This is our overarching thesis which is an argument for sustainable progress via abundant computation and clean energy.

Forward to nature was written in conjunction with Charles Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Project, which aims to continue the latter day work of his grandfather, J. Robert Oppenheimer in attempting to avoid catastrophic conflict, focusing on energy.

PDF version here.

Intro

Our house, the Earth, is on fire. To extinguish it we need to prioritize and act. Current political views on both Left and Right are either holding back action through climate change denial or ideological rejection of re-prioritization such as low carbon nuclear power. Longer term, these ideologies are more destructive still. Either assuming a view that we can continue to destroy ecosystems in the name of growth, tarmac the earth and deplete the seas without consequence or that we can reduce growth and progress to create a permanent global recession and not find ourselves sitting in a forest around a candle with lowered life expectancy and increased inequality. Meanwhile climate change continues and we may no longer produce or apply the right knowledge and tools to fight it.

This manifesto is designed to show, from physics principles, that energy consumption is not the problem, it is the solution, provided it is the right type of energy; why waste is part of life and can only be managed, not eliminated; that what we mean by growth is increased knowledge and that only a true understanding of how natural systems work will enable us as a species to protect our environment.

Active solutions require a radical shift in mindset and focus, neither as a passive inhabitant of a benign natural environment nor a bulldozer through it. We are a tiny way towards this goal as we cannot instantly predict the behavior of three components of a system, let alone the billions in the natural environment. But there is a path to do so and it is a utopian, positive view of culture and technology balanced by economic and political realism. This balance creates what architecture critic Reyner Banham called ‘a well tempered environment’. If architecture creates shelter which balances the hot and cold of the seasons to create a well tempered environment, we need to be architects of our planet in sustainable, organic and natural harmony rather than bare concrete conquerors. We need to move forward rather than back to nature.

Charles Oppenheimer and David Galbraith, 2024

1. Accept that climate change is real and an existential threat to humanity.

1. Accept that climate change is real and an existential threat to humans

The Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 1.1°C since the late 19th century. Because this is a seemingly small number on average and because we as humans did not evolve being able to comprehend the impact of small averages on a planetary scale, the catastrophic impact of such a number is hard to communicate. Similarly, we have evolved as a species to survive in a narrow band of climate stability whose envelope may have changed.

Current and projected climate change will create far more frequent extreme individual weather events such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts which in turn will destabilize terrestrial and marine ecosystems and human communities. These weather events will create secondary effects that may be difficult to prove are a direct result of global warming, such as conflict and mass migration of human populations.

Furthermore, warming itself triggers feedback loops which make warming worse still, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost. If left unchecked, these could lead to runaway climate change, making parts of the Earth uninhabitable. We will need to have progress and new capabilities required to tackle these feedback loops.

2. Accept that climate change is provably caused by human energy use

Climate denial has shifted from outright claims of it not being real to ‘it is real but natural’. Multiple lines of scientific evidence prove beyond reasonable doubt that climate change is caused by greenhouse gas increases which are proven to have come from human activity. For example natural factors like solar radiation have been stable or even declined slightly over the same period that global temperatures have risen.
In 1967 Manabe & Wetherald found that increases in CO₂ from fossil fuel use would lead to warming in the troposphere (lower atmosphere) but cooling in the stratosphere whereas if changes to solar activity were the cause of temperature increase, the stratosphere would also warm. The stratosphere has now been observed to be cooling, ruling out changes to solar activity as the cause of global warming.

Atmospheric samples show increases in carbon isotopes from fossil fuels that are not present in natural sources, ruling out natural sources for observed increases in greenhouse gasses.

Radiative forcing models also demonstrate that only human factors, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, can account for the amount and pattern of warming observed.

Detailed climate models that include both natural and anthropogenic factors have only been able to replicate observed temperature changes when human activities are included.

3. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions not energy consumption

This is perhaps the most controversial of all the items in this manifesto, but it is the key statement. It goes against conventional wisdom of much environmental policy which has focused on efficiency and reducing consumption, for historical and cultural reasons, yet it is the simplest to understand and demonstrate to be true.

Energy produced by humans creates emissions which trap all energy longer (of which the human portion is a very small proportion compared to sunlight), warming the planet.

The Earth consumes more than 6500 times more energy than humans, via sunlight. Sunlight hitting the Earth is energy consumption by the Earth just like the energy consumed by life on it. The logic of reducing human energy consumption is it reduces heat and emissions which in turn reduce global warming. The heat, however, is so tiny (more than 6500 times less) compared to that from sunlight to the point that cutting back on its use makes no meaningful difference as the sun will continue to shine.

Greenhouse gas emissions from a portion of this energy consumption, on the other hand, don’t just amplify the effects of our heat production but amplify it for all sunlight and future sunlight energy too. The effects of consuming the wrong type of energy are millions of times more damaging than the benefits of consuming less energy as a rule.

We go further, here to point out that consuming more energy, providing it is low emission, can actually be slightly beneficial.  Environmental policy should be: “reduce emissions to reduce global warming”, not “reduce energy consumption”.

A simple model of the Earth’s energy system is that the sun warms the planet and waste energy is re-radiated into space by the warm, infra-red glow of the Earth (visible when the sun isn’t reflecting off it). Burning fossil fuels, or using energy in a way that releases greenhouse gasses (such as in cement production) traps waste energy by making the sky look opaque to infra-red light and as a result it makes sunlight create global warming.

Once the greenhouse gasses are present, all of human energy consumption contributes less than 0.0154% (6500 times less) to global warming compared to sunlight. Furthermore, not all of that human energy use is an issue, because some of it is sunlight itself. If all the world’s energy were solar, then aside from the reflectivity of panels,  it would have no contribution to global warming as it would merely be switching it from warming the land or sea to warming a panel to create electricity.

To illustrate a point, consider the following thought experiment. If we were to increase the total energy consumption of humans by thousands of times, throwing away insulation and energy efficiency measures and ‘wasting’ as much energy as we could, providing it was solar (and the panels were roughly the same reflectivity as the earth, i.e. don’t put them in Antarctica) we would actually slightly reduce global warming.

To understand this, consider two laws of physics, the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics: energy is conserved and entropy increases, respectively. The Earth is an open system, it receives sunlight in the form of high energy (equivalent to high average temperature) photons, this warms the Earth till it reaches a steady state and photons are re-radiated or ‘wasted’ out into space at exactly the same rate of energy output as the energy in, so the First Law (energy) is conserved. But entropy (less usable energy) must increase, so the photons have to be at a lower average energy and because they are lower energy there have to be more of them to preserve total energy.

This is exactly what happens in the real world: the sun shines high energy photons on Earth and twenty times more are re-radiated into space, based on the cooler surface temperature of the Earth than the sun.

But now consider what happens in this model if we introduce a machine (low entropy) that can use some of that sunlight energy to do useful things (low entropy), this entropy reduction has to be balanced by an increased amount of waste energy and so even more photons are radiated out into space at lower entropy. The low entropy machines lower the average temperature of the Earth.

Animals and trees and human civilization and fuel are lower entropy, so in absence of other effects like greenhouse gas emissions, increased energy use (from trees growing, animals running around or machines creating usable energy) actually lowers the temperature of Earth via higher entropy heat emissions.

The amount it lowers the temperature is irrelevant, however, compared to the amount that greenhouse gasses can warm it, but because it shows.

4. Reduce pollution except where greenhouse gas emissions are a competing higher priority.

Pollution destabilizes and damages natural ecosystems whereas greenhouse gas emissions destabilize the climate as a whole. Since all natural ecosystems ultimately depend on a functioning planet and climate, emissions are the priority or there won’t be anything left to protect. Analogous to the fact that most insurance claims from fires are from the damage caused by the water used to put it out, unfortunately, fixing the climate may lead to some uncomfortable choices that make, say, funds channeled towards climate change a priority over threatened ecosystems. In the long term, however, if we don’t fix both, we are in trouble.

Environmentalism predates the climate emergency and as a result, quite rationally, protecting the environment typically meant protecting fragile ecosystems from human exploitation and pollution. However, this has led to confusion when climate change mitigation became paramount, because lumping them together can create conflict of interest. For example, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it is not a pollutant. Conversely, nuclear fission energy does have a non-zero risk of creating individual, catastrophically polluting events (even if less polluting on average than coal), but it does not emit greenhouse gasses. For this reason, environmental policy must be able to make trade-offs during a climate emergency, and accept that preserving the climate and protecting local ecosystems are sometimes separate and conflicting issues.

To further understand how to deal with pollution and greenhouse gasses we need to understand what we mean by waste. Waste is an essential requirement for life and all living things must create more waste than the energy that they consume, to stay alive and grow. Overall waste from living things and progress cannot be reduced or output in different forms (e.g. heat energy rather than physical waste), just managed. Not all waste is bad for the environment, solar energy successfully wasted into space or some fertilizers create no harm to the planet or natural ecosystems. We need to reduce the harm caused by some types of waste, however, focusing first on waste that harms the whole planet (greenhouse gasses) and then on individual ecosystems. Unfortunately, with an existential threat to the planet itself from greenhouse gas emissions, some potentially high pollution risk such as waste from  nuclear fission (although less polluting than fossil fuel use) may need to be endorsed to tackle climate change. Opposition to nuclear energy was somewhat rational before we knew we had a climate emergency, but now, nuclear energy is a pragmatic choice.

Since we cannot eliminate waste we need to focus on reducing waste’s harm rather than its quantity, reducing harm to the planet first and to individual ecosystems second.

5. Pursue economic growth as a means to achieve the goal of knowledge and wellbeing

It is difficult to solve the chicken and egg problem of which came first to stimulate the massive burst in human population, economic growth and longevity that accompanied the Industrial Revolution: abundant cheap energy or the requirement for it. The difficulty in separating the two shows the strong link between energy use and progress and the flywheel effect of their interaction. This is a situation which often arises when there is a burst of innovation, such as the web being developed simultaneously with the growth of the internet, rather than triggering it. The first uses of steam engines during the Industrial Revolution were to pump water from the mines that delivered the coal that powered them. Regardless of what came first, Increase in available energy correlates extremely strongly with economic progress and human expansion.

Even today, numerous studies have found a strong correlation between economic output and energy consumption, for example, a study published in the “Energy Policy” journal by Narayan and Smyth in 2009 examined the long-run relationship between electricity consumption and real GDP in a panel of 93 countries. The study found that higher levels of electricity consumption are associated with higher levels of GDP.

In terms of energy leading to economic growth leading to wellbeing, our vision of the industrial era is often dystopian, a world of dark satanic mills, as depicted by authors like William Blake. As a species, we undeniably lost some connection with the land and nature that the pre-industrial agrarian economy offered, but life then was ‘nasty brutish and short’ and while nasty and brutish are difficult to measure, short meant a life expectancy rising from 25 years at birth in the pre-industrial era, to around 80 today.

6. Understand energy, information and capital flows as an integrated whole

Energy flows across a temperature difference, information flows when there is a knowledge difference and capital flows when there is a perceived value difference. There are similarities between all three and viewing the world in terms of interconnected flows of information, energy and capital helps us create accurate models of incentives and outcomes for how energy can be used with the goal of ultimately delivering increased knowledge, in market economies.

7. Capital flows: actively align economic incentives

There is no planet B and markets or ecosystems based on competing selection need more than one participant for selection of the fittest to apply. As a result, overall climate related issues can’t operate in a true free market. 

There is also no second life, so there is possibly no game theory incentive to cooperate.

These two facts combined suggest active measures by governments that don’t require cooperation, to avoid a tragedy of the commons to play out on our planet as a whole. Such measures such as carbon tariffs automatically spread through tit-for-tat retribution but they can destabilize markets and relations between states. 

Converting one person’s low carbon use into into tradable assets for another to indulge in sin, such as carbon credits, may sound like the trading of indulgences, but they work to a limited extent. Other models may work better.

Carrot vs stick, incentives vs tariffs need to be applied pragmatically and most importantly, by creating a functioning market through regulation, actively participating in the market through nationalized industries is usually less efficient, with some notable exceptions such as the UK’s National Health Service.

8. Capital flows: create non prescriptive regulation

Artificial intervention in markets such as regulation needs to be adaptable to market changes which means they need to specify objectives and not exactly how they are to be achieved. Without this clean separation between those who set the rules and how to apply them, when changes happen, such as innovation which creates new capabilities, regulation will become obsolete.

We don’t fully understand the climate, which is why we have a climate problem in the first place, so regulation shouldn’t pretend to know how things should be achieved. Having aligned incentives to achieve something, tell people what needs to be achieved rather than how to achieve it. Specifying exactly how not only stymies creativity and doesn’t allow approaches to adapt to new data, but it can also result in unintended consequences which achieve the opposite aims. What we need to witness is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, this may not be achieved with merely focusing on carbon emissions as per the example of diesel cars and it certainly shouldn’t regulate exactly what should be done to reduce emissions as from the examples here, some have resulted in the opposite.

9. Energy flows: abundant clean energy on demand, anywhere, with real-time pricing

Energy needs to be accessible anytime, anywhere. This means it either needs to be portable or transmitted and on demand. For fossil fuels both are possible, but for renewables, the sun doesn’t shine day and night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the energy is converted into electricity, so requires wires or batteries.

Electricity grids are laid out in the industrial era model, more like a rigid hierarchy than an interconnected, fractal network like the internet, where there are a small number of utilities and where feed-in tariffs and supply costs are rigid and inflexible.

The grid needs to evolve to become more like the internet, a combination of central hubs and decentralized local power production and microgrids, all interconnected and allowing energy to be traded point to point from any supplier to any consumer, with real-time, individualized pricing.

10. Information flows: abundant compute capacity, on demand

Mitigating climate change and understanding natural ecosystems will require massive computational needs, because natural systems are complex ones, where complex has a precise meaning and implication.

In addition, providing that data centers use non greenhouse gas emitting energy, we will be able to increase global compute capacity by near unlimited amounts without it affecting global warming, for the reasons outlined in item 3.

What is a complex system? A watch mechanism looks complicated but it is not a complex system. Conversely, three bodies revolving around each other looks like a simple system but is technically a complex one.

Complex systems have a defined characteristic which is that they are computationally irreducible.  What this means is that a future state cannot be found simply  by plugging numbers into an equation unless the equation represents its state and behavior over one cycle and it is repeated over and over again. The position of the hands of a watch at any time in the future can be calculated by an equation. The position of three bodies can only be calculated by an algorithm, i.e. repeating the equation of motion over and over again from initial to end state.

Computation irreducibility means that modeling and predicting the behavior of natural systems in order to protect them will inevitably require massive computational capability.

11. Information flows: create recipes for solutions

Solutions need designs and design systems need a language and process.

Things created by recipes rather than by blueprints have characteristics that are similar to the natural world. DNA is often described as a blueprint for organisms, but it’s not — DNA is a recipe. There is a genuine connection between recipes and organisms, and recipes are at the heart of organic ‘design’, if we are to move towards a word where there is true understanding of nature and the difference between human-made and natural blurs. .

In natural, ‘organic’ systems, where the output is from a recipe, everything is slightly different but based on the same pattern and decoding these patterns allows recipes to be uncovered. Some of the patterns we see in the built environment, and how they relate to each other were famously described by Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language. Alexander’s patterns codify not only the objective attributes about form and function but the subjective and emotional ones. For example, one pattern explains how pools of light directly over tables in restaurants create intimacy. Because the patterns have diagrammatic and verbal descriptions, they codify the human made environment so it can be recreated, like recipes. Also, because the various patterns describe how they relate to each other, they form the syntax of a type of language — a pattern language.

The pattern language, recipe based design approach doesn’t just apply to buildings, but the wider environment and its model lends itself to solutions for how we construct systems, machines, buildings, infrastructure and cities that are more connected to the natural environment.

If blueprints were the design paradigm for the industrial era, then recipes are the equivalent for a post industrial one where systems are much more like natural ones.