The rich world has seen an incredible development on the back of enormous increases in mostly fossil fuel energy. A couple of hundred years ago, most available power came from backbreaking human work. Even by the end of the 1800s, human labor made up 94 percent of all industrial work in the US. Today, it constitutes just 8 percent.

If we think of the energy we use in terms of “servants,” each with the same work power as a human being, every person in the rich world today has access to 150 servants who clean, cook, drive, heat and do almost everything else for them.

Despite green protestations, rich people still get 79 percent of their energy from fossil fuels. Ending that will be hard, socially destabilizing and surprisingly ineffective.

To see how difficult, take the UN’s recent pronouncement that our Paris promises really mean reducing world emissions 7.6 percent every year this decade. The United Nations cheerfully notes this was almost achieved in 2020 with the global COVID-19 shutdowns.

But this year, we need twice the reduction, equal to two shutdowns. And three in 2022, ending with the equivalent of eleven global shutdowns every year from 2030. Economic models show this will cost tens of trillions of dollars annually.

It will also destabilize rich countries. They have seen their per-person growth rates decline — in Europe, it is now edging toward zero. As climate policies reduce growth further, this will threaten long-term social coherence as people realize their children won’t be better off and pensions wither.

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