And what of the technologies used in the IAMs to allow for this theoretical overshoot? Luckily the authors have managed to publish a sequel asking just this question! I’ll be diving in this month while visiting family in Iraq.

A key point made is that the arguments for overshoot won’t go away when crossing a given threshold; the goalposts will be moved indefinitely. The question then becomes: how does climate politics change when we fully enter the “overshoot era”?

as this seems to not be occurring by itself. Related to this is the insight (again building on other work) that profit, not price, drives private investment in energy systems, including some incredible anecdotes of fossil companies using cheap solar power to fuel oil rigs!

(Building on other recent work they argue for recognising an energy addition rather than transition, in which renewables add capacity onto existing fossil stocks without displacing them). Ultimately they call for a “moment of reckoning” to enforce a climate Minsky bubble-popping moment,

This leads to their take on the energy transition, which they argue is being indefinitely postponed due to the build up of stranded assets, and the political inertia this implies.

They are clear they aren’t blaming scenarios researchers for the lack of climate action, as the material driver is ultimately the fossil economy.

Parts of this narrative are familiar but articulated brilliantly here. They argue this reflects dominant social interests and their influence on science more broadly, and while the specific history isn’t as detailed as I’d like here, it becomes hard to argue with the broader point.

The next section is provocative - arguing that historical IAMs, far from being neutral explorers of future scenarios, baked in an “overshoot ideology” by negating the possibility of more radical interventions to reduce emissions, and over-relying on negative emissions technologies.

Also featuring a damning opinion of the politics of the Paris Agreement, which they see as recognising the harm of 2C+ but baking in the impossibility of meeting this (via voluntary contributions; as always begs the question of what else to have done…).

It starts with a pretty bleak - and hard to argue with - assessment of the last couple years of global retreat from serious talk on climate, especially in finance…

More detailed documentation hopefully coming soon... including the representation of climate and climate impacts