the earth as a free and unlimited resource. Private companies will internalise the gains and privatise the profits, but externalise the losses or socialise the environmental costs.
If we were to account for all the damage and repair or contain all the environmental externalities of private corporations, the cost of life would probably triple. By allowing environmental impacts to go unchecked, we are minimizing the real cost of production and shifting the price to pay further down the road. Floods, droughts, food crop volatility, mass migration, the cost of rebuilding from natural disasters will keep inflation high for decades to come before we face the inevitable Earth limits and collapse of our overshoot and resource-extraction society.
The only real solution to our environmental crises, of which climate change is only a part, is a dramatic reduction in energy consumption. No amount of renewable energy or technological innovation will get around this hard truth: we need to use far less energy and to consume less, period.
But let's face it, it's not going to happen voluntarily: Even if we triple renewables capacity and double efficiency over the next five years, it will only serve to fuel growth and consumption. Our growth-obsessed society simply can't make the hard choices or accept the drop in living standards required for a much lower energy or renewable-based economy.
Despite clear evidence that global decarbonisation is failing, we're repeatedly told that using more renewables sources and buying more electric cars is the answer. It's a cynical delusion, completely unsupported by the data. All it really does is funnel more public money into the hands of the same corporations that have been exploiting consumers for decades, while creating the illusion of progress.
Climate change is not linear, neither is collapse. The Amazon creates its own rain through humidity, but if you cut down enough trees or raise the temperature, it can shift from rainforest to savannah. Soil depletion, water stress and climate volatility do not follow straightforward linear projections based on past measurements. Ecosystems fail abruptly, not gradually. Places that are risky now are becoming uninhabitable as baselines shift. Ice sheets, permafrost and ocean circulation shifts, along with other Earth systems, do not always move slowly. Feedback loops can accelerate once thresholds are crossed. Complex systems fail non-linearly, and that is the real danger: An acceleration in the impact of climate change.
We are currently at +1.4°C and are definitely heading towards +3°C by the second half of the 21st century. Few scientists consider 3°C to be manageable. The planet won't end at 3°C, but the world as we know it and modern societies will. At 3°C we lose half of the species on earth. At 3°C, whole regions will experience constant heatwaves exceeding 40°C, necessitating air conditioning to ensure human survival. However, A/C is currently unavailable in 95% of homes, and we will regularly face this kind of challenge. Outdoor labour will become impossible. Grid failures will result in mass casualties. Many regions of the world will not escape. Tens of thousands will die each year in heatwaves. The World Bank already projects over 200 million internal climate migrants by 2050 under more favourable scenarios. At 3°C, this figure will increase to at least half a billion, maybe a billion climate migrants. While most movement will be internal, cross-border flows will drive nationalism and conflict. At 3°C, extinction accelerates, forests collapse and water stress worsens. The release of methane from permafrost isn’t just a centuries-long process. The Atlantic overturning circulation is weakening already. A sharp slowdown would alter rainfall patterns across Africa, South Asia and South America, affecting billions of people. Boundaries don't fail gracefully; they cascade. The idea that 3°C is manageable is fantasy. Three degrees above pre-industrial temperature means waves of heat death, clustered crop failures, migration shocks, unravelling ecosystems, and economic fragility. Not everywhere and not overnight, but relentlessly. This may be survivable, but only if we abandon our illusions. The real work lies in preparing for the descent: This means imagining economies that function with less, re-anchoring communities and local supply chains, restraining ourselves, living minimally, stopping the overshoot of consumption and adapting culturally to live within limits.
Unfortunately, self-restraint is not part of human nature. None of those necessary changes come naturally to us: we accumulate more and more possessions and privileges, envy others, always want more comfort and convenience, and externalise the environmental impact of our lifestyle so that we do not feel responsible for it personally. Even if we were willing to restrict ourselves, ageing populations combined with growing debt will limit our financial ability to adapt. We will have fewer financial resources and less time to act in the face of increasingly negative climate consequences. This is an impossible challenge to overcome, especially on a global scale. We will not deliberately lower our lifestyle or reduce our environmental impact, so climate change is our destiny. Unfortunately, nature must force us to restrain our overshoot. This can only be achieved through poverty, lack of purchasing power, and diminishing access to resources.
Climate change is an inseparable by-product of our man-made, convenience-driven society. Believing that climate neutrality, net-zero and 'renewables' can solve global warming is ignoring the fact that most of our energy consumption cannot be electrified on the scale that modern civilisation demands. It is ignoring density, intensity, storage and dispatchability, transportability, intermittency, scale and material inputs. Eliminate fossil fuels and it's not just emissions that are lost, but also capabilities and basic necessities. Modern civilisation would collapse without fossil fuels. Climate activists refuse to admit this, and the general public has been seduced by the idea of caring about the planet without making any effort. It's a true fairy tale that only children believe in. convenience of life, level of comfort, prosperity, and abundance of services.
The industrialied civilisation and its people have become detrimental to the Earth's nature and ecosystems. The only time people of our industrialied civilisation are in harmony with nature is when we die. Any progress, innovation, new technology or solution proposed by humans is only there to help us increase our consumption and standard of living without any sacrifice or effort on the part of humans.
The best thing you can do to combat climate change is literally to do nothing: Don't buy, don't consume, don't move unnecessarily. You want more biodiversity? Leave a field untouched for years and the plants and nature will take over. You don't want temperatures to rise? let Mother Nature grow trees on her own.
At our current rate of 3% growth in world GDP and 1% growth in fossil fuel consumption, we would increase our carbon emissions by a factor of 16 in 300 years, the Amazon rain forest would become a savannah, there would be no life in the ocean, we would reach +10°C or +15°C temperature rise, sea levels would rise by 7m to 10m, flooding 30% of current cities, so obviously humanity would suffer enormously and we would live in a very different kind of civilisation if we ever survive this scenario. This means that business as usual, the prosperity and growth since 1850 and the "drug" discovery of fossil fuel consumption, is going to end one way or another, whether we choose it or not.
If people want to protect the planet, the ecosystems and the environment, they will have to live in greater poverty and drastically reduce their standard of living. To believe that we can have the best of both worlds, a high quality of life and no damage to the environment, is simply utopian, misinformed, idealistic and irrational. But giving up our comfort and high standard of living is not going to happen on purpose, so the damage to the biosphere and ecosystems will most likely continue until our civilisation collapses.
Geopolitical and economic reality is overwhelming climate policies. When economies tighten, and it certainly will in the coming decades due to the demography, climate takes a backseat.
We should focus on adaptation and resilience now, because climate change and environmental degradation will continue and accelerate in the coming decades.
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- THE LAST DECADE -
December 2025
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