An Inconvenient Truth… Still.

In 1968, humanity saw itself from the outside for the first time.

A small blue sphere rising over the gray horizon of the Moon.

No borders.
No nations.
No ownership lines.

Just one closed system suspended in black space.

In 1972, the full Earth appeared again — completely illuminated. The image became an icon. A symbol of unity. A symbol of fragility.

And wrapped around that planet was a razor‑thin layer of atmosphere.

That thin layer is everything.

If Earth were the size of an apple, the breathable atmosphere would be thinner than its skin.

Within that narrow margin exist:

• Stable temperatures
• Predictable rainfall
• Agriculture
• Freshwater cycles
• Livable coastlines
• The conditions that make complex civilization possible

We have known this for more than fifty years.

Then came the measurements.

CO₂ concentrations rising sharply.
Global temperatures rising sharply.
Ice mass declining.
Ocean heat increasing.

This was not ideology.
It was physics.

When climate warnings entered mainstream politics in the early 2000s, the science was already mature. When Al Gore brought his slide presentation to a global audience in the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, it made the evidence visible to millions — but the data itself had already been accumulating for decades.

The conclusion was simple:

Increase greenhouse gases.
Trap more heat.
Change the climate system.

Cause and effect.

And yet, the debate continued.

“But climate has always changed.”

Yes. It has.

But natural climate shifts do not explain the rapid spike in atmospheric CO₂ since industrialization. They do not explain the acceleration of warming that matches industrial emissions almost perfectly.

The warming pattern could not be reproduced in models unless human emissions were included.

This was not controversial fringe science.

The controversy existed elsewhere.

Because acknowledging the full implications meant something far larger than switching light bulbs and drive hybrid.

It meant restructuring industrial civilization.

Modern economies were built on fossil fuels.

Coal powered industry.
Oil powered transport.
Gas heated homes and produced fertilizer.

Entire pension systems, stock markets, geopolitical alliances, and national budgets were tied to fossil energy.

So when science concluded that fossil fuel use had to decline rapidly, it did not merely challenge opinion.

It threatened the whole economic foundation.

The resistance was not confusion.

It was structural self‑defense.

Extreme flooding in Europe — and Hurricane Katrina in the United States — did not ask who believed in it.

Hurricanes did not consult political parties.

Wildfires did not negotiate with quarterly earnings.

Heatwaves did not care about campaign donations.

Infrastructure either held — or it failed.

Insurance markets either absorbed the cost — or they retreated.

Food systems either adapted — or yields declined.

This was never primarily a debate about belief.

It was a collision between physics and incentives.

Modern monetary economies require growth. That is just how it is.

Debt must expand.
GDP must rise.
Production must increase.
Consumption must accelerate.

If growth stalls, markets panic.
If markets panic, governments fall.

Serious climate mitigation requires reducing fossil extraction drastically, slowing material throughput, and redesigning energy systems at planetary scale.

That implies contraction in many sectors, and our global coordination system, also called the monetary system – is not made for this.

Contraction is punished hard inside a growth‑dependent system.

So what happened?

Targets were postponed.
Deadlines were extended.
Half‑measures replaced structural redesign.

Not because politicians are evil or immoral.

Because they are operating inside a system that cannot voluntarily shrink fast enough to remain stable.

The atmosphere is finite.
The planet is finite.

The growth requirement is not.

That is the contradiction.

For over half a century we have had the image.
For decades we have had the data.

What we did not have was an economic structure capable of aligning with planetary limits.

The debate persisted because the true implication was too large to admit — something even Al Gore acknowledged when he noted that fully accepting the science would trigger an unavoidable and far‑reaching imperative to change.

To stabilize the climate requires more than policy tweaks.

It requires completely redesigning the incentive architecture of civilization.

And that is where the real resistance lives.

The Monetary system itself is the culprit. Nothing else. And that was why no politician could change it. Because the solution is not political.

It is systemic.

If you want to explore what a systemic redesign could look like — not as ideology, but as a practical civilizational shift — follow Benjamin Michaels into the world of Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. The novel explores a world where incentives align with planetary limits and cooperation replaces growth dependency.

If this resonates, please share this article. The real debate begins when we stop pretending it is one.