Re: Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm, study says

[Hart Hagan]

The Guardian reports: Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm, study says

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/10/super-rich-assets-outsized-amount-climate-harm-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other 

I think they are obscuring the issues behind an overly complicated analysis.

Here's why.  

Ecological degradation is proportional to dollars spent, if you consider that 1) Dollars spent correlate almost perfectly with 2) Energy consumption and 3) Materials extracted, this according to people like Nate Hagens, Tom Murphy and Simon Michaux. 

• Thomas Murphy: “Physics and Planetary Ambitions” | The Great Simplification #18
• Dr. Simon Michaux: “Minerals and Materials Blindness” | The Great Simplification #19

If the correlation holds, then when you double the GDP, you double energy consumption and the extraction of materials from the farms, forests, mines and oceans of the world.

This is why it is a fool's errand to focus on carbon emissions or an energy transition. Carbon emissions will go up with energy consumption. Solar and wind require monumental amounts of fossil fuels. 

If "the economy" grows at 2.5% per year, then it doubles every generation, along with energy expended and materials extracted. 

Is there a scenario whereby you can double the GDP, energy and materials throughput every generation while reducing carbon emissions? 

I think not. And yet this is the central message of the climate movement.

Even if hypothetically solar and wind only require half the fossil fuels per unit of energy, if the economy doubles, then you're right back to where you were. 

Solar and wind require a great deal more land per unit of energy and a great deal more materials (e.g., metals like copper, nickel, aluminum, cobalt) per unit of energy. Besides which, an industrial scale wind or solar "farm" requires a steady "baseload" power supply in the form of coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydro power. Jeff Gibbs addresses this issue skillfully in Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans | A Film by Jeff Gibbs | Full Documentary

The futility of protecting the environment amid endless economic growth (as the economy is currently organized) is the single most underreported story in environmentalism, in my opinion. 

The solution is to tell this story consistently and persistently, and challenge the prevailing dogma that says it's possible to lower carbon emissions while growing the economy, as long as "energy is the economy" (Vaclav Smil), and as long as so much of our economy depends on the extraction of new materials from the earth in processes that are polluting and unsustainable.

What do you think?

We forget that the purpose of an economy is to meet the needs of people. It is supposed to serve us. Instead, we have become subservient to an "economy," which is really just a bunch of rules and preconceived notions that have been imposed upon us, quite apart from the needs of people or the planet.

Ecologist and filmmaker John D. Liu frequently points to the absurdity of an accounting system that values nature at zero. A forest has no value until you extract timber or clear the land for mining or crops or livestock. Nothing wrong with crops and livestock, but these are currently organized as extractive industries and as plantations producing products for export, anything but providing food for the community or the region or even the nation.

What's missing here is actual democracy. I submit to you that we've never seen actual democracy, because we the people have never been invited to design the economy, even at the local level.

If you would like to continue the conversation, please see the upcoming webinars on my website: Hart Hagan

On Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 2:19 AM 'Nancy Lee WOOD' via BLC Leadership Team <blc-leadershi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm, study says
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/10/super-rich-assets-outsized-amount-climate-harm-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Sent from my iPhone

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[Fred Jennings]

Thank you, Glenn. I'm glad you were able to find some valuable information from my Ecological Economics course materials. There is an incredible array of interesting readings that I assembled for that course.

I'm glad that it is still being used by some people. You have made my week!!!

Fred

On Thursday, June 11, 2026 at 03:24:27 PM EDT, Glenn Gall <glen...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, it's much much worse.

https://www.unep.org/resources/state-finance-nature-2026

" For every dollar invested in protecting nature, US$30 are spent destroying it. In 2023, US$7.3 trillion flowed into nature-negative activities—from fossil fuel subsidies to investments in high-impact sectors like utilities and energy. Meanwhile, only US$220 billion supported NbS [nature based solutions], with private finance contributing just US$23 billion." 

I've been reviewing some of Fred Jennings' materials, thank you Fred (copied on this post), from his voluminous Eco Economics BLC course a few years ago. 

A video of Bill Rees mentioned Ross Ashby, a cyberneticist, who is noted for the understanding of complex systems which can maintain variables as conditions change, and a system cannot regulate that complex system if it is not at least as complex as the system regulated. In our experience, we see that happening in the relatively simple GHG model of climate change, and realize that land use affects the more complex vegetative dynamics, moisture cycles, and energy flows, and therefore more relevant and impactful for moving forward than the GHG model alone.

But beyond that, Rees argues that climate change results from a system that creates many more issues due to resource extraction. Fred posted a number of papers that deal with that.

In https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-myth-of-human-progress/, Chris Hedges has this to say:

"Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship."

I am finishing my presentation on The Value of Regenerative to be delivered next week to the www.ussee.org biennial meeting. While I am encouraged by efforts using frameworks to leverage cooling in forests, and fully support them, Regen Ag has, for various reasons, potential to rapidly reduce heating by increasing vegetative cover and evaporative cooling. Though there will still be the spectres that Rees and Hedges have presented, Regen Ag does have a long list of benefits, but there are no illusions that the problem of extractive empire must not be overlooked . 

Glenn

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