An Essential Revolutionary Idea That Nobody Else Is Suggesting

I didn’t set out to revise my entire view of life and the world. I just wanted to end the obvious current crises, especially the climate crisis.

I tried to focus. I didn’t want mission creep. As I saw it, the world was and always would be troubled, but the climate crisis was something different, something unacceptable.

Something that would end life as we know it and doom future generations. All future generations.

As someone who enjoyed a normal life on a healthy Earth, I simply couldn’t let this happen. Yes, life is always challenging but our children and grandchildren and every future generation deserves better than a dying planet.

So I ruminated and tried to figure out what to do.

Climate Passion

I did a lot of reading. I was and have always been aware of my limitations. I’m not an expert on much. I certainly don’t have any great abilities in science or climate science.

But I can read, and if I can’t understand everything, I can find other people who know better than I do about various specialties.

There are climate scientists, experts who do research at a high level, and who’s work is peer-reviewed. They do real science. And while nothing humans do is perfect, science is simply the best way we have of understanding the world.

It seemed to me, and still seems to me, that to solve the climate crisis, we need to put the experts in charge — not just as advisors, but at the decision-makers based on physics and biology and geology and the best information available. Applying the thinking of the best minds on Earth for dealing with this crisis — THAT’s what we need to do.

No politicians. No businessmen. Scientists — assisted by whoever they request. But decisions shouldn’t be made based on a desire to maximize profits or political power.

I wrote something called A Climate Declaration — a tightly written summary of my proposal. I urged that we apply the best expertise we have to deal with the crisis and treat it seriously — as an actual crisis.

I still agree with this, but I have done further thinking which took a turn I never expected.

Other Reading and Experiences

I read a lot. I’m an introvert and reading has always been one of my favorite activities. I recall only a small portion of the books I’ve read, but certain books make a huge and lasting impression.

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber — which I bought because the title amused me — was one of those special books. Graeber persuasively establishes that most jobs are useless and wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared.

I feel certain he’s right. I recommend the book. You can draw your own conclusions (indeed, I think you should), but Graeber’s argument is a powerful one.

Meanwhile, I was still wrestling with the climate crisis. What could we do in the 2020s when the crisis is so advanced? We still weren’t doing anything meaningful about the crisis. Nations would sign papers and then violate the agreements. And, even if followed faithfully, the agreements were insufficient to meet the severity of the crisis.

We weren’t doing enough. Worse, it was hard for me to imagine that we could do enough. We have a worldwide civilization that’s grounded in fossil fuels. Alternative energy is impressive and could replace most if not all of our fossil fuel energy.

But not very quickly. We started too late and moved too slow. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. I’d love to be proved wrong, but each updated report by the climate scientists had us crowding planetary limits and, in some cases, exceeding them.

It seemed to me that we didn’t have the time to meet the crisis. We were doomed.

Or perhaps not.

Our Best Bet Has Additional Benefits

I’d heard of the degrowth movement. The idea that civilization needed to shrink and get by with less. I’m not sure what I thought about it, but I certainly felt that it was motivated, in part, by anger at humanity — possibly a justified anger.

Degrowth seemed to demand that humanity suffer for its sins. And even though it didn’t seem to me to be a religious movement, the morality behind it struck me as Old Testament biblical.

It didn’t appeal to me and I gave it little thought.

I thought about the world and the role of work. People were spending their lives, mostly, in useless jobs. Or perhaps it was worse than that.

Because every job takes a toll on the environment, on the world.
Commutes. Use of fossil fuel energy. Producing various products that end up in landfills. We are talking about a gigantic system of planetary abuse and waste. All for producing a profit, a profit that mostly goes to a handful of undeserving people — the people who DON’T even do the work.

Of course, this is largely an old idea. Exploitation of workers by capitalists or dictators or communist parties or some other elites. Hey, pharaohs did it too, thousands of years ago.

But something in this thinking was new — at least new to me.

If most jobs and most production was unnecessary, actually useless or even destructive — then why not stop doing it? If, say, 80% of work and production was eliminated, what would happen to fossil fuel use? And other environmentally damaging activities?

They would plummet. Overnight. Unlike building infrastructure for alternative energy — which is a big job that would take decades — NOT doing things can happen very quickly.

Look at what happened during the pandemic. We realized quickly how much work wasn’t “essential.”

Practical Matters

Of course, if we stopped working, except for producing food, medicine and a few crucial supplies, what would happen?

The world economy would collapse. But…so what? Do we care about an abstraction like “the world economy”? Or do we care about life and the well-being of people and animals and plants and the biosphere that sustains us?

We don’t need jobs. We need water and food and human companionship and time and sleep. Money? Irrelevant except in the current systems.

Do we keep working, protect “the economy” — and ruin the Earth and destroy life? Or do we ditch the idea of work as part of an economic system?

All kinds of objections come to mind, but really, those objections all fail. We have a clear choice. Perhaps there’s some other way to overcome this crisis, but the other ideas seem iffy to me.

Now, we still need scientists and experts. Even a giant change like ending work won’t solve everything. But it would give us a huge and immediate step in the right direction. It would buy us time. I don’t see anything else that could make as big a positive environmental change so quickly.

But there’s additional implications. The quality and experience of human life would change everywhere — for the better. I wrote it all out in an essay called “Work Is Absurd and the Economy Doesn’t Matter.”

But the core point is this: when 80% or more of our compulsory activity is ended, people suddenly have an enormous amount of time to live as they choose. Their time is mostly their own. They aren’t exhausted from commuting and being trapped in cubicles and factories all day. They don’t have psyches crushed by working for bosses who control whether they eat or starve. They don’t worry about bills and living paycheck to paycheck and the ever-present danger of poverty and homelessness.

We are talking about a fundamental change in the human condition. A beautiful one that is, perhaps frightening because it is new territory for us.

But it would be a very, VERY positive change. Like freedom for enslaved people after slavery was ended.

Very much like that. What are we waiting for?