The four equestrians of the transition apocalypse

Text editing software is great. It doesn’t just do your spellchecking for you, it helps with stylistic improvements and, it appears, with political correctness. Here’s a true story: a reference to “the Four Horsemen” in an energy article got a change suggestion for “the Four Equestrians” for political correctness reasons.

The article was one of mine. The temptation — impossible to resist. So let me tell you a story about the four equestrians of the transition apocalypse. They have been on the ride for a while, after all.

Once upon a time, people were told that it’s good to strive for a better life. Then they were told this better life is perfectly possible without hydrocarbons. It was important to get rid of hydrocarbons because they were destroying the planet and would render it uninhabitable at some point.

But that was okay because we had the means to prevent the destruction by moving to new sources of energy to power our civilisation. These sources were going to be cheaper, more profitable for the people investing in them, and all around better for everyone. Including sheep. Thus the Four Equestrians named Barefaced Lies, Hyperbole, Settled Science, and Climate Activism were born.

Equestrian #1: Barefaced Lies, riding a white horse

The amount of lies that the transition crusader army has produced is truly mind-boggling. The rate, at which they are being produced, has grown exponentially — that favourite word of EV adoption forecasters.

Unlike EV sales, however, where exponential growth is an illusion, the growth in barefaced lies being told about climate change and the transition appears set to continue on an exponential curve because there is really no other option since physical reality and human nature, not to mention nature-nature, continue debunking them at an equally accelerated rate.

Melting glaciers, sinking islands, the end of snow, you know the song. The singers need to keep singing louder and louder to drown out the actual world, in which glaciers are very much still ice, the Maldives are very much above sea level, and the northern hemisphere keeps having pretty snowy winters. Also, coral reefs are growing and polar bear numbers are on the rise, the cheeks.

Equestrian #2: Hyperbole, riding a red horse

Hyperbole is a precious stylistic tool that many men and women of letters count in their basic toolkit. Hyperbole can often evoke emotions more efficiently than other stylistic tools and, more importantly, it can evoke greater degrees of emotions.

This is how we get the highway to Hell that is our current way of life, according to one prominent well-intentioned road-paving expert. This is how we get global boiling, roasting, climate emergency, existential threat, apocalypse, and catastrophe all looming over us together, threatening the future of our species and the planet as we know it. Climate change is even causing earthquakes and the latest solar eclipse, too.

I admit I couldn’t be bothered to put in the quotation marks around the quotes but you all know the authors, of whom there are legions. And they are busy legions. They can’t afford not to be — the moment the exponential growth slows down and stops being exponential, the horse falls dead and trips the other three. Personally, I find hyperbole quite crass and quite dangerous because of its capacity to radicalise opinions and cause opinion wars.

Equestrian #3: Settled Science, riding a black horse

The science on climate change is settled. This settlement is in the shape of the statement that it was humankind that caused this change and it did it through the uncontrolled use of hydrocarbons as sources of energy.

So obviously it’s up to humankind to reverse the change it caused by its unthinking use of hydrocarbons. Also, this statement is not to be questioned, challenged or even silently doubted. This would be the equivalent of pulling out a bottom card out of a house of cards that is in the process of getting built.

Settled Science, like its biblical counterpart, carries a pair of scales, containing a heap of manufactured scientific consensus on one pan and a grain of scientific fact on the other. The rider keeps its finger on the scientific consensus pan at all times. If it lets go, the pan with the grain of scientific fact will send the consensus flying and we can’t have that. Not in the Boiled Roast Apocalypse.

Settled Science has changed the academic world in, I believe, less than two decades, creeping like a hidden disease across universities and research institutions, metastasising around dissenting voices, killing careers, and exsanguinating scientific thought. Hyperbole I have no truck with but extended metaphors are totally my thing.

Equestrian #4: Climate Activism, riding a pale horse

German youth gluing themselves to roads. British youth throwing soup over works of art. Swiss grannies suing the EU for climate change and winning. Children suing states and countries for the same and some of them winning, too.

Hordes of unwell people roam the earth stopping energy infrastructure projects that will make life easier for many, including themselves, by making energy supply more readily available and cheaper. It makes them feel well again or maybe for the first time ever. This is what sexual self-deprivation does to you.

Climate Activism kills minds about as efficiently as cyanide kills bodies although a bit more slowly. It turns people into zombies chanting “Fossil fuels kill” and “Carbon dioxide is a pollutant” before watering the house plant that exists thanks to carbon dioxide — like the zombies themselves — with a plastic spray bottle in its plastic pot.

That’s before they take off for the next traffic-blocking assignment in their plastic vests and equally plastic jewellery, possibly on their bicycles without sparing so much as a sliver of thought on the amount of hydrocarbon energy that made the production of this bicycle and its affordable price possible.

The good news

Now that we’re all good and frustrated about the four equestrians, let’s meet their opponents. They’re on foot, so they move more slowly but move they do and there is no stopping them.

The four pedestrians of the transition and the ones that will eventually take the equestrians down are Wait A Minute, You Said This Will Be Cheap, its sibling I’m Not Living Like a Caveman to Reduce Emissions, and their friends Sorry But That’s Not How Science Works and Okay, You First.

The four pedestrians may be slow but they are inexorable and there’s no beating them. This is not to say that the equestrians aren’t trying. It’s tricky, though. Because the pedestrians are quite immune to any damage from the weapons of the equestrians.

These weapons are immaterial — words, regulations, bans, and assurances. The pedestrians, on the other hand, are as material as the human brain that has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to detect patterns, make inferences and form opinions. Worst for the equestrians, we have evolved the ability to change those opinions when faced with cold, hard facts that refute them.

Okay, that’s about enough epic from me so let’s end on a lighter note with two headlines, both from The Guardian 2.0.

Headline 1: “What if global emissions went down instead of up?” Subheading: “That turning point could be closer than you think and its consequences may be profound.”

Headline 2: “German industry unlikely to fully recover from energy crisis, warns RWE boss”, Subheading: “Markus Krebber says there will be ‘significant structural demand destruction’ in energy-intensive sectors”

And that’s about as well as the four equestrians are doing in the real world. They’re going to have to ride harder and that’s great because high speed is dangerous. It can push the rider well into the stratosphere of hysterics and produce claims such as the one about recession and unemployment helping people live longer. Four-horse pile-up on Transition Boulevard coming soon.