Progress is visible everywhere

I think I have been too pessimistic about the overall direction of the world. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Here we have the world’s least developed countries. What do we see? Even in the least developed countries, the calories available per person have increased by 25% in the last thirty years. Look at where that line was during thirty years of relative climatic stability, then look at where it has been for the past thirty years, during accelerating warming.

These are the world’s countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, but they’re up 25% in thirty years. Now think about Europe, the United States, Japan, China, New Zealand. These are the world’s developed high IQ countries. The places that are least vulnerable to climate change.

I just don’t really see how climate change is going to cause a global catastrophe, if these are the numbers we’re dealing with. It still seems to me, given these real-world numbers, like somewhat of a long-term problem, instead of something apocalyptic within my lifetime. There will be more heat deaths in the years ahead, but deaths from extreme cold will go down too.

And let’s say things do get really nasty in the developing world. They’re not using fertilizer yet:

So there’s still a world to gain for Nigeria. Their yields are ridiculously low, because they make ridiculously poor use of their soils. Population growth is still a massive issue in sub-Saharan Africa, but I’m just not sure anymore that catastrophe is baked into the equation yet, especially considering that censuses in Africa are unreliable, nobody truly knows how many people live in Nigeria.

Let’s look at this graph again. I think it’s fair to say the world ended up with an RCP4.5 scenario. That’s just not something apocalyptic in my lifetime, unless James Hansen is right.

But let’s say Hansen is right. You would still need a scenario where we’re unable to cope with warming through geoengineering. Let’s say we settle on stratospheric aerosol engineering.

There’s no need to globally engage in stratospheric aerosol engineering, it could be focused on countries near the equator, that already receive sufficient light. As a result, I think the practical impact on crop yields would be modest. You only get issues with crop yields, if you try a Pinatubo scenario, where the sulfates are just spread pretty evenly around the globe. We would obviously deploy them from airplanes, concentrated above vulnerable areas of the planet, during periods of peak heat.

What I personally suspect is that with sufficient technological development, negative emissions become possible. Enhanced weathering is a real thing. There are minerals that react naturally with carbon dioxide in the air, but they’re mostly stuck in the ground. All you need to do is ground them up into small particles and strew them out across the world’s soils.

The EU currently has a cost on carbon of €75.36 per tonne of CO₂. Forecasts put the average EUA price at around €85/t for 2026, with consensus projections crossing €100/t in 2027 and heading toward €126/t by 2030.

How much does it cost to crush the rocks and strew them over crop fields? I asked Claude, here’s what Claude had to say:

At the current EU ETS price of ~€75/t and the realistic European ERW cost of $160–190/t, you’re looking at roughly a 2–2.5x gap between what ERW costs and what the carbon market currently pays. That’s not “almost within reach” — it’s a meaningful shortfall, at least in Europe at current scale.

The optimistic case for viability rests on three things closing that gap simultaneously: MRV costs falling as protocols mature (plausible — this is a software and methodology problem, not a physics problem), EU carbon prices rising toward the €126+/t consensus for 2030, and ERW benefiting from the agricultural co-benefit angle (liming, pH correction, nutrient release) which could allow some of the cost to be offset by reduced fertiliser expenditure rather than charged entirely to the carbon account. ERW is currently estimated to cost $160–180/t, with projections suggesting prices could fall below $100/t as the sector scales. If that happens while EU carbon prices rise toward €126/t by 2030, the economics start to pencil out — but both of those things need to happen.

The wildcard that makes this look most attractive is the use of mine tailings and quarry waste as feedstock. Using waste rock that has already incurred its extraction and grinding emissions can reduce total process emissions by 60–90%, making ERW dramatically more carbon-efficient and cheaper. In those cases the floor cost could be genuinely competitive within this decade, even in European conditions.

We’re not there yet, but it is within reach in the future. All that it takes is for people to collectively say: “Well this global warming issue is a bigger problem than I thought.” There’s entirely nothing preventing us in Europe from doubling the carbon price to 200 Euro per ton, this is perfectly achievable. Once you put the price on 200 Euro per ton, you have economically viable negative emissions technologies.

It’s easy to achieve a price of 200 Euro per ton. In fact, the expectation is we’ll have a cost of carbon of €200/t by mid-2030s, that’s essentially the consensus. In other words, by the mid-2030’s, we can realistically expect that we’re simply going to take crushed rocks and pour them over agricultural fields, to sequester carbon dioxide.

So I think climate change is essentially going to be solved by technology. Not even so much by new technologies, but by distributing the technologies we already have more equally. I’m abandoning the dark green mentality and moving towards a bright green perspective. I just don’t see anymore how we could screw up so badly that we won’t manage to get this thing under control. Essentially I’m discarding the “extinction rebellion scenario”, of “billions of human deaths”. I don’t see that as realistic anymore.