The Point of No Return

This evening I have been listening to one of Manda Scott's podcasts and thinking about my failure in trying to lead the village's planning working group, and about the cognitive dissonance underlying my Tricycle project. I suspect this essay will be a grim read; it's not well formed in my mind as I sit down to write.

One of the (many) books on my bookshelf which I have bought in recent years but have not read because I fear to read it is Clive Hamilton's Requiem for a Species, written now fifteen years ago. The purpose of the book was, I understand, to explain the psychological processes behind the denial of climate change.

The climate has already reached 1.5° of warming, although no official scientific committee has yet come out and said so. But we're already well past the point at which it can be stabilised at 1.5° of warming; rather, a terminal rise of at least 2.5° is now locked in. We are already beyond the point of no return, at least to the world as it was before.

Are we also beyond the point where a climate capable of sustaining complex life on earth can be salvaged? Well, probably. Of the sixteen tipping points outlined in the Global Tipping Points Report, ten have already passed their expected trigger threshold, and two more are expected to be triggered before we reach 2.5° of warming. But each itself has feedback effects for warming.

Furthermore, that is only the climate effects. While heating the atmosphere alone could be enough to bring an end to complex life on earth, it is not by any means the only global environmental crisis we face. The release of persistent compounds into the ecosystem is poisoning life everywhere. Other forms of pollution are also extremely widespread. Stresses from warming, from pollution, from over-development, are causing mass extinctions, also everywhere. We're also, by travelling so much, rapidly increasing the speed at which infectious diseases — both in ourselves and in the food species on which we depend — spread around the planet. The increasing centralisation of our agricultural seeds industries are creating in effect global monocultures, of food crops all of which are vulnerable to exactly the same pathogens.

Simultaneously, the increasing globalisation, homogenisation and instability of our economic systems threaten sudden severe economic disruption at any time, even if not directly triggered by climate or ecosystem failure events; and the rise of right wing demagogues in many countries, largely financed by the fossil fuel industry, threatens to set back action to tackle climate change even further.

As breakdown happens in one part of the planet, the people there are going to want to move. They're going to have to move, if it is possible to do so. As I've already documented in The Everyone Dies Event Class, this will probably happen first in the tropics, and we're already at the point where it can be expected to start to happen. As I documented in that essay, as that happens, the total area of arable land in the world also declines sharply.

So when we cross the 'everyone dies' threshold, even in quite small areas, not only will the entire populations of south Asia, central America, and much of Africa want to move and to move suddenly, there will be nowhere to grow enough food for them even if they are able to successfully move. We cannot grow crops in places where people cannot live, even if the crops could survive the climate.

Vast population moves, and widespread famine, are likely to be triggers for war. Desperate people will fight desperately, with any weapons they can find.

So yes. Whether it's just climate change, or climate change plus other factors, I believe that we are past the point where we can sustain an advanced technological civilisation — probably anywhere — into the twenty second century.

My friends and neighbours in this village have access to the same information on climate that I do. Many of them are activists of the climate action group of which I am a trustee. Earlier this week I dropped in briefly on a meeting of the eBike project sub-group. Of the five people there, three had come, one ten miles, two two miles each, in three separate fossil fuelled vehicles. All of them have bicycles; at least one has a personal eBike. The two who had come two miles had come from exactly the same place, each alone in their separate motor vehicle.

I say this not to shame my friends, but to illustrate the problem. Even climate activists, who have access to the information, who have some degree of understanding of the urgency of the situation, cannot bring themselves to face the change in their lives necessary to prevent catastrophe.

I turn seventy this coming week. I'm tired. I don't have any children to follow me. Is this, really, any longer, even my fight, if those who do have children, who may live to see the collapse (and die in it) won't fight it?

Back in 1980, I was a member of a working group working on a plan for Auchencairn for 2020. I can't remember what happened to that plan. I don't think it was ever completed. I suspect it was one of the projects which collapsed after the sudden, unexpected death of my friend Norval Rennie, who was then the village's foremost community activist.

Now, in 2025, I've been trying to lead a working group to produce a much less ambitious plan, a 'Local Place Plan' covering the years 2027-2037. That effort is now on the point of collapse because my sense of urgency has made me too difficult to work with, and I think the only way to salvage anything from the effort is for me to withdraw from it entirely. Which probably means we won't get a plan worth having, but is any plan worth having in the current state of the world?

Auchencairn won't be the first place to burn. Auchencairn is blessed with a cool, wet, climate, and if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current does collapse, as it's likely to, we'll have an even cooler climate. We have a low population and land which, although not the best for arable cultivation, will grow a wide range of useful crops, as well as plentiful fodder for animals. Auchencairn can easily grow more than enough food for its people.

We have plentiful wind; we have plentiful rain, and fast running burns (if not rivers). We're not short of energy. We have timber and stone for building, and sea shells which our ancestors used to burn to make mortar to build with. We even have — small, old, no longer worked — iron and copper mines. Auchencairn can survive, even if the British (and Scottish) states collapse entirely. We can settle some refugees from other places. There may still be a viable population living in Auchencairn (and in Galloway more widely) when the children of the village reach my age. A subsistence lifestyle on this land would not be dreadful.

When collapse happens, a small, out of the way, unimportant, remote place might possibly be relatively unaffected. It's possible.

It doesn't seem very likely.

I started the tricycle project at least partly as a defence against suicide. But it's partly, also, an experiment to see whether a practical vehicle which could transport a person and luggage can be built with the sort of resources the planet can now afford — or, to put it differently, which does not consume more than my fair share of the planet's resources.

But to do that, I've been planning to build it largely from carbon fibre. Carbon is plentiful in the environment, it isn't a toxic material in itself. But carbon fibre is not a naturally occurring form of carbon, and it's very strength makes small fragments mechanically toxic. I don't know about the long term breakdown of particles of carbon fibre. It will certainly oxidise — into gaseous carbon dioxide — if burned, but it may be very stable, and therefore long-term dangerous, unless burned. May be. I don't know.

The epoxy resins I propose to use are similar. 'Bio epoxies' — made from plant-based materials — are available. They have similar technical properties to non-bio epoxies. But is the resulting resin long term toxic? I suspect not. I don't know.

To build a vehicle using a technology which I believe may leave long term toxic detritus in the environment is dissonant with a desire to save a habitable ecosystem for generations to come. But if there are no generations to come, does this matter?

An alternative to carbon fibres would be to use cellulose fibres, specifically flax. Cellulose does not have long term mechanical toxicity; it readily biodegrades into harmless materials, which will be absorbed by new plants to make new cellulose. But it also doesn't have the extreme strength of carbon, and consequently a tricycle built largely of flax fibres would have to be substantially heavier; and for a vehicle which will be powered largely by my ageing muscles, that matters.

Similarly, balsa wood can be used as a core material instead of Nomex or polystyrene. Balsa, exposed in the environment, rots extremely quickly and would be pretty benign; but it's three times heavier than the synthetic alternatives.

If I believe there's a future, then it would make sense to build the tricycle with flax and balsa, even though that vehicle would be less good than one made of carbon and aramid: because the planet can afford for us to build lightweight biodegradable vehicles in large quantity, and can easily integrate and recycle the resultant wastes.

But if there's no future, does it matter?

It's because people generally believe that what they personally do makes no difference — doesn't matter — that we are in crisis. No one wants life on the planet to end. Even those who have no children of their own don't wish death on the children who live around us. If we all of us were to start being the change that we want to see in the world, we could stop pumping fossil fuel this year. It is possible.

It wouldn't stop climate change. We really are past the point of no return. But it might salvage a habitable biosphere, for at least some parts of the planet. Of which Auchencairn, in Galloway, would be very likely to be one.

I can't stop climate change by myself. I can't create a sustainable future for my village by myself. To do either of these things, everyone else needs to work together. But badgering people, being frustrated with people, being angry with people (and yes, I am angry — very angry — with people I know, and like, and respect, very much) doesn't motivate them to work together. My very frustration, my very sense of urgency, makes me a liability. I should stop.

I'm tired.

Tags: Climate, Galloway, Grief, Journal, Madness