Read Falter this summer

A brief review of Falter by Bill McKibben (published in 2019)

The review by Jared Diamond in the New York Times counted the positive and negative chapters of Falter and warned that the quantity of negative chapters might not be so good for climate deniers. But I don’t think about them so I’m posting my own review (I’m a former banker - working on climate and finance since 2007 including testifying on Waxman Markey and publishing a paper on real option analysis showing the significant hedge value of negative NPV 450ppm policy).

I’ve read nearly everything by Bill Mckibben. A decade ago Eaarth was out and these phrases from Eaarth stand out to me - with each McKibben phrase is followed by a graph representative of how we’re doing:

Durable, Sturdy, Stable, Hardy, Robust - versus Growth (speed and complexity) or Sustainable (squishy)…transform our racehorse into a workhorse. Can we imagine smaller? That is the test of our time.

Ever since Reagan, the libertarian economists had insisted that self interest alone was enough to hold at bay the the possibility of collapse.

Why, after a certain point, does bigness spell trouble? For one thing, useful feedback diminishes as scale expands - you're too far away from reality.

So the workhorse remains the household at the median income level, the racehorse is corporate profits (ironically especially financials), consumption outracks median income (bigger debt burden for the median and/or more stuff for the high-end), and corporate concentration executed through anti-trust blind M&A (which adds yet more of the political power that Falter reveals).

The climate impacts of “self interest alone” are clear - the US replaces quite a bit of coal with gas - and renewables prove themselves but await their climate-necessary dominance.

But here’s the scary thing that Falter only hinted at - if we invest in oil & gas technology and discover higher reserves than expected (which has been largely the case with fracked resources) a recent Energy Information Administration scenario (referred to below as HOG-RT below, for high oil & gas resource/technology) could put US production at more than double that called for in the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario. And, no surprise, there’s a whole of money at stake in that choice - near term profit for drillers, long term risk of hardship for the poorest people in US and the world (the IPCC SR15 Report states it more bluntly - mortality): 

So should everyone read Falter? Absolutely! Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Context - Up to date on climate change, politics, technology (genetics and AI), humanity
2. Passion - you are reading a (great) writer who has put himself on the front line, globally
3. Narrative - I don’t recall a chart in this book, or even many numbers. He tells a story.
4. Challenge - We can sleepwalk into both pollution and technology that is existential yet avoidable; do we care enough to engage in non-violent protest to defend what we have? 

After reading Falter its hard to resist the call to non-violent protest - or at least to vote for humanity, thoughtfulness, and integrity by leaders who elected on those characteristics rather than self-interested cash.