Climate. Energy. Money.

Ethical reflections on economic morality.

Our task – and the task of all education – is to understand the present world,
the world in which we live and make our choices.

- E.F. Schumacher, philosopher and economist

This book dives into the realities of the climate crisis, the energy problem, and the money question –
issues that are intertwined in countless ways. Not least in a way of looking at reality that seems to
deprive us of our future.

The book aims to help us better understand the world we live in and the challenges we face, so that
we can make sensible and informed choices. It aims to address the need to be better informed – and
to be better systems thinkers – when it comes to sustainability issues and social responsibility. It also
wants to help make an ethical reflection on an economic morality that resides in the root causes of
this triple systemic crisis. And it is only a start. It is not more than an impetus to explore the deepest
leverage points for change: the stories we tell about ourselves, about who we are as human beings.

The book grew out of my own concerns and my long-standing, committed quest around
sustainability, transition, resilience, interdependence and meaning. It is also the result of 20 years’
experience with courses such as ethics, business ethics and sustainability in higher education.

Rudy Dhont

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 Foreword

An economic lens we so often, and so unknowingly, adopt

There are many ways of looking at reality around us. The glasses we wear determine what we see.
They also determine what we lose sight of, and what kind of reality we create for ourselves. In the
mirror of that reality, we see ourselves reflected and the story through which we look at it.

Those who live in an environment where an economic view of the world is predominant will be
influenced by this in their thoughts and actions. And in a kind of self-reinforcing feedback, such a
view will help shape reality. An economic view of the world sees the world in terms of goods and
services, supply and demand, customers and market share, self-interest, efficiency and branding, data
of all kinds, production and consumption, competitors, benchmarks, growth and jobs, innovation and
the urge not to be left behind, purchasing power, expenses, investments, opportunities and debts,
annual and quarterly figures. Of profit and – increasingly – of profit growth. Of money mainly. Just
about everything that can be converted into money – from ideas and promises, and data and
processes, to trees and mountains – becomes a commodity in the wonderfully competitive game of a
global financial economy. Even people with their highly unique stories are sometimes reduced to
human raw material in this move: human resources. Not to mention the reduction of all other-than-
human life to its utility value.

While it is not hard to see that this is only one particular and limited way of looking at the world, we
often fail to notice that we are wearing those economic glasses. That is how natural that way of
perceiving the world has become: good is what yields or generates a profit – doesn’t really matter
how – and if you lose you have done it wrong. Beneath such views lurks a reduction of reality that is
far from harmless: those with only a hammer will after a while only see nails. And let us add a not-so-
innocent observation: our society seems to be getting more and more in the grip of that economic
way of thinking. Politics, education, healthcare, research, governance, communication, recreation, art
... they are increasingly seen or defined in economic terms. If we are not already resources, we
become customers or consumers just about everywhere. Or not more than data.

With this economic outlook, more ideas and perceptions sneak in that score high in terms of self-
evidence. For instance, we may unthinkingly or simplistically assume that growth is good and can go
on forever, that money increases the well-being of individuals and societies, that economic
development solves poverty and means progress, and that we will always have the energy and
resources to keep doing the things we do now. Or even do them better. Surely the stone age did not
end for lack of stones either – or so it sounds. And as for that progress: very often we seem to
assume that our society is making progress simply because time is advancing. And that the natural
environment in which all this happens is nothing more than the background scenery, or something
that must be overcome, subdued or deployed to keep our growing society going on numerous levels.
And if things do not seem to be working for a while, we should try harder and keep doing what we
did to secure ourselves of that brave and wonderful new world of tomorrow. Back to normal as soon
as possible.

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But how normal is normal?

Questioning those economic lenses and the things that seem only self-evident, is extremely
inconvenient and uncomfortable. Even if we know by now that the conceptions, beliefs, or
presuppositions from the previous paragraph are wrong. And – if we stop to think about them – often
cannot but be wrong. Reality contradicts them. And we bump into the limits of a way of dealing with
reality that makes the world an unsafe place. Anyone who picks up the signals or finds themselves in
the line of fire, does no longer know what to do with all those negative future scenarios about
climate extremes, ecosystem destruction, energy or water scarcity, conflicts and geopolitical turmoil,
exploitation, overuse, pollution, polarisation, poverty and despair, biodiversity loss, insurmountable
debts, the end of democracy ... and more that put us in a pandemic hold. Where are we when our
future seems to be slipping through our fingers?

What happens to us – or what we have brought upon ourselves – is food for thought. That is the least
we can say.

Ethics as a critical reflection on an economic morality

Ethics is a profession, a métier, a craft. Perhaps even an art. It is a discipline in which we ask the
questions around right and wrong, and around how we should act as human beings: in general, or in
very specific, concrete, dilemma-like situations. Ethics entails orbiting around the age-old question of
what it means to ‘live well’. By the way, beware: that ‘good life’ has taken on a very distinct
individualistic-economic-carefree interpretation for many who can afford it. That is not what we
mean here. Ethics is our common search for wise action, for the good life for all of us – humans and
other-than-humans alike – in this deeply interconnected existence. Here. Now. And for the future.
With the challenges before us.

Ethical questions usually crop up in full force when reality gives pause for thought, the usual self-
evidence crumbles, the road threatens to turn into a dead end, and the path to follow is less obvious.
Viewed this way, our times beg for ethics: systemic crises of all kinds force us to look into things. If
what goes wrong is not just an unintended side-effect of past choices, but is intrinsic to the path
chosen, then it is good to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what we are doing, and what we have
made of the world. Then it is good to think about how we can bring that ‘good life for all of us’ closer
again – even if we are only human.

It is common to distinguish between morals and ethics. Morality then is the set of norms and values –
mores, morals, customs – that can be gauged from how people behave. The diversity is quite
colourful: perhaps there are as many types of morality as there are people or societies. After all,
values and norms can vary considerably, and even on something like human rights we do not agree.
Morality can be mapped. It shows what is common for a person, group, or culture: what people
consider important and right, or less important and wrong. Actually, morality forms the tip of an
iceberg of stories people tell about themselves: it is the visible exterior of a host of unspoken
presuppositions and assumptions about who we are as human beings, and about how reality works.
Our ideas – it may be somewhat sobering – are not the result of our thinking, they are mostly just the
things we think with. When we are in the middle of it, those morals are self-evident, and it can be
damned hard to even understand a different morality, or someone else’s morality. Listening – deep

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listening – seems to be the way out here, otherwise we get caught up in battle and struggle with that
vital diversity. And with such deep listening that typifies respectful relationships, we have already
begun to move into the direction of ethics.

In how we distinguish it from morality here, ethics is not a descriptive, but rather a critical-thinking
activity. Even a prescriptive and future-imagining activity: how should we act? Ethics thus constitutes
– in a first movement – a critical reflection on prevailing morality, and on the prevailing self-evidence
and culture within which that morality fits. And if – in a second movement – ethics is to be
meaningful as moral philosophy, it must also provide plenty of food for thought for that future: as a
branch of philosophy, it is the search for wise action. What can we learn from our critical reflection on
prevailing morality about the paths for alternative futures that we should choose already now? So
don’t let the term philosophy lead us astray: as the search for wise action, it is a very practical
discipline.

And time is running out: because the challenges and threats are historical and global, the ethics we
propose here cannot but dig deep into the soul of our times. Much deeper than what is feasible or
affordable – that kind of limitation is part of the thinking that locks us into our economic morality.
The ethics we propose here, incidentally, also require a time perspective and sense of reality that has
fallen into disuse in that mainstream morality: what will make us wise grandparents and ancestors for
generations to come? How do we maintain healthy, appropriate, and balanced relationships with the
rest of our kin – everything and everyone – in the great web of life?

Diverse voices and the ecological ground beneath our ethical feet

It may be clear what we are aiming at here: to look at ourselves in the mirror of the climate, energy
and money realities around us. Delving into those issues gives us the opportunity to reflect on our
prevailing, economic morality – of which our crisis-ridden reality is, in a sense, the distorted face.

Engaging in critical reflection on the prevailing self-evidence around us: there is no denying that such
a thing raises huge, complex, and often frustrating questions. Indeed, the danger is far from
imaginary that we push ourselves deeper into the quicksand of our own assumptions and beliefs
when we want to use them as a touchstone to critically reflect on our own (or someone else’s)
morality. Where do we find guidance, who or what helps us discern, on what basis should we judge
or assess? Is there such a thing as the ‘universally good or human’? Are there things we can call
absolute and categorical, or is everything ultimately subjective and relative? Each his truth, each his
world?

In any case, critical reflection does not come naturally. It requires training and education, practice and
patience. It also only works when a number of conditions are met. For instance, you need to have
sufficient knowledge and the necessary information. In depth, as well as in breadth: the bigger
picture and the connections are just as important as specialised knowledge from different disciplines.
For those without that scope of understanding, things are often simple – all too simple. And then we
inevitably get stuck. It therefore almost goes without saying that critical reflection is something that
works better when done together than alone. Moreover: a critical reflection on a society or culture
and the world view that underlies it, for example, is only possible when you can compare with other
forms of society, and other types of cultures or world views. That means you need to be familiar with

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alternatives. Only by comparing do you begin to see things – cultures, viewpoints, economic systems,
worldviews – in their uniqueness, identity or dynamics. And in their merit in sustaining the good life.
No critical reflection without diversity: that broad view is indispensable for ethics. On the axes of
space and time respectively, cultural anthropology (societies from elsewhere) and history (societies of
the past) thus appear, or a combination of both. So also expect to see occasional excursions into
history, or elsewhere on our planet.

It is unfortunate that we often forget, overlook, or even deliberately keep out of sight the
accumulated wisdom stored in many traditions and other ways of life. It makes us poorer. The
problems and crises we face today have occurred before and elsewhere. It may be true that the
global scale of those problems makes our situation more urgent and potentially more dangerous than
in the past, but the problems – apart from the tangible form in which they now appear to us – are as
old as humanity. We are not the first to struggle with thoroughly disturbed relationships, with
ecological and social abuses, with money and energy, with poverty, loss of meaning, injustice or
hunger. The question of what good and responsible behaviour should be like has been answered time
and again in numerous traditions, under changing circumstances. Many traditions and cultures can
teach us essential things about the paths we can take, while even more (and sometimes the same)
traditions and cultures unfortunately also show us things we should avoid.

Perhaps the most fundamental thing about an ethical reflection is simply the fact that it takes place,
that it brings us together, in other words, and that ethics is done – as a mature conversation with a
diversity of partners and perspectives. (Such a thing, by the way, might come surprisingly close to that
good life we may be looking for.) In a sense, then, the questions are more important than the
answers: they bring us together more than the answers we try to formulate. Anyone hoping to find
ready-to-use and one-size-fits-all solutions here better think twice: reality is more complex and more
multi-layered than that. Although a healthy-critical questioning of all that is supposedly self-evident
yields quite interesting signposts and surprising wisdom. But it also requires a deep kind of listening,
and a fair share of discipline: the discipline to put on a different pair of spectacles, to learn to see the
ins and outs of the matter, to get to the heart of the tangle of crises that characterise our times, to
want to see that things can be done differently, and to learn about who we are. It takes courage. And
it requires imagination: to also not forget who we are, and to see who we have always been as part of
the web of life.

Ethics requires an open mind and a planetary perspective. It is both a discipline of compassion and
empathy, and one of courage and entrepreneurship. More a duty than a checklist. Indeed, ethics is
more like a conversation between open-minded and mature individuals, rather than a hidden
treasure pulled out by specialised magicians. In a changing, diverse, interconnected world, ethics is
always – and by definition – work in progress for which we need each other. And let’s define ‘we’ as
broadly as we can: perhaps things have even begun to go awry when we started to silence the many
other-than-human voices.

However, all of this – the many questions, the impossibility of answering them definitively, the
diversity of voices and stories – in no way means that we would have no ground to stand on. We do.
And we have always had some ground to stand on. Almost literally. If there is a final foundation or
principle we can and should always fall back on, then – as in the depiction of the snake biting its tail –
it is that creating and recreating self-sustaining life itself. That is the ultimate foundation: the
ecological ground under our ethical feet. Life itself is the guide, norm and standard: that eternal cycle

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in which death and birth are each other’s precondition and everything exists by grace of other things.
Perhaps, then, choices are simply ethical if they harmonise with life itself as a self-recreating
possibility.

Getting started: a window on the world and looking at ourselves

Back to the concrete outline of this book which consists of an exploration of the big challenges
around climate, energy, and money. Any ethics – any search for wise action – begins by looking at and
disentangling the situation: what is happening, and why? Even though the three issues are called
wicked realities because of their complexity and systemic nature – and can therefore never be
defined or described conclusively – there is more to learn than we think. Above all, it is also the
interconnectedness of the three issues that confronts us with a certain kind of economic thinking that
is deeply embedded in them. And behind that thinking, in turn, lies the even broader socio-cultural
context as an expression of an unsustainable worldview that brings us to this tipping point. So it is
that climate, energy and money can form relevant starting points for a profound, ethical-critical
reflection on our current economic morality.

Indeed: in our exploration, gradually but surely – with theme after theme – patterns and connections
will become visible. Certain insights will emerge. It is of great importance to see dynamics and
feedback loops: these are the movements within, of and between systems. The climate, for instance,
is a complex system where all sorts of things are interlinked, and which in turn is interwoven in
ecosystems, or in ecosystem earth – nature, so to speak – in which all sorts of dynamics, interactions
and feedback loops are at play. When we look at the energy systems on which our society runs, we
may think of fuels and electricity, but energy is a much more comprehensive system with its own laws
of conservation, conversion, and loss. A system that starts with the sun, but equally encompasses
phytoplankton and whales, and all in all resembles a food web that itself has a history. Money
systems and the economic systems of which they are the expression or the lubricant also exhibit all
sorts of dynamics and feedbacks. As we shall see, some of them are downright baffling. And all these
systems – climate, energy, money – and the dynamics associated with them also interact. This is what
we are working towards: fundamental insights into how our interconnected reality works – or how
we make it work. This is also accompanied by the necessary modesty: to get a taste of insights, and of
a certain kind of wisdom, almost by definition goes hand in hand with the observation that there is –
always – a lot more to know and explore, and that much remains elusive.

The invitation is to take stock for yourself at the end of the three-part journey. What are the deep
insights our exploration has yielded, and where – if we link the themes – is the underlying
interconnectedness of everything situated? Getting to the heart of the issues gives us more than a
glimpse of the possible, alternative paths to explore from now on. It is also at this point that we find
ourselves deep into ethics: in a critical reflection on the values, norms and worldviews that have
brought us to this point – but in all likelihood will bring us not much further. And in an exploration of
the values, norms and worldviews that can bring us home again in our search for the good life and
wise action on our planet.

Only, the latter movement – the inventory, the alternative futures, the better stories about ourselves
– is rather implicit. This book can be no more than a possible basis for the ethical conversation that
must necessarily follow it. Still, let’s not underestimate the power of what it can mean to dive deep

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into the defining issues of our time: only those who understand where the shoe pinches may be able
to remedy the situation. We see alternatives only when we know in what way – how, where – they
should be different from the things for which they are supposed to offer an alternative. Too many
people quote Einstein – you can’t solve a problem with the thinking that caused the problem – only
to do exactly that: sell old wine in new bottles. In doing so, we shoot ourselves in the foot and rid us
of our own future.

Perhaps this happens because – with a view to change – the wrong leverage point is used, and the
deeper, underlying system – society, culture – is left unchanged. With this we refer to the tiered or
multi-leveled diagram in which a system is represented as an iceberg. Above the water are the visible
events and observable phenomena, below the surface are patterns and trends, below that sit system
structures, and at the very bottom resides what supports and underpins everything: our mental
landscapes, our assumptions and presuppositions about who we are and how reality works.

Experience suggests that systemic change – something we now seem to desperately need in a lot of
areas – is mainly triggered by intervening deeply in the identity of systems. Symptom relief and a bit
of window dressing are more likely to perpetuate unwanted systems. The most rewarding leverage
point lies where we ask ourselves: what is it that drives us? Who do we want, or have to be? And
what kind of world do we want to live in?

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 Climate and ecology, wake up in different world

While economists dream on, the ecology unravels.

- Alastair McIntosh, writer and activist

Education at all levels would be understood as knowing the universe story and the human role in the story.
The basic course in any college or university would be the story of the universe.
- Thomas Berry, cultural historian

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein, physicist

No longer the same

The world we live in is a different world from that of, say, a generation ago.

It is old news that right now the earth’s climate has changed significantly. And we understand that
the health and resilience of ecosystems may be seriously compromised. In the media, we are
confronted with it almost daily. The facts don’t lie, and in countless ways they not only shape the
reality of our lives today but pose even more serious challenges for the future. They form issues that
are complexly woven into just about everything we can think of. Climate and ecosystem disruption
are issues that affect just about everything we can think of. There is a simple reason for this: life
forms one big interdependent web, and when climates and ecosystems are disrupted, the wellbeing,
health and, ultimately, survival of many is at stake.1

How do we deal with this as individuals, as a society, as a culture? What do we do, and what should
we do?

Why not start at the beginning: by taking a close look at what is going on? For those who try to
understand as best they can what is happening, and more importantly why we have ended up in this
situation, there are interesting lessons to be learned. Although it sounds easier than it is, it is never a
good idea to waste a crisis. A crisis, especially one that without exaggeration can be called a systemic
crisis, a system of problems, or a super wicked problem,2 gives us the opportunity to ask questions,
to look in the mirror, to adapt, to make amends, to fundamentally change course if necessary.

1 Such a thing is evident, for example, in the World Health Organisation’s ‘one health’ concept: human health is inextricably
linked to the health of animals, plants, habitats, ecosystems.

2 A systemic crisis means that not just parts of it, but the whole system is in trouble: the whole organisation, the whole
society, the whole economy, the whole culture, the whole planet, so to speak. The term ‘wicked problem’ has become
commonplace and is also used for issues other than the social policy for which it was originally coined. It refers to issues
that are intractable, hard to define, not really solvable, and every intervention changes the whole issue itself again. The
term goes back to Horst W. J. Rittel & Webber, M. M. (1973) Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy sciences. 4
(2), 155-169. For the use of the concept ‘super wicked problem’ and its application to climate change: Levin, K. et al. (2012)

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Waking up in a different world means, among other things, realising and experiencing first-hand that
the climatic and ecological conditions of our lives are no longer the same as they were some time
ago. That the natural environment no longer is what it was for most of human history. It means
realising and experiencing that some things quite simply cannot continue into the future, that they
are unsustainable.3 So things will change. Or we will bring about change ourselves. It is as simple as
that: change or be changed. What cannot last, stops.

Waking up in a different world means shifting things around and saying goodbye to self-evident ideas
about how we organise our lives, run our economies, organise our law, shape our politics, model our
education. And perhaps of saying goodbye to a certain way of understanding ourselves: who are we
human beings? What is our place in the bigger picture?

If ethics involves the critical reflection on mainstream morality, on the values, norms, beliefs, and
presuppositions that shape the taken-for-grantedness of our ‘normal’ existence, then the climate and
ecological crises give serious food for thought. Do they perhaps give us the opportunity to more or
less reinvent ourselves as human beings too?

But let’s start at the beginning.

Ecology as the web of life

For that beginning, for the very ground of our existence, and to understand why climate change and
degradation of natural integrity can be alarming things, we need to be with ecology and ecosystems.

Ecology is commonly referred to as the science that studies living organisms, their interrelationships
and their relationship to the environment: plants, animals, humans, fungi, bacteria and more life
forms are connected with each other and with the non-living environment in all sorts of ways in a
kind of big web.4 That non-living environment then includes elements such as soil, water,
topography, wind, light, air, temperature and so on. These non-living elements can of course be
brimming with life: think of the rich life of fertile soil, think of all the life in the air or in water.

But ecology often also refers to that living web itself with all its living and non-living components, and
not just the study or science of it. In that sense, ecology becomes almost synonymous with nature,
where it stresses the interconnectedness of everything and everybody in it. It becomes synonymous

Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change.
Policy sciences. 45 (2), 123-152.

3 Meanwhile, the term ‘sustainability’ has become so widely adopted and stretched that it threatens to become an empty
shell. In 1987, the UN Brundtland Commission put the concept of ‘sustainable development’ on the map in their report
under the telling title Our Common Future: "meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the needs of
future generations". Sustainability thus refers mainly to whether something can last, whether something is sustainable,
generation after generation after generation.

4 The idea of the web of life took an almost literal or visual form in the mycelium or wood wide web – the underground
network of threads and fungi that connects trees and plants. See, for example, Sheldrake, M. (2021). Entangled life: How
fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures (First published in Vintage). Vintage. Publisher Atlas
Contact. Or: Simard, S. (2022). Finding the mother tree: Uncovering the wisdom and intelligence of the forest. Penguin
Books.

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with ecosystems and how they work and are connected, and thus also with what we might call the
ecology of existence: ecosystem earth.

More recent scientific insights, from roughly the past half-century especially, invite us to see planet
earth indeed as one big, living whole.5 As a dynamic and complex system in which everything is
connected to everything else, and which can self-regulate. Exchange and cycles are the order of the
day at many levels: exchange of nutrients, chemical elements, energy, information, mass, ... and
cycles of water, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon, and so on. There is constant interaction
between life on earth, the atmosphere, the land, the ocean, and the earth’s crust.

That is so for the whole of ecosystem earth, and it is equally true for all large and small ecosystems,
embedded in and encompassing each other, ranging from coral reefs over tropical forests, snow
caps, moors, and wetlands to desert highlands. Or from the local ditch and the small urban vegetable
garden to the weeds between the paving stones. And all have their own climate or microclimate –
the common or ‘normal’ weather that goes with that ecosystem: from continent-crossing monsoon
systems to very local heat islands.

What we want to highlight here with this focus on ecology is this: there are no life forms that exist
separately or independently. All existence, all life is ‘thanks to’ or ‘by courtesy of’. By courtesy of
other life forms in the web or habitat that serve as food, for example. By courtesy of things like the
diversity, resilience and health of ecosystems that keep providing that food permanently through
pollination, photosynthesis, or nitrogen fixation, for example. By courtesy of the proper functioning
of all kinds of processes and cycles that, for example, purify water, maintain oxygen levels, make
precipitation patterns more or less reliable, or keep temperatures within a liveable corridor.

The point is not that evolutions or changes cannot occur in those ecosystems or in ecosystem earth
as a whole: we only need to go back 20,000 years, for example, to find ourselves in an ice age. The
point is that if a change occurs somewhere in the system (in its climate, in its nitrogen cycle, in its
water management, in one of the many functions that animals or plants are responsible for, ...), this
possibly means that via domino, ripple, waterfall or butterfly effects, the whole system is thoroughly
shaken up and has to more or less adapt or even completely reorganise.6

5 Consider the pioneering work of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis that culminates in Gaia Theory: living organisms and
their inorganic environment have evolved together as a single living system that greatly influences the chemistry and
conditions of the earth’s surface. See also the 2001 Amsterdam Declaration on Earth System Science: "The Earth System
behaves as a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components. The
interactions and feedbacks between the component parts are complex and exhibit multi-scale temporal and spatial
variability." Gaia Theory and Earth System Science form part of the emerging framework of systems science itself: the
interdisciplinary field concerned with understanding (complex, dynamic, chaotic) systems in nature, society, technology,
computing and so on. For an introduction to Gaia Theory, see, for example, Harding, S. (2006). Animate Earth. Science,
Intuition and Gaia. Green Books, Totnes. For Earth System Science: Lenton, T. (2016). Earth system science: A very short
introduction (First edition). Oxford University Press.

6 Such concepts are often used interchangeably, but do not always mean the same thing (in systems thinking). But all point
to ways in which changes or disturbances affect systems. To visualise them gives an idea of what happens: dominoes
pushing each other over (domino effect), chain reactions acting like a waterfall (cascade effect), throwing a stone into a
calm lake (ripple effect), snow gathering around an object rolling down a snowy slope (snowball effect). One such non-
linear concept deserves extra attention for our topic: the butterfly effect or the Lorenz Butterfly. Edward Lorenz, professor
of meteorology at MIT, accidentally made a discovery in 1961 that pioneered the study of chaos, and which later became a
key notion in chaos theory. It is the idea of the butterfly effect: small things can have dramatic effects or consequences. Or
technically: a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Or, as the title of one of his articles says: "Predictability: Does the
Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?". It is interesting to note that the butterfly effect, when

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The earth is not the place where we live, it is the living entity we are part of.

Crossing the boundaries

According to systems science, whether or not such a change or reorganisation occurs in (parts of)
ecosystem earth depends on whether or not boundaries or thresholds are crossed. Thus – despite all
kinds of bad things – things can go well for a long time, and it may seem like there is no problem, but
when a certain tipping point is exceeded or a certain threshold is crossed, ecosystems can ‘suddenly’
enter a different ‘state’. A bit like we sometimes hear ourselves say (at yet another inappropriate
comment, for instance): I’ve had it! Enough is enough, that’s the limit!

Just as a healthy person has sufficient resilience and a certain ability to cope with difficulties in order
to keep functioning (overcome an illness, deal with a setback, accept loss, ...) so ecosystems, and by
extension planet earth, also dispose of processes to neutralise or dampen change, shock or impact.
Often these take the form of what we, in systems thinking, call a negative or balancing feedback:
something like this ensures that the system returns to the ‘prevailing state’ at that moment. 7 Back to
‘normal’ as it were – the currently prevailing ‘normal’.

Deep, geological time teaches us that the planet has self-regulatory capabilities, that it has the
capacity to maintain or at least influence the (at the time) ‘prevailing state’ or the ‘prevailing normal’.
For example, we find that over a geological time scale of billions of years, earth’s average
temperature does not increase along with our warming sun. The extra incoming energy of our sun as
a dying and thus growing star is counterbalanced, so to speak. And for an example of the ecosystem’s
ability to cope, we can think of the asteroid impact (Yucatán, Mexico) some 66 million years ago. This
had a huge impact on the planet and caused a mass extinction. Three-quarters of species
disappeared, but life did not end. It preserved itself, reorganised, diversified in a different way than
before, and a new era dawned.

But there are limits. Limits to what a person can take, limits to the resilience of ecosystems, limits to
the self-regulatory capacity of the planet. Beyond certain thresholds, changes may become
irreversible, and the system could find itself in a state that may be a lot less desirable: a person falls

invoked in debates around climate, usually conjures up a situation where we could end up in a disaster scenario (the
tornado) when we cross a certain threshold (1.5°C, for instance), and hardly the other way around: where small things
trigger a change for the better. But as Lorenz puts it – in the same paper: "If the wingbeat of a butterfly can play a role in
generating a tornado, it might as well help prevent a tornado."

7 Feedback loops in system dynamics exist in two types: negative and positive feedback loops. It is less confusing to speak of
balancing feedback loops instead of negative feedback loops, and self-reinforcing feedback loops instead of positive
feedback loops. The first kind neutralises and undoes the change, it buffers it, so to speak, and acts in a self-regulating way
– to maintain the ‘state’ of the system. This is interesting if that state is desired, but less interesting, of course, if it is not.
(Think of what a thermostat does: maintain the room temperature at the requested level. But whether that requested level
is desirable or not is an entirely different question). The other kind reinforces: more and more, or less and less. (Think of
what a microphone does that captures the sound it amplifies. This kind of loop is sometimes called a vicious circle: not
necessarily a positive thing.) So balancing feedbacks, so to speak, preserve situations, self-reinforcing feedback loops break
away from normal (and can get out of control, or go into overdrive).

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into depression, a crystal-clear lake turns into a murky pool, a rich and diverse forest area turns into
a desert, an ocean becomes too acidic or a planet too hot, and part of the web of life falls apart.8

It is often in the rear-view mirror that we can suspect which straw broke the camel’s back, and where
the threshold or boundary lay. Often things are a drop in the ocean, and nothing happens –
everything stays the same – but sometimes they do indeed make the cup run over, and everything
becomes different. Think of that butterfly effect where a minute difference in initial conditions can
(but not necessarily does) make a big difference elsewhere or later in the system. The connection
with tipping points seems obvious: we have passed a certain threshold, and then non-linear, abrupt
changes come into play.

This is not the kind of exact science some people would hope for: we do not speak of chaos and
complexity theories by accident. Trying to determine precise boundaries or the (exact) location of
tipping points is difficult, if not impossible – even if we know they are there (and often only notice
them in the rearview mirror. But precisely because so much may be at stake, we should apply the
precautionary principle: when there is a risk of serious, irreversible damage, incomplete scientific
certainty or precision cannot serve as an excuse to postpone action.

The trick is, in other words, to stay within safe margins, in the Safe Operating Space for Humanity.9
The research team behind this influential model of the ‘safe operating space for humanity’ suggested
(in 2009) some 9 planetary boundaries that it is best not to cross. The boundaries are related to
climate change (amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, radiative forcing), biosphere integrity
(biodiversity loss), land use change (amount of land converted to agricultural land), freshwater use,
the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, aerosols in the atmosphere, ozone depletion
(hole in the ozone layer) and chemical pollution (toxins, plastics, heavy metals etc).

In a September 2023 update, they indicate that six thresholds have already been crossed: those
related to global warming, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution (‘novel entities’), fresh water, land
system change, and the biochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus. 10 The planetary thresholds
model as a whole gives an idea of the scope and scale of the ecological crisis that marks our times.
The crossing of the boundaries – indicating that we no longer find ourselves in the safe operating
space – gives an idea of the immediacy and urgency of the problem.

8 The terminology comes from systems science: a system (e.g. a person, family, landscape, organisation, planet, company,
economy, school, political party) is in a certain state or regime (e.g. happy, fertile, bankrupt, depressed, in bloom,
qualitative, rich, past glory, drained) but due to shocks (e.g. a storm, meteorite impact, new director, embargo, job loss,
virus, tweet, earthquake, relationship breakdown) or internal dynamics (e.g. rigidity, curiosity, open-minded culture,
increasing sense of powerlessness), thresholds or tipping points may be crossed after which the system enters a different
state or regime. For instance, a usually cheerful person can fall into burnout for years, a prosperous region can become
deprived when unemployment hits hard, a thriving culture can suddenly fall into decline and disappear, a healthy lake area
can turn into a biological desert. Usually, it is more difficult and takes longer to get back to the desired state than the other
way around – if it is even possible at all. (Remember the folk wisdom: too late to lock the stable door after the horse has
bolted).

9 A renowned and influential 2009 article from the journal Nature. Rockström, J. et al (2009). A safe operating space for
humanity. Nature (London), 461(7263), 472-475. See https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-
boundaries.html for a visualisation, and for explanation of the model, planetary boundaries, research and follow-up
research. A longer version of the original Nature article appeared in the online journal Ecology & Society: Rockström, J. et al
(2009). Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2), art 32. See
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

10
Richardson, K. et al. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science Advances, 9(37).

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For those who hadn’t noticed: these are threshold values that are all about human activity, about
human pressure on ecosystem earth. Not about natural processes: rather about disrupting natural
processes. Human activity is currently the main driver of change in system earth.

This leads some to conclude that, following the relatively stable period of the Holocene, we have
now definitely entered a new era: the Anthropocene or Age of Humans.

Climate and the other issues

Each of the planetary boundaries, and even more issues to do with the earth as a planetary
ecosystem, deserve to be covered here. Only, that is impossible given the scope of this text. In what
follows, we concentrate on one aspect of the ecological crisis, namely climate change.

But again, this is not to say that, for example, the alarming loss of biodiversity would be unimportant,
as was still being highlighted at the UN Biodiversity Conference (Montreal, Canada) in December
2022. Biodiversity makes up the bedrock and resilience of life: it is much more than endangered
animal or plant species per se. The issue provoked UN Secretary-General António Guterres’
statement on that occasion: we are committing suicide by proxy. Because our lives as humans are
intertwined with everything else, and we undercut ourselves when we undercut nature and its vital
diversity. Or as philosopher-economist E.F. Schumacher put it earlier: if we win the battle against
nature, we will find ourselves on the losing side.11 An estimated 30% of animal or plant species have
become endangered or extinct since 1500,12 and between 1970 and 2018, the population size of fish,
birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles declined by as much as 69%. 13

Nor does it mean that nitrogen issues or overfertilization do not matter, or that plastic soup and
pfos, pfas, and other forever chemicals are not an issue. Or that water tables and aquifers are not
something we should be concerned about. Or that we need not worry about a hole in the ozone
layer: that still means that harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun is no longer blocked. That, by
the way, is a different problem from the climate problem.

But, for what follows, we focus mainly on climate change, although links to the other issues are never
far away. Of course, biodiversity loss and climate change are intertwined, just as they are interwoven
with land-use change, ocean acidification or chemical pollution. In other words, we pick out one issue
without losing sight of the interconnectedness with the other issues, and hope above all that this
example exploration can help to suspect an equal degree of complexity and urgency behind the
other issues.

The advantage is that we can approach one aspect with a certain depth. This is an approach that
should lead to a firmer and deeper understanding and can make us better systems thinkers.

11 Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, Blond & Briggs.

12Isbell, F. et al (2022). Expert perspectives on global biodiversity loss and its drivers and impacts on people. Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2536

13Almond, R. E. A., Grooten, M., Juffe Bignoli, D., & Petersen, T. (2022). WWF Living Planet Report 2022-Building a Nature-
Positive Society. WWF, Gland, Switzerland. https://www.wwf.nl/globalassets/pdf/lpr/living-planet-report-2022-wwf.pdf

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Weather and climate

To assess what is going on with our climate, and how exceptional or alarming it may be, we have no
choice but to zoom out first. The bigger picture and the longer term matter: the history of the planet
can teach us a lot. Only against that background will it become clear what is going on now.

But let’s not run before we can walk: what is (a) climate in the first place?

If by weather we mean any actual situation in time, by climate we refer to the average weather over
longer periods of time: the average temperature, precipitation (rain, snow, etc.), cloud cover,
humidity, wind, air pressure, and the seasons, patterns and other normal variability associated with
these phenomena. Certain areas have a specific climate: think of tropical, arid, or polar climates. Or
think of a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters; of monsoon regimes
with their rainy seasons; of rainforest, desert, or tundra climates.

The dynamics at work in this average weather, and the patterns into which they culminate, are the
result of different, interactive components such as the atmosphere (the layer of gases around our
planet), the biota (the living things that make up all ecosystems), water (liquid or frozen) and the
earth’s solid crust (with its tectonic plates). The dynamics of interacting components produce
regional and recognisable differences.

But with a little abstraction, we can also look at climate at planetary scales and geological time spans.
Then we look at the global mosaic of regional climates, so to speak, and at the averages, variability
and patterns that may be typical of the whole set. Of planet earth, in other words. And we can look
at how that has changed over time. For instance, as most know, a sort of alternation between ice
ages or glacials and warmer intermediate periods has been occurring on earth for some time. And for
those who go back further in time: at some points the whole planet was covered in snow and ice, and
at other times the climate was tropical from pole to pole.

Can we sense or feel climate change? No, by definition, we do not feel climate change: it is what we
establish or notice based on measurements, statistics and averages over a minimum of 30 years. We
cannot possibly feel 30 years at any one given moment. Or, rather, yes – we can feel climate change?
If climate is average weather, then of course we do feel it when the climate changes, because ... on
average, the weather will be different, with more extremes for instance. And that weather, of course,
is what we feel.

But one harsh winter or wet summer never suffice to make statements about climate. Then we mix
up weather and climate – something which is done often.14 Global warming can indeed mean that it
gets colder in some places on earth, or that at some times it is just colder than normal. To determine
or notice climate change, we need to look at long-term averages. And specific, temporary, or local
weather phenomena can seemingly contradict that.

14Of course, the telling anecdote here is that of US Senator Jim Inhofe who "disproved climate change once and for all" (a
headline in the Washington Post on 26 February 2015) by bringing a handful of snow to the US Senate. Inhofe is the author
of "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future".

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On climate variability and climate change

Although the terms are relative in a sense, it is not unwise to distinguish between climate variability
on the one hand and climate change on the other.

The term ‘climate variability’ then refers to the rather normal and expected differences that can
occur within a given climate. It refers to the ups and downs that come with it – the normal outliers
around the averages, so to speak. They are often related to cyclical variations. One such very well-
known cycle, for example, is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO): a cyclical pattern of winds and
warmer and colder sea temperatures that affect the earth’s ambient temperature and precipitation.
Those outliers – which are in part the result of those cycles – do make a difference, for agriculture,
for example. But the typical thing about variation or variability is that, after the deviations, the
system returns to previously normal values.

The term ‘climate change’ refers to something else. With climate change, a significant change occurs
that is persistent, and which is not within the ‘previous’ or ‘normal’ variability: it is the averages
themselves (of temperature, precipitation, etc.) and the variability or range associated with them
that are now changing in a consistent way over an extended period. But in a sense, again, this is
relative and depends on the time scale we consider: for instance, there is the cyclical alternation of
glacials and interglacials mentioned earlier. Those recurring ice ages, lasting about 100,000 years
each, can be explained by Milanković cycles – small changes in how the earth orbits the sun.
Depending on how broad we take the scale, we can go two ways: we call such a thing climate change
if we look at the rather short term (tens of thousands of years), or we speak of climate variability if
we look at the much longer term (millions of years). Most often, when there is no natural pattern or
variability that explains what is happening, we speak of climate change.

Either way, the climate variation and climate changes that have occurred on our planet throughout
history are the result of natural, internal processes as well as external forces or dynamics. And
especially of their interplay, combination, and possible mutual reinforcement through feedback
loops. Some of the drivers at play: our increasingly bright sun, plate tectonics (earth crust
movements), ocean circulation, albedo variation (differences in light reflection because of less or
more ice for instance), very abrupt events such as volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts, cyclical
changes in earth’s orbit around the sun, and the cyclical nature of solar radiation. And most likely
even more than what we know so far.

It is worth noting that life itself, fauna and flora, also plays a remarkable role as climate regulator, or
– for that matter – as driver of climate change. In fact, the climate change we are experiencing now is
due to human activity, and not to any of those natural factors or cycles just mentioned.

The background picture of palaeoclimatology

It is quite interesting to look at the evolution of the earth’s temperature. We can learn a lot from it.

Climate, of course, is about much more than average temperature, but we can easily imagine that
when that temperature changes, other aspects or parameters of climate also change: wind and
precipitation patterns possibly change, seasons differ, weather phenomena become more extreme
and frequent or the other way around, ice cover melts or increases, sea levels are consequently

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higher or lower. Etcetera. So they make worlds of difference. Change in average temperature can be
seen as the cause and/or face of climate change.15

Palaeoclimatologists study climates from the deep past. They collect data by studying ice cores,
sedimentary rocks, growth rings in trees, or sediments in coral reefs. Based on their findings, even if
they are sometimes only approximations of reality, we can build graphs showing average
temperatures going back hundreds of millions of years. We see surprising ups and downs.

Thus, we assume that around 635 million years ago earth was in a true deep-freeze state, a so-called
snowball earth. The entire planet was covered in snow and ice. Something similar, by the way,
according to the hypotheses, also occurred at other points in geological time – the earth is some
seven times older. Then followed, over hundreds of millions of years, the ups and downs of
greenhouse earths and icehouse earths.16 That large, cyclical alternation of hot and cold periods may
correspond to a cycle in plate tectonics: continents drifting apart and then moving together again.

A period in climate history that attracted the attention of quite a few scientists because of similarities
with today is the transition from the Palaeocene to the Eocene some 56 million years ago.17 Although
it was considerably warmer then than it is now, another 5 to 6 degrees were added over a period of
about 20,000 years.

Moreover, the simple fact that the geological history of the planet can be divided into recognisable
epochs immediately suggests that those ‘successive worlds’ looked different. The Devonian, the
Carboniferous, the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous – to name but a few – they
featured different life forms, had land contours and sea levels that were different, and living
conditions and climates differed. And it must be said: transitions often also meant trouble for and
required adaptability from life itself.

We are currently in an icehouse earth: that is, a relatively cold phase. It set in about 34 million years
ago. Then an Antarctic ice sheet reappeared, a first for a long time. For substantial Arctic ice this
time, we had to wait until about 2 to 3 million years ago.

Within that bigger, relatively cool phase that we are in now, but in time scales that we humans still
find hard to grasp, we have seen a particular pattern for about 2 million years now. It involves the
alternation of ice ages and intermediate ages that are up to 5° to 6° C warmer. Scientifically, we
speak of a cycle of glacials and interglacials. The cycle has a turnaround time of about 100,000 years,
with the interglacials being considerably shorter at 10,000 to 20,000 years than the glacials or ice
ages themselves.18 At this point in the cycle, we find ourselves in an interglacial. We have been in it

15This observation also makes the terminology in media coverage a bit more insightful. Strictly speaking, the term ‘global
warming’ or ‘climate warming’ refers only to the increase in global mean temperature. But often that term is used as a
(near) synonym or proxy for ‘climate change’, which is the observed change in climate (which means also in aspects other
than average temperature, as just indicated in the text).

16Consider systems terminology: a system (the planet), when crossing a threshold from one kind of state or regime
(greenhouse world), can end up in another kind of state or regime (icehouse world). (And sometimes back again, as we see
here in the alternation between greenhouse and icehouse earths).

17 Technically: the PETM or the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

18The terminology can be confusing. Often scientists reserve the term ‘ice age’ for, say, the longer, relatively cool period
against which this cycle takes place. If they then refer to the ‘last ice age’, it is to a period that is still going on now. In

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for about 12,000 years. It is an interglacial that bears the name Holocene. All in all, this is the picture:
we are in a rather warm phase within a much larger, relatively cool period that is itself characterised
by a succession of ice ages.

Based on this normal pattern, we should end up in another glacial or ice age in the not-too-distant
future. Should. But that reality, as well as the future, now look different. As pointed out earlier, we
are observing an unusual, not-to-be-expected, non-natural warming that seems to at least put the
next ice age on the back burner.

The pattern is broken: what happens now does not fall within that normal variability.

The earth, life, humankind

It should be clear by now that climate and our atmosphere are dynamic processes. Changes in
climate precede us by millions and even billions of years. After all, we are a particularly recent
phenomenon: our presence makes up only a fraction of the total time since the creation of the earth
and since the emergence of life on earth.

A short exploration of deep time and the mystery of life is fitting.

If we plot earth’s age (a good 4.5 billion years) on a 24-hour scale, we humans show up in the last
few seconds. And that while the first life forms on earth easily go back 3.8 billion years – they appear
on the 24-hour scale between 3 and 4 in the morning.

About 3.3 billion years ago, the sky was pink-red and a day lasted not 24 but 11 hours – the earth was
spinning faster on its axis. The oldest fossils go back 3.2 billion years, and around that time we see
the first of the known (but smaller) supercontinents – where all the land mass lies together. Around
2.7 billion years ago, life begins to take on a role in regulating earth’s temperature. Long ice ages
follow, but then CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere and earth warms up again. Sexual reproduction
begins about 2 billion years ago, with the first multicellular life appearing about 200 million years
later.

Meanwhile, continents tear away from each other, and collide again, every 500 million years. About
1 billion years ago, oxygen makes up 1% of the atmosphere. And as for temperature: probably three
more ice earths. For a particularly long time, life is not really complex or sophisticated – scientists
sometimes speak of the Boring Billion (years). But about 542 million years ago, the Cambrian
explosion occurs: in a time span of about 5-10 million years, life invents the complex patterns for all
life forms to follow. Life colonises the planet. Meanwhile, by the way, oxygen levels in the
atmosphere have risen briskly, up to 21%.

With the Cambrian begins a period of amazing diversification: fish with jaws, mossy plants, then
vascular plants, insects, trees, amphibians. But this flowering of life is also interrupted by moments of
mass extinction: 252 million years ago, for example, 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial
species become extinct. This is the Permian-Triassic mass extinction or Great Dying – the third of five
documented mass extinctions since the Cambrian explosion. Then come reptiles, dinosaurs, first

colloquial language, however, ice age is also simply synonymous with glacial: if the ‘last ice age’ is then referred to, it is to
that period of some 100,000 years that ended 12,000 years ago.

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primitive mammals, moths, butterflies, flowering plants. About 66 million years ago, life gets another
hard time: an asteroid causes a shock wave through system earth. 60-70% of all species become
extinct, including the dinosaurs. The fifth mass extinction. Then the age of mammals arrives – birds
are the only surviving dinosaurs.

Primates appear. Homo sapiens, our human species, enters the scene somewhere between 300,000
and 200,000 years ago. The last ice age ends about 12,000 years ago: that means our ancestors lived
through more than one ice age. (But actually, we should see it differently: all life forms that we
descend from are our ancestors – we go back 3.8 billion or even more years, to what or who we call
LUCA: our last universal common ancestor.) Agriculture – about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago – is a
fairly recent invention, befitting the relatively stable, warmer period that dawned with the Holocene.
But it is not as if it represented a simple, one-off switch from hunter-gatherer cultures to agricultural
societies. The industrial revolution: started just 200 years ago. Meanwhile, on the 24-hour scale that
indicates the age of the planet, we are talking milliseconds. 19

So, humans appear in the very last moment of a particularly long story. But our appearance,
meanwhile, has by no means gone unnoticed: as humanity, we have evolved into a force no longer
inferior to the rest of the geological forces and cycles acting on the planet. We appear to be a very
successful species that is indeed making its mark on the geological time scale and is shaping the
world to its liking. But also: a species apparently capable of starting a sixth mass extinction, playing
ecologically particularly dangerous games, and triggering climate change.

Very successful – what’s in a name? Whether the Anthropocene – the Age of Humans – has a long or
short life span, either way we have already made – quite literally – an indelible impression.

What we can also learn from this kind of excursion into deep time is precisely the importance of the
time scales we use to look at an issue like climate change. Changes that occur in one human lifetime,
or in one generation, may be perceived as slow and negligible from a human perspective. In people’s
perception, they are far from the so-called abrupt and dangerous changes that (we think)
climatologists talk about. But ‘abrupt’, ‘slow’ or ‘gradual’ are terms that only take on their meaning
when you see them in the right time scale. From the larger, planetary perspective and on a geological
time scale – the kind of perspective where humans are just a speck in the history of life – these
observed changes are much less trivial, far from slow and perhaps even the exact opposite of
gradual.20

Living climate basics

Let’s step back and for a moment focus on the workings of climate itself.

The primary energy for ecosystem earth comes from incoming sunlight. In this way, the sun is the
main driver of the climate system. Sunlight has a warming effect on land, water, and air, and it is this

19Some of the data in this section come from the Deep Time Walk, a documented 4.6-kilometre walk where every metre
you walk represents 1 million years. See also the app, and https://www.deeptimewalk.org/

20 To clarify the problem of the right or wrong time scale: banging into a wall is banging into a wall, whether you do it in
slow motion, or in real time. And there is the image of the frog in the familiar story: if you put it in hot water, it will jump
right out, but if you heat the water slowly, it won’t really be alarmed and stay put. Unaware of the danger – it only gets
fractionally warmer – the frog is overtaken by reality itself.

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absorbed temperature that is then distributed across the planet via wind patterns and ocean
circulation. Some of the incoming energy or heat is lost back into space, or even immediately
reflected through the albedo effect. This is the reflectivity of, for example, clouds or ice cover: white
or light surfaces act as mirrors that bounce the energy back into space.

A major climate factor is the natural greenhouse effect – a component of ecosystem earth. It is the
phenomenon whereby greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere. Without that greenhouse
effect, the earth would be much cooler than the current average of about 15°C: the average would
be well below the freezing point of water. In a nutshell, it works as follows: the atmosphere captures
or absorbs thermal, infrared radiation (coming from the earth’s surface, after coming from the sun)
that would otherwise be lost in space, and radiates that energy in various directions, including back
towards earth. So, heat is trapped, like in a greenhouse or glasshouse – hence the name. The main
greenhouse gases are water vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O),
ozone (O3) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Levels of incoming and outgoing energy or radiation on our planet can vary and are determined by a
large number of factors (and the interactions between them): the solar cycle, volcanic eruptions,
plate tectonics, forestation, changing orbits of celestial bodies, more or less albedo, amount of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, etc. The difference between incoming and outgoing radiation –
the energy balance so to speak – is called radiative forcing and is measured in watts per square
metre (W/m2). Positive radiative forcing (more incoming than outgoing energy) means that air, land,
and ocean warm up, negative radiative forcing (more outgoing than incoming energy) results in the
opposite process: the earth cools down.

The system is in thermal equilibrium when radiative forcing is zero: the earth’s average surface
temperature is then more or less stable, and the energy budget is in relative equilibrium. That the
system tends towards equilibrium, even with an increasingly bright sun (which has increased
incoming energy by 25 to 30% since the beginning of life), can be seen as a form of self-regulation of
ecosystem earth. Despite that increase in energy or heat, the temperature over geological timescales
on earth remained surprisingly stable within a certain corridor. Earth with life on it has thus managed
to keep the global mean temperature acceptable or liveable for itself.21 Earth’s life forms thus play a
remarkable role in temperature and climate regulation. Trees and algae are well-known examples:
plant life stores the greenhouse gas CO2 through the process of photosynthesis. Plant life thus forms
part of the carbon cycle, which must – ideally – be in a kind of relative balance: not significantly more
carbon should enter the atmosphere than is taken from it.

Climate-wise, this is where we come to the cause of the current global warming: human activity,
mainly since the start of the industrial revolution. The combustion and use of fossil fuels (oil, gas, and
coal), and that to an ever-increasing extent, produces large, additional emissions of greenhouse
gases which significantly amplify the natural greenhouse effect. Consequently, greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing, resulting in more radiative forcing and thus higher
temperatures on earth and in the oceans. This includes, for example, not only the carbon dioxide

21This was one of the observations that eventually lead to the Gaia theory. (See an earlier footnote.) Usually, people think
that there are external conditions that must be right for life to arise, and for it to persist. And not that life forms also co-
determine these conditions once it has emerged.

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coming ‘directly’ from internal combustion engines (used for vehicles, or in industry), but also, for
example, methane released from oil or gas extraction, or via highly industrialised livestock farming.

At the same time, and on the other side of the cycle, we humans are also destroying or disrupting
more and more of the natural systems that retain or systematically remove carbon from the
atmosphere: deforestation, destruction of swamps and peatlands, or other types of land-use change.
As for CO2: more carbon sources (which release carbon), along with less carbon sinks (which
remove/hold/store carbon from the atmosphere). Let us not forget that what we call fossil fuels,
could just as easily be viewed as carbon compounds that have been stored away. But it’s not just the
carbon cycle that is out of balance, the same is true for the methane cycle, for example.

In turn, an intensified greenhouse effect then begins to interfere with other dynamics of the climate
system. For example, higher temperatures on the planet create significantly more water vapour.
After all, warm air can contain more water vapour. But as we remember, water vapour is a
greenhouse gas. More water vapour creates a stronger greenhouse effect, which produces a warmer
planet, which allows more water vapour to be in the air, ... This means that in a self-reinforcing
feedback loop, water vapour plays an important role in global warming and climate change.
However, it is not the underlying cause, just a feedback effect. Another example of such a self-
reinforcing loop lies in the melting of permafrost: warming thaws the long-frozen (sub)soil in
northern regions, releasing stored methane, which contributes to an intensification of the
greenhouse effect, further increasing warming and melting permafrost. In a cycle that only reinforces
itself.

Not everything that happens produces immediate effects, by the way. Sometimes there are
significant delays in the system – we speak of inertia. This makes it even more complex: the full
warming effect can take several centuries. In concrete human terms, it means that we have not yet
seen the impact on climate of certain things we did in the past: it is still to come. That is the warming
that is still in the pipeline.

And there is even more complexity. Different greenhouse gases not only have different warming
potentials (how much they contribute to radiative forcing, and thus to global warming), but they also
do so over specific and different time intervals. This means that some gases have more effect in the
short term, others in the long term. Methane, for example, is much more potent as a greenhouse gas
(than carbon dioxide) but also disappears from the atmosphere faster (than the carbon dioxide which
lingers longer). Factoring all that in is a real chore. But because greenhouse gas concentrations can
be measured more easily (even in the geological past) than radiative forcing or temperature, they are
taken as indicators.

Sometimes the six main greenhouse gases are expressed together as carbon dioxide equivalent
(CO2e), because carbon dioxide is the most important of anthropogenic or human-made greenhouse
gases.

Climate science collective

So indeed, sometimes we need to zoom in and out a bit to understand what is happening. Only
against the backdrop of deep time, only with sufficient understanding of what climate is, and how

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.20
climate is part of the ecology of life, can we begin to understand and assess the observations that
science is currently making.

Because reliable information on climate change is crucial, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was established in 1988.22 It is the leading international body for climate change
assessment. IPCC’s role is to compile and estimate the latest scientific, technical, and socio-economic
literature on climate change on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis. 23

Every few years, the IPCC issues a report on the climate situation: the first Assessment Report was
published in 1990. Over the period 2021-2023, the sixth report was completed (AR6 – Assessment
Report 6). This report, like the previous ones, consists of several parts produced by different working
groups. There is the section that brings together current scientific knowledge on climate change (AR6
2021 The Physical Science Basis), the section that assesses impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation
options (AR6 2022 Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) and the section that looks at how to slow
down the speed of climate change (AR6 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change). A final section of the
AR6 report synthesises, in less technical jargon, the work of the other parts by the three working
groups and some other special reports published in the meantime (AR6 2023 Synthesis Report).

Thousands of scientists contribute draft reports and engage in a process of peer review. The whole
cycle of making a finalised report takes several years. It goes without saying that with such a process,
the outcome gains in reliability, and there is every reason to take the reports very seriously. After all,
they can be considered the orthodoxy or scientific consensus on climate change. And they are
alarming.

Even more worrying is to understand that the assessment of the climate situation in the IPCC reports
is an underestimate of reality itself. The reports are easily overtaken by reality itself.

First, there is the slow process of drafting, proofing, and finalising the report. The whole process
takes five or more years, which means that the final reports lag behind because they cannot include
the most up-to-date information and the latest, scientific data. Moreover, it is a rather
uncomfortable observation that a number of worst-case future scenarios from earlier reports have
simply turned into reality in later, more recent reports, for example for the loss of ice mass in the
Arctic. Indeed, often, in terms of scenarios and projections, reinforcing feedback mechanisms and
second-order knock-on effects are mentioned but not accounted for: they are difficult to estimate or
quantify.

Furthermore: assessing climate sensitivity is an important but not straightforward matter. What
increase in global mean temperature can be expected if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations
double (compared to pre-industrial levels)? And where exactly are the thresholds for dangerous

22 Website: https://www.ipcc.ch/

23The simple need for reliable information – facts, observations, measurements, insights, and their contexts – is far from
waning. On the contrary, it looks as if the very idea of information is itself shaken to its foundations: in a world of fake
news, deepfakes, alternative truths, echo chambers, filter bubbles, trolls and steering algorithms, information has almost
become a war zone. Moreover, in the context of freedom of speech, many people seem to think, unhindered by any
knowledge, that they can say anything about anything. The world becomes a difficult place when we no longer know
who/what can be trusted and who/what cannot. Conspiracy theories of all kinds are on the rise – and they are not as
innocent as they sometimes seem. Established facts, meanwhile, have a hard time.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.21
interference? The answers to these questions have implications for the limit of 2° or 1.5° C warming
that it is best not to exceed. 24 Even if we understand that every tenth of a degree makes a difference.

A final remark can be made about the nature of science itself and thus about the nature of
contributions to the IPCC reports. The typical scientific caution or reticence is understandable and
must be defended from a methodological point of view, but it can also send a signal that can too
easily be used as an excuse for not taking the necessary precautions, or for questioning things that
have long since ceased to be in doubt. Statements like ‘there are unknown factors’, ‘we are not 100
per cent certain’, ‘we establish the facts, but our explanatory models are not really capable of
explaining them’ are simply part of good science. By the way, the scientific consensus in climate
science is extremely high, and the (computer) climate models that it uses are reliable.

In terms of looking at the future, the reports obviously work with different scenarios, ranging from
the greenest, most sustainable path we can take as a global society, to simply continuing what we
are doing now in a business-as-usual scenario, and everything in between. That kind of scenario
thinking is necessary, because after all, what the future holds depends in part on how we react to the
situation now and what we are going to do next. For all sorts of reasons, many people prefer the ‘it
will be fine’ scenario. But the seriousness of the situation (and our procrastination) forces us to
consider all possible scenarios for which we have (serious) indications, including the grim ones. Such
seriousness should perhaps invite the scientific community to step a little outside the normal safety
and comfort zone of objective scepticism. Or, as Hansen and Sato put it: "If this restraint is the best
we can do as a scientific community, then maybe we should be farming, or doing something else". 25

The facts

Anyone wishing to look into the current scientific consensus and key findings on climate change for
themselves can consult the various IPCC reports or their summaries. For a general overview, the
Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report is appropriate.26 Here we highlight only a
selection of observations, mainly taken from the AR6 reports. Further details, uncertainty intervals,
and degree of confidence can be found in the reports themselves.27

24Those limits perform an important, mobilising function in raising awareness about the problem of climate change: most
people have heard of them by now. Whereas initially the limit for dangerous climate interference was ‘agreed’ at 2° C,
today there is more caution: at the Paris climate summit (COP 2015), it was agreed that, to significantly reduce risks, every
effort should be made to limit warming to 1.5° C. In 2018, the IPCC released a special report on the impact of such warming
(Global Warming of 1.5° C).

25James Hansen and Makiko Sato in: Global Warming: East-West Connections, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
and Columbia University Earth Institute, 2007 (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/EastWest_20070925.pdf). See also,
for example, the website of Scientist Rebellion ( https://scientistrebellion.com/ ): "As scientists, we have tried writing
reports and giving presentations about the climate and ecological crisis to those in power. We must now have the humility
to accept these attempts have not worked. Now is the time for us to take action, so that we show how seriously we take
our warnings."

26SPM - Summary for Policy Makers, of each of the sub-reports there is an SPM, so also of the Synthesis Report; see
https://www.ipcc.ch/ar6-syr/

27It is completely beyond what we can do here, but it is quite revealing to look at the evolution of findings within the
reports. The six reports, meanwhile, cover 30 years: FAR 1990, SAR 1995, TAR 2001, AR4 2007, AR5 2014, AR6 2022.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.22
The report calls it unequivocal: human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, and
the order of magnitude of changes is unprecedented for hundreds to thousands of years. Each of the
last four decades has been successively warmer than any previous decade since 1850. The global
mean temperature rose by about 1.1° C if you compare the 2011-2020 average with that of 1850-
1900. One degree added in one century, say, with a more marked increase over land (1.59° C) than
over the ocean (0.88° C). Not unimportant to note here is that the extra heat or positive radiative
forcing was mainly buffered via ocean warming: 91% of the increase in energy is in the water.

That global warming is unequivocal is also evident in the global melting of glaciers since the 1990s,
and the increasing loss of Arctic ice and snow and ice cover in the northern hemisphere. Average sea
level also rose by about 20 cm between 1901 and 2018, and sea level rise is accelerating in the
meantime. Half of that rise is due to thermal expansion: warmer seawater expands, it takes up more
space, so sea level goes up. But land ice that melts, for example the ice cap on Greenland or glaciers
worldwide, also raises sea levels. At the same time, ocean acidification occurs, decreasing oxygen
levels in the upper layers of the ocean.

Equally unambiguous is the increase in extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves, droughts,
tropical storms, and extreme rainfall – both in frequency and intensity, and sometimes in
combination with each other. Worldwide. Notably, then, we are not just observing global warming;
we are seeing the impact and consequences of it globally. There is hardly a marine or terrestrial
ecosystem that has not been impacted.

The report is also adamant about the fact that global warming and its consequences are
unequivocally due to humans. The models show it: the observed increase in greenhouse gases since
around 1750 – in other words, since the start of the industrial revolution – is related to human
activity. In 2022, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is 417 ppm (parts per million) compared to a
pre-industrial level of 280 ppm: an increase of almost 50%. Methane concentration stands at 1911
ppb (parts per billion) versus 722 ppb pre-industrial: an increase of more than 150 %. And the
atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has increased especially in recent decades. 28

Moreover, the increase in these and other greenhouse gases due to human activity, according to
climate models, is causing global warming that should be higher than the warming we actually
observe in measurements. This is because other human activity – pollution in particular such as
through organic carbon or sulphur dioxide – is causing a partial cooling of the planet. The paradox:
our pollution partly masks the warming we are causing with our fossil-fuel-based society – green gas
warming partly masked by aerosol cooling.

Confidence in the models used to study climate may be called strong (and has certainly increased
since the earlier reports). That is, the understanding that science has of how the climate system
works is pretty good. Computer models that simulate the current climate based on both natural
drivers (solar cycle, volcanic eruptions, etc.) and human activity (greenhouse gas emissions,
deforestation, pollution, etc.) give results that agree with the observed values. In other words, the

28The Global Carbon Project calculated that more CO2 has been emitted in the past 30 years (1991-2021) than in the period
1750- 990. So that is roughly since the time the first IPCC report on climate change was published.
https://ieep.eu/news/co2-emissions-need-to-be-reduced-twice-as-fast-as-the-rate-they-have-gone-up-since-1990/
Trends in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4, among others, can be tracked at
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/global.html

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.23
estimate of the combined human-induced radiative forcing (mainly warming and a little cooling),
together with the natural drivers (which are currently negligible) and the internal variability of the
climate, corresponds to the actual observed warming of the planet. The scientists’ climate models
are sound.

And on this point too, the report is adamant: warming of 1.5° C and even 2° C will be a reality in the
21st century unless carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced in the
coming decades. Whatever future scenario we look at, global warming will continue until at least the
middle of the century: given the inertia, warming is still in the pipeline. How temperature and climate
continue to evolve, and thus what kind of world we will live in, depends (in part) on which path we
choose for the future.

But things are certainly going to be different: some of the changes are already irreversible for
hundreds to thousands of years, and these have to do mostly with the ocean, with ice sheets and sea
levels. And we also know that more warming – every additional 0.5° C so to speak – only makes the
changes in the climate system even bigger, even more severe, even more dangerous. With even
more, and even more intense heat waves, cyclones or water bombs, for example. With even stronger
melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice, and accelerated thawing of permafrost, for example. But also with
a loss of efficiency of terrestrial and marine ecosystems to act as carbon sinks.

Things that seem rather unlikely now cannot (any longer) be ruled out, such as combined extreme
phenomena (hot, dry and windy, for example), according to the report. And they must be taken into
account in risk analysis.

AR6 looks at different groups of scenarios that imply different socio-economic developments for the
future – SSPs or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Are we going to succeed in taking the most
sustainable pathway, bringing emissions down so drastically that we reach net-zero emissions
sometime in the middle of this century, and even net-negative in the second half of the century? Or
do we take the highway of business as usual – the continuation of a fossil fuel-intensive
development? Or do we ‘somehow do our best’ and end up in a scenario somewhere in between? In
the most sustainable path, the first scenario, we might limit warming to around 1 to 1.8° C by the end
of the century – best estimate then being 1.4° C. With a fossil fuel-based development path, we will
be living on a planet that is 3.3 to 5.7° C warmer at the end of this century – with a best estimate of
4.4° C.

Of course, we are not there yet.

Consequences and concerns

We live in a time when the bills are being presented. The effects of climate change are seen and felt.
And as to what impact each additional 0.5° C of warming will or may have: that is what the reports,
and the broader scientific community, try to form an idea of. What does it mean to live in a world
that is 2°, 3°, 4°, 5° or more degrees warmer?29 Some of the things we are already seeing will occur to

29See, for example: Lynas, M. (2021). Our final warning: Six degrees of climate emergency (4th Estate paperback edition).
4th Estate.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.24
an even higher degree, or more frequently, or faster and perhaps exponentially so as tipping points
in the combined climate-ecology system are crossed.30

And above all, let us not forget: it is not really the (slowly) rising averages that affect us, society, and
the ecology of existence, but rather the outliers and extremes which lie behind them. Not a slowly
rising sea level, but the unseen unprecedented spring tide that can accompany it at any given time.
Not the slowly rising temperature, but the new extremes behind those averages. Such things can be
devastating. In Belgium, for example, the average temperature has increased by 1.9° C since 1890. 31
Most people will not feel such a difference (a mere 2° warmer). What we do feel is, for example, a
heat wave with unprecedented high temperatures, like in July 2019. A new absolute maximum
temperature of 41.8° C was then measured in Begijnendijk. Depending on humidity levels, these are
dangerous temperatures for humans, because above a certain limit, the body can no longer release
its heat.

Or, if we look at 2021, which was a wet year for Belgium: a total of 1038.8 mm of precipitation fell in
Uccle, some 25% more than the normal 837.1 mm. But some regions received that extra 25% over a
period of just 48 hours: a water bomb. We should probably not tell people in the Vesdre region
anything about averages. Jalhay’s pluviometer recorded 271.5 litres of water per square metre over
48 hours. By now we all know what such a thing can do: the floods in Belgium and neighbouring
countries in July 2021 wreaked havoc. They claimed 240 lives and caused some €38 billion in
damage.32 (As for the temperature for that year: the highest measured temperature in July in our
country was 28.4° C – which is 13.4° C less than the 41.8° C of 2019).

It is important to look at consequences of climate change. Because in a sense, consequences – and

not graphs, values, averages, or statistics – are the real face of climate disruption. They bring climate
change home.

It is not obvious to make a convenient summary of consequences and impacts. This has to do with
the fact that all the things we are actually trying to look at separately are intertwined in all sorts of
ways. But precisely because everything is interconnected with everything – climate with ecology first
and foremost – it doesn’t really matter where we start, or how and under which categories we group
the impacts.

There are issues related to water. Changing precipitation patterns show significantly less
precipitation in (already) dry areas. Combined with rising temperatures, rain that doesn’t come
causes desertification, reduced water availability and water stress for many people, animals, and

30Some of the frequently mentioned tipping points or thresholds after which systems may change into a different ‘regime’,
concern: Greenland ice sheet (melt), boreal permafrost (sudden thaw), Arctic sea ice (melt; summer, winter), Amazonian
and boreal forests (destruction, die-off), Atlantic part of the thermohaline circulation or Gulf Stream, and Labrador Current
(severe slowdown or stagnation), coral reef (degradation, fading), Antarctic ice sheet (melt; west, east), glaciers (loss,
disappearance), Sahel & West African monsoon (greening). See, for example: McKay, D. I. A., Steel, A., Abrams, J. F.,
Winkelmann, R., Sakschewski, B., Loriani, S., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S. E., Rockström, J., & Lenton, T. M. (2022). Exceeding 1.5° C
global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. Science, 377(6611), eabn7950.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950

31The figure is from 2019, and comes from Climate Report 2020 from the Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI):
https://www.meteo.be/nl/info/nieuwsoverzicht/het-kmi-stelt-zijn-nieuwe-klimaatrapport-voor

32See the post in De Morgen: https://www.demorgen.be/nieuws/overstromingen-in-belgie-en-buurlanden-zijn-op-een-na-

duurste-natuurramp-van-2021~bec71362/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.25
plants. And it increases the risk of destructive wildfires. But changing precipitation patterns also
show themselves in more or heavier rainfall, often in areas where it was already wet. Or they
translate, as we saw in the example, into extreme weather phenomena such as excessive rainfall in a
very short time where the water not only does not have time to replenish groundwater tables, but
wreaks havoc by claiming lives, destroying infrastructure and washing away fertile soils. Monsoon
and rainy seasons do not always seem to follow their familiar patterns anymore. Along with snow
and ice melt, these changing precipitation patterns affect water cycles and water availability around
the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

There are also problems with agriculture and food, which are of course partly related to these water
problems. Rising temperatures and changing ecosystem and climatic conditions affect the way food
can be grown. Extreme weather phenomena (heat waves, intense rainfall, droughts) destroy crops
and soils, and disrupt agriculture and food supply more than before. Small and subsistence farmers in
particular are hit hard because they depend on seasonal harvests for their livelihoods. Farming
methods and systems that have evolved and adapted to local or regional (climate) conditions are
under threat. Previously highly adapted and successful traditions may suddenly no longer work in
those changed (climatic) conditions.

There are problems with marine, coastal, and terrestrial ecosystems, and with biodiversity: a lot of
ecosystems are feeling the impact of regional climate change. It is appropriate to reiterate here that
natural systems are also hugely affected by human impacts other than climate change: clear-cutting
of old-growth forests, increasing use of monocultures (farming systems based on only one type of
crop), use of pesticides and herbicides, pollution, habitat destruction, wiping out of animal or plant
species, the sometimes unintended migration of invasive exotic species, overfishing, use of chemicals
and plastics, and so on. Individual animals and plants, whole species, as well as humans, have co-
evolved with their environment and the climatic factors that have made them who they are.
Although, as we know, all that life has also helped determine what those climatic conditions look like.
Changes in those conditions can be very alarming: if they cannot adapt or migrate, species become
extinct. The (local) web of life starts to unravel: ecosystems are under pressure.

And this is exactly what is happening, even to the extent that we are talking about the sixth mass
extinction wave. The result, as we saw earlier, is severe loss of biodiversity, making ecosystems less
resilient – less capable to deal with shocks.33 The result is sometimes major disruption, sometimes
collapse of the system. Technically, the latter does not really mean total collapse, but rather a serious
change where the existing system (a forest, for example) is no longer able to self-sustain and
switches to another state or regime (a desert, for example). Another example concerns the die-off of
coral reefs: some reefs, due to coral bleaching, change from coral-dominated to algae-dominated
systems with serious consequences for the global, marine food web.

We can also look at impacts in terms of health and living conditions. Important ecosystem functions
are threatened, such as carbon storage, water distribution, and the preservation of fertile land. Life
forms, including humans, may be in trouble because they depend on those ecosystem services. And
potentially these are life forms that in turn provide other ecosystem services.

33On resilience thinking as a dynamic form of systems thinking, see: Dhont, R. (2010). Veerkracht denken. Oikos, 4(55), 6-
24.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.26
A worrying impact in this respect is the acidification of the oceans, as evidenced by the death of coral
reefs. The changing chemical composition of the ocean thus disrupts not only the food chain on
which a lot of people depend, but also the carbon cycle. Phytoplankton, the basis of marine food
chains and a key factor in oxygen production and carbon uptake, are struggling in a changing ocean.
Or look at forests. Their destruction by intensive logging, by deliberate burning to make way for
agriculture or other activity, by drought that is fatal to the trees, or by the spontaneous and still
barely stoppable forest fires due to higher temperatures and more extreme droughts, all this means
that tropical forests or boreal forests that traditionally passed for reliable systems of carbon storage
are now often net emitters of CO2 .

Because of the alarming information about it, it is appropriate to also take a closer look at the effects
of ice melt, ocean warming, and sea level rise. Sea level rise is a threat to low-lying island states and
to the world’s densely populated mega-deltas and flood plains. It means not only coastal erosion and
infrastructure damage, but also the intrusion of salt water into freshwater areas, resulting in
contamination or salinisation of soil and aquifers. Housing, access to drinking water, and agriculture
are threatened. And warmer ocean temperatures, especially in equatorial waters, can increase
hurricanes in intensity with downright destructive consequences for people, agriculture, and
infrastructure in affected areas.

Meltwater from glaciers, and from seasonal snow in high mountains, on which sometimes entire
populations depend for drinking water, irrigation agriculture and hydropower, is another concern.
Meltwater from the Himalayas, for example, feeds Asian rivers – the Indus, Brahmaputra and Ganges
river basins – on which more than a billion people depend. An increase in meltwater from the
Himalayas because of climate change may give the wrong impression that water consumption can be
maintained or even increased. A quick glance at the not-too-distant future shows that this is only
misleading and temporary: you can’t count on the extra water from glacier melt once the glaciers are
gone. On shorter time scales (and in other places), there is the problem of insufficient snowfall in
winter, which reduces the availability of water (from seasonal melt) in the following season. Or the
problem of too early and too rapid thaw of seasonal snow resulting in (too) early peak flow, and less
or no water at the end of summer.

All these impacts, one after the other, show that climate change is a societal issue that has social,
economic, and geopolitical consequences. Globally, the most vulnerable are hit first and
disproportionately hard. Conflict zones are especially vulnerable because of instability or of poor or
destroyed infrastructure. Extreme drought or floods lead to hunger, to despair, to migrations. To
conflicts over what is still available in terms of food, or drinking water, or other things people need.
To displacement and complex refugee crises. And when all that mixes with latent or existing tensions
it can lead to wars that cause untold human suffering and further ecological degradation. Climate
change creates or intensifies poverty, inequality, conflict and precarious or insecure livelihoods.

Ecosystem services

What may at least be clear from the list of impacts and concerns is the – literally – vital importance of
healthy, functioning ecosystems. Of healthy, resilient nature in other words.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.27
Here lies the reason why, in a sense, we can say that climate and ecology are the issues that really,
fundamentally matter. This does not diminish other challenges we face: keep economies going, find
ways out of conflicts, face pandemics, tackle poverty, hunger or inequality, ensure welbeing and
education for children, provide energy for families and businesses, keep money systems healthy and
in check, fight discrimination, racism and polarisation, show solidarity in difficult times, and so on.
But while we can change human-made systems like economies, money systems, societal models,
policies, or any other way in which we organise things, we cannot really bargain with planetary
ecology. That ecology is based on deep, tangible laws. Earth knows: no ecology? no economy!34

Ecology is the foundation: it carries everything. The nature of our future depends on the future of
our nature: our own future is inextricably intertwined with the future of the larger community of life
from which we spring and which keeps us alive.35 Healthy, resilient nature offers us many more
things than most of us realise. A concept such as ‘ecosystem service’ therefore helps us clarify and
sense what is potentially at stake – directly or indirectly.

It was the UN that put the concept of ecosystem services on the map in 2005, with the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment that examines the health of ecosystems worldwide. In it, four categories of
ecosystem services are identified.36 They are all services that are provided to us every day for free by
ecosystems. As long as we don’t undermine those ecosystems.

The category that enables and supports the other ecosystem services is that of the supporting
services: soil formation, nutrient cycles and primary production (plants capture energy in organic
compounds). When it comes to the products obtained through ecosystem services, we are in the
category of provisioning services: these include food and fibre, firewood, materials, energy, genetic
resources, biochemicals, natural medicines and pharmaceuticals, fresh water. Regulating services, in
turn, include: air quality maintenance, water distribution, erosion control, water treatment and
waste disposal, biological control and pest and disease control, degradation of toxic substances,
pollination, storm protection, climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Cultural services are non-
material benefits that people derive from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive
development, reflection, recreation and aesthetic experiences: cultural diversity, spiritual and

34 Stable climates and healthy ecosystems are the basic conditions for societies (including their economies and businesses):
there can be no such thing as an economy without ecology. There are no externalities. Hence the corrections proposed in
this sense to both the well-known People-Planet-Profit model, and to the Sustainable Development Goals. The triple P
model (people, planet, profit) is usually presented as three partially overlapping circles or Venn diagrams, with the zone
constituting sustainability in the middle. The criticism is that these cannot possibly be three equal or equivalent fields: they
represent interests of a completely different order and are (and should be) in a certain hierarchy in relation to each other.
The correction proposed is three more or less concentric circles of which planet forms the outermost and therefore largest.
That circle includes people (a smaller circle within planet: we are not the only life forms), and profit is the very smallest
circle that falls within the circle of people (but also occupies only a limited space of it: there is more than business in a
society). The Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs, the UN’s agenda of 17 development goals usually presented as a list or
a block, can also be adapted along similar lines. The Stockholm Resilience Centre proposes an SDGs wedding cake: with a
big basic circle of the biosphere (goals 15, 14, 6, 13), which carries society (goals 1, 11, 16, 7, 3, 4, 5, 2), which in turn
supports the economy (goals 8, 9, 10, 12). See https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2016-06-14-
the-sdgs-wedding-cake.html

35
O’Sullivan, E. & Taylor, M. (Eds). (2004), Learning towards an ecological consciousness. Selected transformative practices,
Palgrave MacMillan, New York, p.16.

36 For the diagram of ecosystem services: https://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.html

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.28
religious values, knowledge systems, educational values, inspiration, aesthetic values, social
relationships, sense of belonging somewhere, cultural heritage values, recreation and relaxation.

What a wonderful world. Which is nevertheless a bit at stake.

Looking deeper for root causes

To understand issues like climate change and the wider ecological crisis in their complexity, and to
see the seriousness and urgency of the questions, we have had to zoom in and out quite a bit. But it
pays to be well informed, and it pays to understand the workings and dynamics of all kinds of
interconnected systems that ultimately make up our planetary system. Self-knowledge is the
beginning of all wisdom: for this is us – ecosystem earth.

Good insight into the present and the past pays off in the first place because it provides useful
signposts for the future. It makes little sense to make choices for what is to come if we only know
half the story. Besides, on what basis would one choose one path over another? If things need to be
different, the first thing we have to find out is: different from what? Because it is madness to do the
same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome – Einstein.

A good diagnosis is therefore half the battle; and addressing root causes is better than treating
symptoms. Let us therefore take a closer look at what it is that gets us into this situation. When we
gain insight into causes, and into what may lie beneath them in terms of belief systems and ways of
thinking, we may at least have the advantage of suspecting how the issue can be fundamentally
addressed. If that is what we want to do: after all, measures taken must be proportionate to the
nature, and to the order of magnitude of the challenge.

Causes of complex issues like climate change are actually always to be situated at all sorts of levels.
But climate-technically – if we may use such a word – the direct driver of global warming is clear. The
increased concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have
significantly intensified the existing greenhouse effect. And at the same time, we are degrading the
ecosystems that capture gases and provide storage. This has been the case since the industrial
revolution, and it is the result of fossil fuel use and land-use change. More carbon sources, fewer
carbon sinks. A disruption of the carbon cycle. Of the methane cycle. Of other dynamics. We already
saw that.

Socio-economically, this means we need to look at the industrial revolution as a major cause of our
predicament. Enormous reserves of energy in the form of oil, gas and coal have been tapped –
million-year-old solar energy stored in a carbon compound. Combined with human ingenuity (all
kinds of inventions), but also with human exploitation (all kinds of abuses), that revolution
profoundly rewrites human history. And actually, it also reshapes the face of the planet, as it spreads
around the world. Never has so much (extra) energy been available to humans. Perhaps it has
redrawn humans as a species.

With the industrial revolution, we also begin to see how our own society, and the cultural story on
which it is built, sits at the heart of the trouble: we live in, with and from that revolution. We are the
children of it. The reality we see all around us, and which most now take for granted – it wouldn’t
have been here. None of it would have been here. Without that fossil fuel-powered revolution,

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things would have looked profoundly different from what we see now: a global economy, mass
production and mass consumption, a food industry that is globally organised, mass mobility and mass
tourism, an exploding world population, a military-industrial complex, the kind of wars we fight,
large-scale mining, quarrying and forest clearing, a flow-through economy that can afford to produce
equally massive amounts of waste, far-reaching mechanisation and technologization, .... And perhaps
even the very idea of growth itself – which typifies our culture like no other – had never come about
to that extent: that we evolve to be ever better, higher, faster, richer. That there are no limits. No
limits to a planet. No limits to its carrying capacity.

Before we look for causes elsewhere, or to others: the root causes may live mainly in this ‘new
normal’ of our ordinary lives, in the kind of society we have become so used to that we can hardly
imagine anything else. An awful lot of aspects of our ordinary lives have been and continue to be
based on fossil fuels, on the exploitation and dismantling of nature, on unstoppable growth.

In 2023, the world, now populated with 8 billion people, is organising its 28th climate summit and
despite all that is said and written, and apart from a few tiny dips, we now consume more oil, gas,
and coal than ever before.37 And we continue to treat the earth in a way that sooner or later will land
us on the losing side.

Questioning a culture

Why is that so? Why have we been aware of these problems for so long, yet at bottom so little has
changed? What more do we need to know? 38

And it is not that nothing is happening – it would be ridiculous to claim such a thing. A global
movement of people and groups continue to question the status quo and business as usual in both
words and actions. They act in all kinds of ways to foster change, build resilience, and achieve
transitions. They change tack in all sorts of areas, knowing their facts and with the courage of hope.

Yet, we as humanity do not seem to be achieving the change that is needed and hoped for by many:
climate change is accelerating – that is what the reality around us shows us. It feels like we are
running into walls. Vested interests are immense.39 And these interests often house where the real

37And with a global energy crisis in 2022, fossil fuel subsidies worldwide also reached the unprecedented record high of
$1,000 billion despite a decline the years before, according to the International Energy Agency. IEA (2023), Fossil Fuels
Consumption Subsidies 2022, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/fossil-fuels-consumption-subsidies-2022

38It is not that we were only recently confronted with warnings. As for climate change, as early as 1896, Swedish physicist
Svante Arrhenius knew that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, coupled with increasing evaporation and loss of albedo,
would raise global temperatures. Back in 1965, US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Scientific Advisory Council submitted a
report (Restoring the Quality of our Environment) confirming the noticeable increase in atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuels
and warning of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, water acidification, and change in climate. Joshua P. Howe. (2017).
Making Climate Change History: Documents From Global Warming’s Past. University of Washington Press; eBook Academic
Collection (EBSCOhost).
As for ecological destruction, biologist Rachel Carson wrote her influential Silent Spring in 1962, denouncing the use of
pesticides and the associated destruction of nature. The famous The Limits to Growth, a report commissioned by the Club
of Rome, was also published as early as 1972: it warned of the impossibility of exponential growth in economy and
population in a world of finite resources.

39The disinformation, spreading of doubt, and denial manoeuvres have been correspondingly big. Documents have
surfaced proving that early on the fossil fuel industry knew about the clear link between fossil fuel and climate change, and
yet led the public to believe otherwise. To name just one: (a predecessor of) ExxonMobil predicted global warming quite

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.30
power resides: in the confluence of big business, big finance and big politics. Measures and policy
choices are often flagrantly inadequate in the face of real and uncomfortable truths. Or it involves
change with the handbrake on. But this is not just to do with powerful lobbies. While it is abundantly
clear that some are profiting from all the misery, it seems like everything and everyone is trapped
and running along in the same economic growth model – paying off debt, you know – and in the
narrative of feasibility and affordability. And of employment, purchasing power and growth that
must be maintained. Of pensions and energy that must remain affordable. Of progress that must be
made, of things everyone is entitled to.

So, vested interests also house deeper, and at the same time closer: in our frames of mind, in our
mental software, in the cultural assumptions that create our societies. In the stories we believe
(about ourselves).40 That we are selfish genes, for instance, that life is one big competition, that west
is best, that progress will solve everything, that if things don’t work out it’s your own fault. Or in still
other presuppositions: that we are the only ones on the planet with intelligence, or that people have
the right to do what they want anyway.41

Increasingly, therefore, people talk about the need for a real paradigm shift: a kind of revolution or
reversal in our thinking, in our culture, in our world views. It is an insight from systems science that if
we want to bring about fundamental and lasting change, we must intervene deeply in the ‘identity’
or ‘logic’ of a system. That is where the strongest lever is. In other words, if we want to make a
difference, we need to work on what makes our culture our culture: the stories we tell about
ourselves, our deepest assumptions about who we are as human beings, about what makes a good
society, about our place in the ecology of existence.

What do we see when we look in the mirror held up to us by climate change and the ecological crisis?

In any case, we are not the masters and commanders of the universe. Unless we see that as a painful
reversal of itself, this kind of view now shows itself to be a tragic mistake. Just like the idea that
reality is malleable, engineerable, or manageable, or that we would be invulnerable. The climate
issue makes us face the facts. Literally, palpably: if we see ourselves as the measure of all things,

accurately as early as the late 1970s, and knew, for example, what carbon budget would keep warming below 2°C. See:
Supran, G., Rahmstorf, S., & Oreskes, N. (2023). Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections. Science, 379(6628).
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk0063 Science historian Naomi Oreskes was one of the authors of the book on
‘merchants of doubt’ – scientists who cast doubt on acid rain, tobacco, the hole in the ozone layer and climate change when
there already was a broad scientific consensus on these issues. See: Conway, Erik M., and Naomi Oreskes. Merchants of
Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury
Press, 2010.

40And in a sense, we are also often our own ‘merchants of doubt’: because it is so difficult to get rid of deeply ingrained
habits and mindsets, because the situation challenges our comfort and our familiar lifestyle, because we do not like to
venture into unfamiliar territory, we prefer to deny or ignore things like climate change. Our own, personal ‘denial industry’
to do with ‘cognitive dissonance’: the stress one feels when trying to have contradictory beliefs or conflicting behaviours.

41These are just examples. It is an interesting but by no means easy exercise to check for ourselves what our (individual
and/or cultural) beliefs, ways of thinking and presuppositions are. They shape our worldview, and we can sometimes take
them so much for granted that it doesn’t occur to us that things could also just be different. Our view of the world
determines what we see, and how we see it; but it also determines what is not there, what goes unnoticed. (People even
see other ‘facts’, ‘alternative truths’.) It is sometimes said: change the way you look at the world, and the world you look at
changes. A view of the world (‘of course it is like that!’) creates that world: worldviews tend to build robust, tangible
realities around them that eventually confirm that view of the world (‘you see, I told you!’). Like flywheels, they develop
their own self-sustaining dynamics. It is therefore difficult to change them. Tricky, but certainly not impossible.

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things go wrong. Perhaps the very idea – the idea that we see ourselves as heroes solving problems –
is part of the problem.42

If we look in the mirror, we may see the following: that in modern history, humans have increasingly
come to see themselves as separate from nature, and that nature is something we can deal with at
will. But this illusion of a detached or independent existence is exactly what it is: an illusion, a
delusion, self-deception. After all, in the ecology of existence, everything is connected and the health
and well-being of one, or one species, is linked to the health and well-being of all the rest. It can
rightly be said that this view, this delusion of separation, this loss of the ancient wisdom that
everything is interconnected and interdependent, is partly to blame for the situation we find
ourselves in.

That same illusion of separation also allows too many people to see climate or ecological problems as
something that does not concern them, something not directly related to their own lives.
Unfortunately, this is one aspect of that same big mistake, and in doing so we do wrong to our
ecological selves. We also wrong the larger living community of which we are a unique part. After all,
our ecological self is an interconnected self.43

Perhaps the most important job we have to do is to reconnect with the rest of that great living
community so that we can make the wise decisions and do the right things: the decisions and actions
that preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of that biotic community.44

Become indigenous again

Reconnecting with nature and with the web of life comes down to rediscovering that we are
indigenous: that we belong to the land and are not from elsewhere.45

Perhaps that is the best protection for the planet and for life on it. And in fact, we should not even
reconnect with nature, we should remember that we have never been anything but connected. This
is an important nuance: we all exist, whatever species we belong to, thanks to each other. We still

42"We think that approaching these challenges in the familiar way, as heroes fixing problems, is to vastly underestimate
and even to exacerbate the threatening conditions." O’Sullivan, E. & Taylor, M. (eds) (2004). Learning towards an ecological
consciousness. Selected transformative practices, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, p.2.

43 There is, it may be repeated, a tendency in quite a lot of science to look at larger wholes and relationships, and to look for
the secrets of life precisely in the complexity of those relationships, kinships, and connections. This is quite striking, because
it is a reversal of the scientific reductionism we are familiar with, and the opposite of our fascination with the ever-shrinking
building blocks of life: atoms, quarks, elementary particles, DNA. The living whole is forever different from and more than
the sum of its parts.

44 Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic in: A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, New York, 1949.

45Etymologically this means “born or originating in a particular place” – indigenous, aboriginal, first nations, natives, ...
Indigenous peoples or indigenous populations play a key role in preserving the cultural and biodiversity vital to the planet.
They speak some 7000 different languages and are estimated to number some 370 to 500 million out of a world population
of 8 billion.
Because they live on and off the land, and therefore observe it closely, indigenous groups are often the first to notice
changes in climate and ecology; and are also the first to be affected by them.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.32
do, and it has never been different. It is just that persistent illusion that makes us forget that this is
the way it is.

But even when forgotten, the ancient, indigenous wisdom is not lost: the sense of connection lives
deep in our bones, and it can be found in those groups and societies that have managed to preserve
it visibly in their cultures. Why not find time – ritually, and with devotion and heart – to get closer to
nature, to immerse ourselves in it, with respect and consideration for the great conversation that is
going on there? Why not get acquainted with our own or other indigenous traditions that can give us
a glimpse of how we can treat the earth differently?46

There is nothing alien, supernatural or dreamlike to these ideas about being indigenous, and about
our ecological selves intertwined in an interconnected web of life. In engaging with them, we do not
flee from reality. On the contrary, they bring us straight back to the only real world we share with
everyone – with other people, but also with other species, and with so much more. And rather than
ideas, these are lifestyles, cultures: buen vivir, ubuntu, techqua ikachi, ...

They are ways of dealing with the earth that should not cost us the earth. Ways of life where respect,
responsibility, and to know your place, are part of the adult standard package. Ways of life, and
cultures that take root in the places where they reside or that connect with the landscapes they pass
through. But always with a perspective that is cosmic, and a realisation that everything around us is
part of a larger, mysterious whole that we are part of, and yet at the same time far surpasses us.

It is hopeful that in lots of places people are culturally preserving that ecological awareness – that
knowing, experiencing and feeling connectedness. Despite everything, and against mainstream logic.
And it is hopeful to note that in other places the same ecological awareness is growing again. It
appears unexpectedly and promisingly like dandelions growing through the concrete of our
instrumental way of dealing with the world around us.

The dream of sustainability

So, what about our dream of sustainability? What with the dream that it can all last, and that we
should preserve things at all costs?

We sense a paradox. Here too, if we look in the mirror, we may notice something worth noticing:
that our culture is struggling with parting, with ageing, and with dying and death. To what extent is
our dream of sustainability a new face of the Eden, Utopia, the Land of Plenty, El Dorado, or some
other paradise that we as a culture have dreamed of before? Of the life elixir, the philosopher’s
stone, or the magic potion that keeps us young and alive forever?

46 For an animist worldview that characterises many of those cultures, and how new animism might represent an
interesting cultural choice for our time, see, for example, Dhont, R. (2021). Nieuw animisme. De herontdekking va de
wereld. Permaculture Magazine, 23, 21-24.
Incidentally, it is also fascinating to note that a lot of the findings of recent science (having to do with chaos and complexity
theory, active adaptive systems, non-linearity, whole systems thinking, and thus also holistic science, or interdisciplinarity,
transdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity) bear striking resemblances to ancient, indigenous wisdom or
science, especially with regard to how everything is connected. See, for example, Cajete, G. (2000), Native Science. Natural
Laws of Interdependence, Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe - New Mexico.

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The simple reality – and the inexorable, paradoxical wisdom of life – is that nothing lasts and
everything is transient. What is static is dead. What is alive, moves. And dying is part of living. It is, to
put it bluntly, one of life’s great inventions: it is the key to change and renew, the way to keep
moving, the down-to-earth magic by which we hold on to life together.

Have we, as a culture, forgotten the ancient art of dying?

Around the world, rites of passage occupied an important place in human cultures: at birth, the
transition to adulthood, marriage, death. When going to war, making peace, travelling elsewhere,
taking up a different role, changing seasons. For the many things in life that involve transition. The
rites of passage, as well as the mythical stories that accompany them, display a basic pattern that
does seem grafted onto that inexorable, paradoxical wisdom we were just talking about: that, to live,
we must die. That we must say goodbye to what is over and no longer serves us, in order to enter a
new phase or a new reality.

Except for the rites surrounding birth and death, perhaps the most archetypal of the rites of passage
is the one related to the transition to adulthood. What if we saw climate change as our wake-up call?
As the invitation to become the mature and grown-up version of ourselves? As the invitation to be
initiated into our true place in the mystery of existence?

This earth. Us.

It is a true art to unlearn and let go.

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 Energy for the future, imagine a different world

When you find yourself stuck in a hole, rule number one is to stop digging.
- Matt Simmons, energy adviser

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

Living at a tipping point

What will the energy of the future look like?

It is one of those issues that is particularly high on our society’s agenda: the energy question, and the
desirability, possibility, and feasibility of an energy transition.

Families, societies, and economies need energy. And the world as it is today demands that energy in
large quantities: the numbers are staggering. Moreover, if we assume growth, or if there is growth in
the system – economic growth, population growth, welfare growth – then that energy is also in ever-
increasing demand. Which is what we see in the figures too. As well as the fact that currently by far
most of that energy worldwide comes from fossil fuels. This leaves us with a double problem. First
and foremost, there is the climate problem and the ecological crisis. The use of oil, natural gas and
coal is causing global warming. And it is causing widespread destruction on the planet – through the
growth and technology and exploitation that so much energy makes possible.

But there is also the depletion problem: as non-renewable sources of energy, fossil fuels are – by
definition – a finite story. Estimates are difficult for many reasons, and finite stories can drag on for
quite a long time, but there are signs that this easy energy bonanza is nevertheless increasingly
bumping up against its own limits. Running out of energy is definitely a frightening reality for a
society and an economic growth model that are almost entirely fuelled by cheap and easily
accessible fossil fuels.

So, we live at the tipping point of a much-needed energy transition: away from fossil fuels, and
towards renewable, environmentally friendly alternatives and the technologies that go with them.
And we need to be a lot more efficient with the energy we have. (But we will also have to pose
inconvenient and uncomfortable questions around growth itself.)

That is the simple representation of what we must do.

But as a world we have known that for much longer than today. And that transition is not exactly
what we realised. There were all kinds of studies and reports presented to governments, the
business world, and the wider public. As far back as half a century ago. There were studies that

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.35
pointed out climate disruption. And there were also studies that warned of fragile dependence on
energy systems and energy supplies that could not be guaranteed in the future. Moreover, a series of
fossil fuel crises pushed us headlong into that same fragile dependency. When something goes
wrong with energy – with its availability or affordability – it sends shock waves through societies and
through the geopolitics of the world: discontent, hoarding behaviour, social upheaval, escalating
conflicts, food shortages, price volatility, energy rationing, economic recessions, migrations of people
in search of a better life, trouble in the financial system.

But no warnings or signals have made us fundamentally change course. We seem to keep
overcoming these shockwaves one way or another, which in turn gives us reasons to ignore the
warnings from the reports.

And yet. Time and again, and increasingly, we are confronted with the energy issue as a deeper
problem that persists. It sticks to its guns. Sooner or later, in one place or another, the problem crops
up again. Often with more power and bigger consequences. And even if some – here – continue to
lay their hands on loads of energy, let us not forget that others lack access to even the most basic
form of it – food.

A perfect storm

The International Energy Agency speaks of the first truly global energy crisis in 2023.47 Unlike say 50
years ago, with the oil shocks of the 1970s, the global economy is now much more interlinked, and
this time it involves all fossil fuels. Several factors play a role in this perfect storm: the unexpectedly
rapid recovery of the world economy after the covid pandemic, weather conditions (which undercut
part of the energy supply), dependence in the event of scarcity, short-termism, lack of investment in
(alternative) energy, the war in Ukraine, geopolitical power play, price machinations and speculation
in financial markets. Not to mention the simple fact that in many places fossil fuel extraction has
become more difficult, more expensive, and more contested.

This crisis shows once again how nonsensical it is to disentangle the energy problem from the
complex web it forms with society, economy, money, and politics. And with ecology, climate and the
physical reality of our existence. Because even the weather plays a role in this perfect storm: lack of
cooling-water for nuclear power plants, low water levels on canals and rivers used for transport,
extreme drought shutting down hydropower plants. Such a crisis also shows how broad and deep the
energy issue is in its impact. Although we may argue that climate and ecology are the more
fundamental issues, many people do not really care when energy poverty is imminent, food prices
skyrocket, jobs and incomes are lost, and it becomes hard to make ends meet. Then the short term
prevails. But, understandable though it may be, short term is meaningless without long term.

In fact, it makes little sense to focus only on this – for now – last storm. When we look at moments in
history – the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, the oil price shock of 1990, the increasing energy demand in
an energy-constrained world as part of what lead to the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the energy
crisis of 2021-2023 – it is tempting but dangerous to look at them in isolation, or disconnect them
from a deeper pattern. Because then we think they are exceptions, or temporary hiccups. Or we

47"Record prices, fuel shortages, rising poverty, slowing economies: the first energy crisis that’s truly global." See:
https://www.iea.org/topics/global-energy-crisis

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think that each time is different, and we just need to further fine-tune our system. We seem to feel
reassured by the times when, more or less or all in all, we return to normal. But if we look beyond
the events to the trends, patterns and dynamics, these crises are not the exceptions that confirm the
old normal, but the extreme events that are the face of a situation that is fundamentally changing. As
such it is comparable to the climate change situation where we do not feel the slow average increase
in temperature: no, we are unceremoniously confronted with the extreme weather phenomena that
are the true face of it.

The extreme events – even if we survive, forget, or ignore them – show that there is something going
on deep within the system for which short-termism is no match. And by the way, anyone who zooms
out sufficiently in time no longer sees the various moments with a decade or so in between, but
rather one crisis that occurs at the end of an era around the turn of a millennium.48

Energy is arguably the misunderstood foundational base of the world as we know it.

Understanding the energy issue, and the energy situation of the world, is important for more than
one reason.

It may help us to make responsible and well-informed choices regarding (future) energy supply and
energy systems. And because of the complexity, it may help to consider a range of solutions and
alternatives, at a variety of levels. Basic notions and some literacy when it comes to energy sources,
energy carriers and energy networks are not a luxury.

But investigating the issue also helps us understand that world itself: what moves, drives, prompts
us? Where does this huge and growing demand for energy come from? Is it avoidable? And what is it
that keeps us trapped on a path that is incompatible with the limits of the earth and the resilience of
our ecology and climate? A path that is even questionable in terms of whether it gets us the things
that really matter: wellbeing, health, belonging and connectedness. And what about all this growth,
progress, and technology that some believe will solve the problem – any problem really?

If ethics involves the critical reflection on prevailing morality, on the values, norms, beliefs and
presuppositions that shape the self-evidence of our normal existence, then, like the climate and
ecological crisis, the energy issue gives serious food for thought.

It holds up a mirror to us.

The energy of life

Understanding the energy question can only begin in one place: with the question of what exactly
energy is, and where it comes from. So we need to start at the start. And, as with the climate issue,
as far as our story here is concerned, this brings us to the ecology of life. And to the sun.

The earth as a (living) system receives energy from the sun in the form of light and heat. Plants, and
some bacteria, through photosynthesis, convert that solar energy into chemical energy, into organic
material or nutrients in other words. While they extract carbon dioxide from the air, and produce

48 Which leads some to speak of a ‘permanent crises’ and of ‘generation crisis’. Hard to ignore, this experience: always
something somewhere. Banking crisis, energy crisis, nitrogen crisis, economic crisis, climate crisis, water crisis, ecological
crisis, health crisis, ... system crisis.

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oxygen as a by-product, plants convert solar energy into energy they need for themselves, or which
they accumulate within themselves as biomass. Plants are the only ones who can make their own
food. At the same time, they make that converted energy much more widely available to other life
forms for whom that biomass serves as food: animals get their energy from plants and/or they eat
each other. Animals therefore also form, and are, biomass – living matter that can serve as energy.
When plants or animals die, decomposers come into action: organisms that clean up and break down
dead organic matter into inorganic components. Which allows everything to start again: those
components are now available again to primary producers (plants) who, with the sun as a driving
force, in turn make them available to primary consumers (plant eaters) and secondary consumers
(animal eaters). And all leftovers are cleaned up again and again. The cycle of life. The cycle of energy
in a nutshell.

In our minds we may now see a kind of food pyramid, but hopefully we mainly discover that ecology
is the endless cycling and recycling of energy and matter. Energy seems to be the working force of
life itself. Terms like ‘web’ and ‘pyramid’ are therefore perhaps a bit too static: it is more of a cycling,
living, moving and cooperative whole.

If energy, in a dictionary definition, is the ability to do something, to produce an effect, to be active in

any way, then it is only appropriate that when we think of energy, we think first and foremost of
food or nutrition. Or biomass – which amounts to the same thing now we understand the process.
Biomass allows life forms to do what they do: food and energy begins for us as biomass. Food is
stored energy.

In this way, we are also reminded that fossil fuels are ancient, stored solar energy. Lignite, coal,
petroleum, natural gas, tar sands: they are the result of geological processes dating back millions of
years. The decomposition of organic matter in specific, low-oxygen conditions sometimes resulted in
the formation of these carbon compounds. They are found in sediments rich in organic material that
got buried or trapped. A huge energy store in other words.49

Energy and history

Human history and the rise and fall of ways of living on this planet cannot possibly be separated from
the type and amount of energy that is available for us. Nor from the ways in which that energy can
be harnessed, manipulated, or controlled. It is against this background that it becomes clear how
extraordinary the energy situation is we currently find ourselves in.50

A core concept here is that of the energetic basis of a society or way of life. What energy is available?
And in what quantities? In the end, that is what everything is built on.

49From a systems perspective, those huge stores of what is now used as energy could be seen as a planetary ecosystem’s
way of keeping cool (in the face of a warming sun): a huge carbon store that has brought down the greenhouse effect. For
Gaia and/or Earth System Science: see the section on climate.

50Richard Heinberg is one of those people whose work helps to understand energy as an (or even ‘the’) important factor in
human history. See, for example: Heinberg, R. (2007). The party’s over: Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies.
Clairview. For someone else looking at how energy has shaped societies throughout history: Smil, V. (2017). Energy and
Civilization: A History. The MIT Press.

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For a notably long time – for the vast majority, and for many still today – the limiting factor is
primarily the amount of food people can make available for themselves. Throughout human history,
energy mainly comes from the food that our bodies need in order to function (to grow, to think, to
keep warm, ...) and from the muscle power it gives us to do the things we do. That includes hunting
for, and gathering or growing that food, but also everything else people do in their human history:
dance, raise children, tell stories, create things, make enemies, settle conflicts, explore horizons, run
away from danger, perform rituals, build or rebuild things. Perhaps that also includes the idea –
when we need extra energy to do stuff – of working together, or of using the muscle power of others
for the benefit of ourselves or our own group. Forced or otherwise.

When food is the (sole and direct) energy base of society, it is vital to have sound knowledge and
skills around that food supply, and to pass it on to others and to new generations: hunting
techniques, for example, farming or horticultural methods, food preservation systems, knowledge of
ecology, the land, the climate. Sometimes, because of the whims of nature for instance, it is
important for people to migrate to environments that provide a new source of easy, interesting, and
diverse food. Moving to new hunting, fishing or gathering grounds, or rotating between them, or
following the migration of prey animals, are probably all part of the picture: simple necessity
perhaps, or ecological wisdom. And a bit easier maybe in a far less populated world: in those kinds of
societies, population density is nowhere near what it is today. 51 Maybe a nomadic existence, and the
seasonal migration between summer and winter areas, for example, is just part of the wisdom and
possibility of this kind of food gathering.

With their knowledge and skills, fed by constant observation of the habitat they depend on, humans
begin to interfere with their environment. Sometimes this is by simply taking seeds and spreading
them for example, but at other times and places they interfere in a more controlled and organised
way, by starting to control prey herds, for example, or by clearing patches of land for certain crops.
With or without the use of fire. In any case, certain plant and animal species are gradually selected or
domesticated. Cultivated – so it is sometimes said. The question is whether an overly sharp division
between (pristine) nature and (human) culture makes sense or holds up. For instance, it turns out
that the extremely rich, important, and biodiverse Amazon Forest, in the form as we know it today, is
not the pristine rainforest we usually take it to be. Its richness and diversity seem at least partly due
to a key species in the natural system itself: humans.52 Many traditional indigenous communities
were not passive observers of nature: they were architects of abundance. 53 Or how nature and

51This brings into focus the term ‘carrying capacity’ used in ecosystem science: the ability of an environment (region,
ecosystem) to support a given population or species. Today, when we talk about the ‘carrying capacity of the earth’, we
mainly talk about the limits to ecosystem earth as a whole: in terms of the natural resources it offers and in terms of its
capacity to absorb our waste. The idea is sometimes presented as our (global) ecological footprint - which we know pushes
the earth into the red. ( https://www.footprintnetwork.org/ )

52See, for example: Levis, C., et al. (2017). Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest
composition. Science, 355(6328), 925-931.

53After the title of a doctoral dissertation: Johnston, L. J. (2022). Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food
and Land Management Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History. University of Alaska Fairbanks. For the short
presentation of this: the TEDx by Lyla June herself (3000-year-old solutions to modern problems) see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH5zJxQETl4

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culture, and biodiversity and cultural diversity might be less far apart than we think. 54 Wherever we
humans go, we leave traces, for better or for worse. We manage to maintain or even strengthen –
regenerate – our ecological or food base – not only for ourselves, but for ‘everyone’ in the system.
And sometimes we do the opposite: impoverish or undermine our ecological base. Humans are not
the only factor involved, but, for example, we play a role in the disappearance of megafauna in
Eurasia and the Americas at the end of the last ice age, and even earlier on in Australia.55

Even if no sharp boundaries can be drawn, and history does not show a simple or even one-way
transition from (exclusively) hunting and gathering nomadic groups to (exclusively) farming and
livestock-rearing sedentary societies, it is not difficult to understand that these are quite different
dynamics with regard to food and thus energy supply. And that they are different dynamics when it
comes to societal organisation. Domestication, not to forget, is quite radical and creates a mutual
dependency: we get services from animals, but in return we have to care for them. Where they
succeed, and for the time they succeed, agricultural societies may provide a surplus of food. Which
means there is extra energy that can be used for other things, and time that may be freed up.

The energy picture begins to change. With the domestication of animals, the possibility of using
animal power – on top of human muscle power – is added. It comes in the form of pack and draught
animals or riding animals such as yaks, oxen, camels, sledge dogs, buffaloes, llamas, reindeer, horses,
elephants, ... Remember: horsepower, hp, is an (old) unit of power.

The energy base of societies expands when other forces are being harnessed. Animal power
complements muscle power. Fire, and the control humans gain over it, has been in the mix for a long
time. But water and wind power also play a role. Water to transport things, water and wind to grind,
saw, move things. But animal power that supplements muscle power, both in the form of the meat
and (dairy) products that are eaten, and in the direct extra power provided by pack, draught and
riding animals, does mean that animal feed also starts to form an important part of the (indirect)
energy base of a society. So that needs to be taken care of too.

An increasingly important role in many of these societies is also played by implements, tools and
technology. Whether they are clothing, baskets, axes, ploughs, fire drills, knives, mills, nets, boats,
carts, pulling tools, hoists, or smelters, they all signify an extension of human capacities, or an
amplification of human strength. How some of these tools and technologies are powered also makes
a difference: where humans manage to bring in external sources of energy (animals, wind, water,
fire) to do so, they gain power.

Perhaps the most remarkable piece in what we can call the history of energy is when we humans
begin to harness stored forms of energy. And especially when we combine them with increasingly
sophisticated tools and technology. Initially, in early industrialisation, it mainly concerns biomass in

54
To highlight indivisibility, Donna Haraway introduced the concept of ‘natureculture’: the dichotomy of nature/culture and
human/other-than-human is challenged. Resilience thinking also assumes the nonsensicality of the disjunction: humans and
nature are always linked; it makes no sense to treat them as separate. A basic concept in the resilience framework is the
notion of social-ecological systems (SES). For an introduction into resilience thinking: Dhont, R. (2010). Veerkracht denken.
Oikos, 4(55), 6-24.

55After which those ecosystems found a new kind of balance. In myths from those cultures, we often find traces of such
times when people unbalanced natural ecosystems; and what they learnt from that, or the taboos (‘this is not allowed!’)
they distilled from what happened afterwards.

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the form of wood or charcoal to fire furnaces or power (steam) engines. Wood, or more generally
speaking biomass, may be a renewable form of energy, but deforestation seems to be a (dangerous)
constant in our history: first when we clear land for agricultural activities, later increasingly when we
use wood as a construction material and as a source of energy.56

A true revolution – an unprecedented upheaval – breaks out when we humans begin to use the
planet’s deposits of non-renewable energy: coal, oil, natural gas, and later uranium. The industrial
revolution is a fact, and the amount of energy available increases exponentially. That energy will
change the planet and profoundly reshape global society.

Little is it understood that this industrial revolution is actually an energy revolution.

The Roman Empire, calories and forced labour

Before we look at that revolution, and to make the idea of the energy base of a group, society, or
culture a little more tangible, let us zoom in on two moments in history. It also gives us the
opportunity, in the second example, to become acquainted with a perspective on energy that is
almost incomprehensible to people who are the children of that industrial revolution. But first:
Rome.

All sorts of things can be said about the Roman empire. But as the overview should already have
indicated, its energy base is mainly food and fodder: the empire is one of the great agricultural
civilisations. The splendour of Rome was built on what was brought in or enabled from just about
anywhere in the then-known world. Rome managed to set up the political, military, financial and
transport infrastructures whereby conquered land and provinces, with fields and farms, supplied
what the centre of that empire itself needed for its grandeur: food, fodder, materials, labour, or the
means to seize them.

In Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down, a calculation makes something around energy particularly
clear. It concerns the construction of the Colosseum in Rome.57 The energy cost of this – that is, the
energy that must have been needed to build the Colosseum – was estimated in the calculation to
total 44 billion kilocalories (kcal). That total was broken down into 34 billion kcal for feed for the pack
and draught animals involved in construction – represented in the estimate by 1806 oxen – and 10
billion kcal in food for people assuming a construction crew of 2135 labourers working for 5 years (at
220 days a year). When attempting to calculate how much farmland must have been needed to build
this Colosseum, that is to provide the food for the workers and fodder for the oxen, the calculation
results in 55 km2 of farmland for 5 years. For one building of ancient Rome. Anyone who wants to,
can start counting: how big/great Rome was, and therefore how vast the empire was – or the other
way round.

Calculating calories reminds us that energy can exist in different forms and can be converted to
provide work or labour. The chemical energy of biomass in the form of food and fodder can be

56Deforestation, as we saw in the section on climate, is linked to climate change: it means a reduction in CO2 storage or in
the capacity to store CO2, and in the case of wood burning, it even means an increase in the release of CO2.

57 Homer-Dixon, T. F. (2006). The upside of down: Catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization. Island Press.

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converted into the kinetic energy of animal and muscle power. The kinetic or motion energy of water
flowing and wind blowing can be converted into the mechanical energy of mills. Chemical energy
such as wood or food can be converted into the thermal energy of a fire or body heat. And so on.
Different units of measurement of energy and power can be converted to each other: manpower,
horsepower (hp), calorie (cal), joule (J), watt (W).58

Using the Roman Empire as an example, another important and not to be underestimated factor in
energy history comes to the fore: that of the use of forced labour. Slavery is a catch-all term that
covers many shades, ranging from domestic slavery and help in care, education, or the local
economy, through sex slavery, child soldiers, prisoners of war and debt slaves, to true penal and
labour camps, plantation slavery and construction slavery. It is a practice that, in waves, has been
widespread across cultures. And it still exists. Today, according to the International Labour
Organisation, some 50 million people – one in every 150 people – live under a modern form of
slavery (forced labour or forced marriage).59 The use of forced labour relies on (military or police)
power that perpetuates the situation of unfreedom, and makes the labour or service provided
enforceable.

It is not hard to see that this kind of forced labour, and other phenomena such as guest labour,
labour migration and seasonal labour, play an important role in the available energy, and thus in the
economy of societies.

Beringia, whales, and smart energy systems

All roads lead to Rome, but in a second example we zoom in on an area much less covered in our
history books. The example helps us realise once again that ecology is the endless cycling and
recycling of energy and matter.

The Bering Strait is the strait between the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, located between Asia
and the Americas, between Siberia and Alaska. It is one of the richest marine ecosystems in the
world. Beringia refers to that strait, the coastal areas, and the mainland surrounding it. They are
traditionally the habitat of a lot of smaller, sovereign, and autonomous groups of people belonging to
the Iñupiat, Yupik and Chukchi language groups. Indigenous people.

In her book Floating Coast, Batsheba Demuth writes the environmental or natural history of the area:
An Environmental History of the Bering Strait.60 She stresses something right from the start: it makes
no sense to separate the history of nature or the natural environment (geology, biology, and ecology)
from human history (culture, economics, and politics). Not only humans make history, nature does so
too. And, matching what we saw earlier about life and energy: everything starts with the sun. In
Beringia, as a specific ecosystem, this means that energy – through the process of photosynthesis,

58Units of measurement: amount of energy (e.g. J, joule; CAL, calorie; MTOE, megaton oil equivalent; BTU, British Thermal
Unit), amount of energy per unit of time or power (e.g. W, watt; HP, horsepower), energy density or amount of energy per
unit of volume or mass (e.g. MJ/kg, megajoule per kilogram, kWh/Nm3, kilowatt hours per cubic metre).

59The report gives the estimate for 2019 and shows a large increase (10 million more people in slavery) since 2016. (Global
estimates of modern slavery forced labour and forced marriage. (2022). International Labour Office).

60 Demuth, B. (2019). Floating coast: An environmental history of the Bering Strait (First edition). W.W. Norton & Company.

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biomass storage and animals as consumers – gets stored in the main food sources for the people
living in that area: whale, walrus, caribou. The energy base of Iñupiat, Yupik and Chukchi.

Bowhead whales, which can live for over two centuries, are traditionally hunted by these peoples.
Their meat contains more calories per weight than any other Arctic species. Because of their large fat
reserves, these animals can easily bridge periods when less food is available to them. In this way, and
with their large, slow cycle – they only have a calf every 3 to 4 years – they bring stability to the
ecosystem. As such they were also the most stable and reliable food or energy base for the local
coastal peoples, although other species such as walrus, caribou, or smaller animals were far from
unimportant. For the natives this had always been so – since time immemorial. They had managed, in
often harsh conditions, to subsist on what this ecosystem offered them. Without undermining it.

But whales were also what attracted people from elsewhere to the area in the 19th century: whalers
with an insatiable appetite for whale oil, baleen and amber for a nascent industrialisation. Whether
imperialism and ships came from capitalist or communist backgrounds, the impact was profound:
both on the population of bowhead whales, and on the living conditions of the Iñupiat, Yupik and
Chukchi. What was happening now was fundamentally different from how indigenous people dealt
with whales – their energy base – and with the whole of their living environment.

The indigenous people treated the whale with the respect that any living creature deserves. They
also saw the animal for the key role it plays in the local ecology – like the salmon does, for example,
in other regions. In the experience of the native people, there was not that great distinction between
human and other-than-human life. Everything was animated. And the whole universe was linked up
through respect. The stories of indigenous people show it: how whales were sung to, how hunts
were ritually prepared, how shamans contacted whales, how whales were unwilling to give
themselves as food when people behaved unworthily, or did not share food with each other, how
taboos existed around what could and could not be done in whaling, and ceremonies of restraint to
counteract over-hunting. It shows a mutual ethic, an economy of gifts, and the realisation that all life
is an alternation of give and take, of eating and being eaten. A deep kind of energy wisdom.

But with the arrival of the whalers, and the capitalist or communist ideologies they bring with them,
a shock wave goes through Beringia. Ecologically as well as culturally. Populations of whales, and
later walrus, caribou, arctic fox, bearded seal ... are severely disrupted. Whales and other animals
suddenly no longer have souls, they now simply represent a utilitarian or monetary value, and turn
into commodities: lamp oil, baleen, skins and fur, ivory. Things are no longer done for subsistence,
but to increase production or meet targets. Or gradually, even for indigenous people, just to make
ends meet in a whole new reality of outboards, shotguns, imported products, shops and constantly
moving global markets. The so typical long-term culture with its ecological wisdom is in danger of
extinction.

If we think about what something like a smart energy system might entail, then surely we had a
serious candidate here. The contrast with the whalers and the time and worldview of which they are
an exponent is stark.

Fossil fuels and the industrial revolution

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When it comes to energy, the time period that reshapes the history of the planet is without a doubt
the industrial revolution. It spreads from Britain, across Europe, the US, Japan, and the rest of the
world. As a starting date, 1750 is often put forward. There is no end date: what began then continues
today.

What happens is a combination of several factors.

First, but impossible to separate from all the rest, is technological innovation, and the knowledge and
science that makes inventions and discoveries possible. The industrial revolution is unthinkable
without looms, steam engines, pumps, internal combustion engines, blast furnaces, cast iron, steel,
telephones, electricity, ammonia, or light bulbs. Revolutions within transport and mobility are also
part of the package: railway lines with steam trains, later an entire transport infrastructure for cars
and means of transport with combustion engines. Canals, ships, aeroplanes. Within agriculture
industrialisation, mechanisation, automation and economies of scale change the way we produce
food and fodder: an agro-industry with fertilisers, pesticides, diesel tractors, machines of all kinds.61

And, of course, there are the major changes in society that are both the enabling condition and the
consequence of what has just been mentioned: factories, factory labour, wages, labour organisation,
urbanisation, and the financial infrastructure to support all this.

Hidden deeper beneath that industrial revolution are ideas and concepts that slowly gained ground
in Enlightenment Europe: faith in man’s own (thinking) ability, an instrumentalist or utilitarian
approach to reality, a reduction of reality to what is measurable or empirically observable, the idea of
progress, belief in the social engineering of society, a view of nature as something to be subdued,
conquered or exploited.

But perhaps the most defining factor in the whole picture of the industrial revolution is the energy
(and material flow) that drives it, and for the extraction of which some of this technology is precisely
deployed: fossil fuels. First and foremost, this is coal to replace the depleting wood. Pretty soon, the
huge potential of oil and natural gas is also discovered and exploited. Knowledge, innovation,
technology: however impressive, nothing happens without the energy to do so.

Fossil fuels change everything. That may be a bold statement, but the vast amounts of ancient solar
energy that humans now lay their hands on mean an unprecedented increase in the ability to do
things. A mighty surplus for our muscle and animal strength. To stick with the calorie, joule, or watt
calculations: a Chinese peasant hoeing his cabbage field in the year 1700 has a power of 50 watt, an
English farmer ploughing with two small horses in the year 1800 a power of 1,000 watt, a French

61The so-called ‘green revolution’ after WWII (or ‘third agricultural revolution’) significantly increased food production
precisely by turning agriculture into an industrial and commercial large-scale model with fertilisers, pesticides, crop
selection, monocultures, mechanisation, large-scale irrigation and so on. The name ‘green revolution’ is misleading
(especially now when people talk about ‘green power’): the impact on nature in general, and on the health of soils, is
worrying in this agricultural revolution. The so-called ‘green’ revolution masks a fossil fuel revolution: for powering
machinery, and in products like fertilisers (gas) and pesticides and herbicides (oil). The green revolution also leads to the
emergence of powerful corporations that increasingly control agriculture worldwide at the expense of small, family
farming.
That, in the long run, this development undermines the capacity of natural soils and ecosystems to produce food (= our
basic energy), makes Vandana Shiva say that we should not care about oil, but about our soils (which are undermined by
that oil and the green revolution model behind it): Soil, not oil. Shiva, V. (2008). Soil not oil: Climate change, peak oil, and
food insecurity. Zed Books. Shiva, V. (2006). Earth democracy: Justice, sustainability, and peace. Zed Books.

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farmer with a small tractor in 1950 a power of 50,000 watt, and a Canadian industrial farmer
ploughing with a large diesel tractor in 2015 a power of 298,000 watt. 62

The role of fossil fuels should not be underestimated: they have drastically reshaped not only the
physical, but also the mental landscapes of our society. With the emergence of fossil fuels as an aid
to human livelihood, everything in human society changed – from education to politics, from cultural
myths to individual dreams.63 A different world emerged, a different lifestyle, a different way of
seeing: we would have to describe the entire (material and cultural) reality around us to get an idea
of how radically fossil fuels reshaped the world.

And, not entirely unexpected with such a boost in energy: a self-reinforcing feedback loop of growth
emerges. Ever greater amounts of energy made available allow even greater amounts of energy to
be tapped. Directly or indirectly. Through what eventually becomes large-scale industrial agriculture
and food production. Through mechanisation, technologization and robotisation that help us
produce more, but also allow for even more drastic interference with the landscape. Through
globalisation of the economy. All of which results in growth: population growth, 64 economic growth,
mobility and transport growth, consumption and production growth, growth in needs, growth of
waste. Which in turn, of course, boosts the demand for energy. The resulting reality is a spiral of
growth which, by the way, is fuelled and maintained by the money system we now have: money built
on debt that must be paid off with future growth.

But if energy is one of the most defining factors in the industrial revolution, it is also its limiting
factor. Fossil fuels are non-renewable, and, simply put, if we run out of supplies and there are no
replacements on the scale needed, then that is the end of the story. Although, with climate change in
mind, we should not even consider continuing the fossil fuel road, whatever stocks are left. Do we
write our own ending to the story, or will it simply happen to us?

The oil age, and the canary in the coal mine

Arguably, it is oil that has become the very face of an industrialised society. Or at least of a certain
part of it: the oil age.

The oil age or petroleum era starts around 1850, at the time when people begin to see the practical
applications of petroleum and begin to have the technical skills to produce it at some scale. In a self-
reinforcing loop, especially the invention of the internal combustion engine and its applications in
industry and transport, but also the many applications in petrochemistry, will drive the demand for
oil as a fuel and as a raw material. A new era is stirring.

62 The figures come from Smil, V. (2017). Energy and Civilization: A History. The MIT Press, p. 458.

63A quote from Richard Heinberg: Heinberg, R. (2007). Peak everything: Waking up to the century of decline in Earth’s
resources. Clairview, p. 41.

64 No-one thinking seriously about the alarming problem of exponential and unsustainable growth on a finite planet with
limited resources can ultimately avoid the population issue - there, too, we see unsustainable, exponential growth.
However, the issue does not benefit from absolute numbers alone: there is the relative weight of people’s impact and
energy consumption. Some people inhabit this earth thoughtfully and leave no footprints – some are even part of a
regenerative culture bent on restoring nature – while the lifestyles of others consume many times their rightful share.

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Fast forward 150 years, and we may rightly be surprised at how oil applications have become woven
into the finest fibres of the reality around us. Oil applications in the form of fuels like petrol, kerosine,
diesel, or fuel oil, for example. But also oil applications as lubricating oil, as asphalt, and as raw
materials in petrochemicals: ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, xylene isomers. We see a world
built largely from oil applications: textiles, medicines, solvents, nylon, plastics ... in the thousands of
things we use every day, from toothbrushes to smartphones. And we see a world largely powered by
and adapted for oil applications: automobility and the entire infrastructure and road network that
goes with it, global shipping of goods and raw materials, trains, trucks, vans, agribusiness and global
food chains that run on diesel and shipped biomass, herbicides and pesticides, mass tourism and
aircraft mobility, centralised systems ranging from shopping malls, business parks, leisure parks and
campuses to megacities. The applications are everywhere: in mobility, transport, agriculture,
industry, construction, heating, lighting, infrastructure, education, healthcare, military power,
tourism, logistics, ...

Nothing short of amazing, according to some, and proof of the exceptional character of human
prowess and ingenuity. Accompanied by the belief that nothing can stop us.

Not so according to others. Along the way came warnings that the oil era would come to an end. Oil
reserves are not inexhaustible, and there were signs that things would not last forever. 65 So, sooner
or later, everything would have to be put in place to replace oil as a fuel and as a feedstock, as well as
the processes, systems and infrastructure that go with it. Or we would face a rude awakening and a
partial collapse of a society as we know it.

Peak oil – the moment in time when oil production reaches a maximum and begins to decline – thus
became a bit of a canary in the coal mine.66

More than half a century ago, in 1956 to be precise, petroleum geologist M.K. Hubbert predicted that
oil production in the US would peak sometime between 1966 and 1972. 67 After which, according to
him, a decline would inevitably set in. He did so not only on the basis of estimated oil reserves, but
more importantly on the basis of his study of oil production at numerous sites. 68 On average, those
production figures showed a kind of bell-shaped curve. A curve that, for those familiar with oil and oil
production, is all in all plausible: it takes a while before a field is made operational, but once the field
is drilled, production increases fairly quickly. After all, the first oil comes out almost naturally under
its own pressure. But it becomes systematically more difficult, and water must be pumped into the
field to maintain pressure for example, or oil must be pumped up when the pressure is gone, and
what is taken out is of poor quality. Oil production begins to slow down; certainly, it does not go up

65To talk about oil reserves in absolute terms is not as simple as it seems. A distinction is made between proven, probable,
and possible reserves (and on combinations thereof in 1P, 2P and 3P oil) and about degrees of extractability of the oil.

66
And sign that something is not right. Canaries were taken into mines by miners to see if there was dangerous mine gas:
when the canary died, they left the mine immediately.

67Hubbert, M. K. (1956). Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Shell Development Company, Exploration and Production
Research Division.

68An important insight from systems thinking concerns the importance of stocks and flows. Translated to fossil fuels: of
course, it matters how big the stocks are, but the real bottle neck is in the flow: production – how much of it can or will be
made available at any one time. An economy does not directly benefit from stocks that are not converted into flows, from
reserves that are not (or cannot be) produced.

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as fast as before. And the (economic) reality of all those oil fields he studied showed that at some
point oil production peaks and then starts to decline. At some point, it just doesn’t pay off anymore,
and production stops altogether.

The prediction was pretty accurate: US oil production peaked in the early 1970s and in the years that
followed, production did indeed go down. This was a game changer, as it meant that the US had to
go elsewhere for some of the oil it needed.

And, of course, what would be an even bigger game changer is something like global peak oil – the
moment when oil production peaks globally and starts declining. That is the moment when declining
production in most locations can no longer be compensated by new production elsewhere. Then it
becomes a geopolitical or even military issue: who manages to get hold of the oil? After all, there is
no longer enough for everyone. Actually, the issue is even more serious. It is a systemic problem: not
only will there no longer be enough to meet an existing global energy demand, because that energy
demand itself is still on the way up (to keep our economies growing), the gap between energy supply
and energy demand will only widen.

We are mistaken if we think that such a thing takes place only in tables or graphs, and that it is only
about averages that start to slowly decline on those graphs. If a (global) energy ceiling is reached, it
means nothing less than a ruthless shock to an economic and societal system which depends on that
energy and which, moreover, is built on growth and thus depends on further growth. 69 In reality, it
could mean things like extremely volatile prices, yo-yoing economies, waves of inflation, panic
behaviour, higher conflict potential, shutdown plans, energy rationing, social unrest, and the chain
reactions that energy shortages and even energy blackouts trigger for businesses, food supply,
transport, administrations. There was every reason to be prepared: a severe contraction of our
energy base could rock the reality around us and take out the bottom of the system.

The predictions people tried to make about the timing and height of that peak – and it is notoriously
difficult to get hold of reliable figures on stocks – seemed to be overtaken by reality time and again.
The peak in oil production worldwide just didn’t seem to come. And something happened, in the US

69 “Even those of us who have been thinking about resource depletion for many years are still just beginning to awaken to
its full implications.” See: Heinberg, R. (2007). Peak everything: Waking up to the century of decline in Earth’s resources.
Clairview, p. 23.
In the absence of systems thinking (of understanding how everything in economy and society is connected and depends on
ever bigger amounts of energy), there is little awareness of the gravity and impact of meeting such a ceiling in the
production of oil (or of fossil fuels, or of energy in general). That from then on the availability of oil (fossil fuel, energy in
general) declines, not that it runs out, may seem pretty harmless to some. A gross misconception: in economic and societal
systems where growth (and at its deepest level, only energy can provide growth) is indispensable to sustain employment,
social security, pensions, government revenues, affordability, purchasing power and so on, such a moment actually means
the end of that system itself. And oil production, even temporarily or locally, that peaks and then declines can wreak havoc.
We already got a taste of what it means to experience such a technical or geopolitical peak moment. Stagnating oil
production in 2007-08, combined with rising demand, sent oil prices soaring. This resulted in food crises worldwide (rising
oil prices mean rising food prices, and in numerous places there are people whose whole income is pretty much spent on
food and necessities). In the US, it culminated – as people could no longer pay off their mortgages – in a housing market
collapse. Followed: an all but global financial meltdown and economic recession. (Don’t forget: 2008 was the moment after
which the US started to tap into non-conventional oil – which is why some speak of a peak easy oil moment: production of
easy oil – conventional – peaks around that time). Petroleum geologist M. K. Hubbert showed himself to be a true systems
thinker in a 1981 interview in which he said that with world peak production, large-scale financial instability would follow.
Exactly what 2007-2008 saw following peak easy oil.
A geopolitical moment of energy scarcity and skyrocketing energy prices, especially for Europe, comes with the Russian
invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A shockwave still fresh in the memory.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.47
too, that Hubbert had not anticipated. So, the picture was not quite accurate, or at least it was more
complex than some figures predicted.

In the US, Prudhoe Bay went into full production towards the end of the 1970s: the largest oil field in
North America, discovered in the far north of Alaska. This reversed the declining trend of oil
production in the US. A first time. For a while, oil production went up again, although it did not reach
the levels of 1970. A good five years later, from 1985, the curve again followed the Hubbert pattern:
downwards. Until 2008. Then oil production started to skyrocket again. To well above the 1970 peak
– with this increasing production the US is one of the main reasons for the absence of a global oil
peak. The trend still seems to be upward for now – although a covid dip can be noticed.

What is happening worldwide (but especially in the US), in a number of waves, is that through
technological innovations, financial injections, and major geopolitical and strategic interests, oil is
being found and made available in places that were previously inaccessible, and/or through
techniques that did not exist before. There is now offshore and deep-sea oil. And in distinction to the
easy, conventional oil, there is now what is categorised under non-conventional oil, such as tar sands
and other heavy and extra-heavy oil, light tight oil, oil shale (through fracking), coal-to-liquids and
gas-to-liquids. This non-conventional oil (and also the non-conventional gas) is often contested for
ecological reasons: there are issues around groundwater, air quality, health, methane emissions,
pollution, low net energy, ecological disruption and climate disruption.70 But all this seems to matter
little to our global economy. For the global economy that needs the energy, and for a society where
the lights must be kept on, the sky is still the limit, and there is no (ecological) price on energy.

But even though the cautionary tale around peak oil seems contradicted by an ever-shifting reality
(toward ever harder-to-get oil), deep down it cannot be undone. Just like the 1972 Limits to Growth
report cannot be undone. That report too received criticism – it located the Achilles heel of an
economic growth model (and the interests represented in that model): such growth and a finite
planet do not go together. Nor can an exhaustible resource continue to be extracted. 71

But perhaps, regarding the energy situation, the most important shift of late is this: that the
exhaustibility of oil (and by extension of coal and gas) is not the real issue. The real issue is the
climate disruption caused by fossil fuels. Here lies the existential challenge: how do we get rid of our
fossil fuel addiction without undermining our well-being?

Yes, and how big a challenge is that really?

70 Biofuels such as biodiesel and bioethanol deserve attention here: they too are sometimes included in tables and graphs
of all kinds (under the ‘all liquids’ category, for example). In any case, they are non-conventional and they can distort the
figures that way. The use of biofuels in a bid to become fuel independent from other global players, or to reduce emissions,
is contested. It is always very context-specific, but issues include: low net energy yields, high water consumption,
competition with agriculture for food production (‘food for people or food for cars?’), environmental degradation and
biodiversity loss.

71 Meadows, D. H. et al. (1972) The limits to growth: a report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind.
New York (N.Y.): Universe books. For a review of the report from the energy perspective, 50 years after its publication, see,
for example: Hall, C. (2022). The 50th Anniversary of The Limits to Growth: Does It Have Relevance for Today’s Energy
Issues? Energies (Basel), 15(14), 4953-. (Which basically says the report still stands.)

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.48
The world’s energy mix

So let us first have a look at the world’s energy situation. Where does our energy come from? What
are our energy sources?

Before we do so, let’s be reminded of the important difference between primary and secondary
energy. In terms that are much clearer, that is the difference between energy sources and energy
carriers.

By energy sources or primary energy, we generally mean the natural forms in which energy can be
found: biomass, wind power, hydropower, petroleum, natural gas, coal, peat, uranium, thorium,
sunlight, waste, and geothermal energy, for example. The point is that an energy source often
undergoes modification or conversion before it appears in a form usable for one application or
another. That conversion happens, for example, in oil refineries, nuclear reactors, stoves, wave
energy farms, wind turbines, hydroelectric plants, incinerators, photovoltaic panels, geothermal
plants and so on. And it is the result of these that we call energy carriers or secondary energy. In
some cases, those carriers hardly differ from the sources, while in other cases they are a completely
different form in which the energy from the source is now available. Energy carriers include, for
example: electricity, steam, compressed air, hydrogen, bioethanol, paraffin, coke, diesel, petrol,
charcoal, firewood, chemical energy in batteries, heat.72

Looking at where our energy comes from worldwide means, in other words, looking at primary
energy. At the sources. And in doing so, it always remains important not to just take the snapshot of
the moment, but also to look at trends and longer periods. 73 That too reveals a lot.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Key World Energy Statistics, the picture for the
world looks roughly as follows.74

In the pre-covid year 2019, it totals 606 exajoules (EJ or 1018 joules) or 168,000 terawatt hours (TWh
or 1012 watt-hours) of energy. No one can possibly imagine what such a figure could mean. Maybe
not even if we also convert that to tonnes of oil equivalent – a unit that recalculates energy to see
how much oil would be needed to generate that amount of energy. The figure is then 14,470 Mtoe
(million tonnes of oil equivalent). Converted, this is roughly 106,000,000,000 barrels of oil for that
year. One barrel equals 159 litres.

72Mixing up sources and carriers is a mistake some people keep making. For example, about electric cars: switching from a
combustion engine to an electric motor does not necessarily mean that the car runs on renewable energy. The electricity
for it can still come from, say, a gas-fired power plant. Hydrogen can also be made in different ways: from fossil fuels
(currently around 95% of all hydrogen produced in the world) or via electrolysis with water.

73 Situations at a given moment in time – snapshots – can understandably be coloured or influenced by (temporary)
circumstances: a pandemic, a financial crisis, a war, a severe natural disaster, a geopolitical shift.

74 Key World Energy Statistics from the International Energy Agency in its 2021 edition uses figures up to and including
2019, that is up to just before the disruptive factors of the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. BP’s Statistical Review of
World Energy – an (other) oft-used source for energy figures worldwide – indicates in its 2022 edition that energy demand
in 2021, after a dip in 2020, nevertheless now clocks in at 1.3% higher than 2019. The IEA report talks about Total Energy
Supply (using the technical definition: production + imports - exports - international marine bunkers - international aviation
bunkers ± stock changes. For the world total, international marine bunkers and international aviation bunkers are not
subtracted from TES), the BP report on Primary Energy Demand. Differences in methodology produce minor differences in
the figures.

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In 2019, 30.9% of total energy comes from oil, 26.8% from coal and 23.2% from natural gas.
Together, the three fossil fuels thus represent 80.9% of total primary energy worldwide at that time.
Biomass, biomass-derived fuels, and waste represent 9.4% of the total: these include, for example,
wood, charcoal, biofuels (bioethanol, biodiesel), biogas, industrial and municipal waste. Nuclear
energy represents 5.0% worldwide, hydropower 2.5%, and the ‘other’ category 2.2%. Within the
‘other’ category are geothermal, solar, wind, tidal/wave/ocean, heat and other sources.

So, in our current world, about 80% or four-fifths of all energy comes from fossil fuels. Solar and wind
power are such a limited part of the mix that they do not even appear separately as a category in the
charts.75 And the total amount of energy at our disposal is hard to imagine, to say the least. Yet
another attempt: if those 606 exajoules of energy in 2019 – roughly 100 billion barrels of oil – were
to be supplied by human workers, we would need 734.4 billion workers.76 (For those who have
momentarily lost track of the numbers: in November 2022, the world population is estimated to have
rounded the 8 billion mark. So, we are something like 726 billion people short. Or 90 of our densely
populated planets short.)

Let’s take a leap in time and go back just under half a century. We leave the 1990s for what they are
and go to the year 1973. In other words, we’ll jump back over the period of the 1990s that, with
major trade agreements, patent protection, deregulated capitalism, and far-reaching investment
agreements, kick-started the free trade era and put a physically global economy on track. 77

In 1973, global energy supply stood at 254 exajoules, according to the International Energy Agency.
In other words, the figure of 606 exajoules for 2019 means that in that little under half a century, we
have seen a growth in energy consumption of almost 140% – significantly more than doubling.78 In
1973, fossil fuels together still made up 87% of the total. Oil accounted for 46.2%, coal for 24.7% and
gas for 16.1% of that total. The remaining figures: biomass, derived fuels and waste (10.2%),
hydropower (1.8%), nuclear (0.9%), other (0.1%).

So, in the 1973 world, at 87%, an even greater part of energy came from fossil fuels – with a greater
share of oil in the mix then, and a smaller share of gas. The 2019 world shows that we have shifted to
less fossil fuels in the overall mix, and less oil and more gas in the fossil fuel mix. But what does that
mean? Have we started using less fossil fuels, then?

75 That puts a lot of news stories like ‘new record in green power production’ into a bit of a broader perspective. (Even if it
is true that records keep being broken.)

76 The basis for the calculation is as follows: if a worker (in a conservative estimate of 100 watts per hour they can supply)
works a year at 8 hours a day, five days a week and without holidays, that worker will supply about 208 KWh that year.
Heinberg, R., & Fridley, D. (2016). Our renewable future: Laying the path for 100% clean energy. Island Press.
See also Buckminster Fuller's concept of energy slaves: the amount of energy we use (in a given activity, or for our modern
lifestyle in general) is then recalculated into the amount of adult humans we would need to generate that energy for us via
muscle power. These are then the energy slaves: it thus involves expressing amount of energy needed or used not in joules,
calories, oil equivalent or the like, but in 'manpower'. Combining that idea with Heinberg’s calculation base, a back-of-the-
envelope calculation puts us at 272 energy slaves per average Belgian in 2021. (According to IEA figures, in 2021 there was a
Total Energy Supply in Belgium of 2,346,728 terajoules. For a population in that year of 11,521,238 (Statbel figure), that is
0.203,687 terajoules or 56,579.72 KWh per person. To be divided by the 208 KWh per energy slave).

77 The 1990s are widely seen as the real start of (physical) globalisation. For how in the 90s ‘climate negotiators’ lost from
‘free trade negotiators’, see, for example: Klein, N. (2014) This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate. London: Allen
Lane.

78 Between 1973 and 2019, the world population nearly doubled - an increase of almost 100%.

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Not at all. In absolute figures, the use of fossil fuels has increased sharply over that small half-
century. We are meanwhile running societies with immense overheads in terms of energy. Oil use,
despite dropping in the mix from 46.2% in 1973 to 30.9% in 2019, is up 60% in absolute terms. Coal:
plus 159%. Gas: plus 244%. So, despite fossil fuels in the mix dropping from 87% to around 81%, fossil
fuel use has more than doubled.

Between 1973 and 2019, nuclear capacity and certainly wind and solar energy have increased by
staggering percentages: after all, most nuclear power plants had yet to be built, and solar and wind
energy (with the photovoltaic panels and wind turbines as we know them today) only begin to
emerge at the beginning of the 21st century. Correct: an increasingly important part of our electricity,
meanwhile, is supplied by wind turbines or solar panels instead of gas-, oil- or coal-fired power
plants. A good thing considering the climate issue. But the point is that (when we look at global
figures) these new technologies have not replaced fossil fuels anywhere, and at no point in time – in
the sense that we would be using less of those now.

All that can be said is that without this increase in wind power, solar power, nuclear power, and, for
that matter, hydropower, the increase in fossil fuel use would have been even more pronounced. So,
at most, their rise has slowed down somewhat. But the simple reality is that we keep producing and
using ever more fossil fuels.

Let’s take another leap in time. When we go back a century, to the year 1920 say, the picture is as
follows.79 Total energy: 63 exajoules. That’s just under 1/10th of what we have as energy today. The
mix then: coal (54%), traditional biomass (38%), oil (5%), gas (1.2%), hydropower (1%).

When we go back another century, we land in 1820, with a total energy of about 21 exajoules. That’s
less than 4% of what we have available today. At that time, all except for 2.5% coal is traditional
biomass – wood, charcoal, those kinds of things.

It shows once again how phenomenal the increase in available energy has been. And what enormous
growth fossil fuels have made possible. Growth in economy, in mobility and transport, in resource
extraction, in conversion of land into farmland, in stuff, in prosperity, in access to education, in
anything and everything. Also in population: around the year 1800 there were an estimated 1 billion
people, around 1920 2 billion, around 1975 4 billion. Today there are 8 billion of us. A rough
estimate: in those 200 years, the population multiplied by 8, and the available energy by 28.

The numbers help. This is the challenge, and the order of magnitude of the challenge: replacing a
still-increasing amount of fossil fuels, which make up the vast majority of the mix anyway, with
something else.

Energy wisdom to rise to the challenge

Quite a challenge.

79The figures (in TWh) come from Our World in Data and are based on Vaclav Smil (Smil, V. (2017). Energy and Civilization:
A History. The MIT Press.) They have been converted here, for comparison with the 1973 and 2019 IEA figures, into
exajoules with a small correction.

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For years now, much of the (public) sustainability debate has been about the transition to
alternative, renewable forms of energy – CO2-reduction, you know. Sometimes the climate problem
or ecological crisis even seems reduced to an energy or fuel problem. If we achieve replacement, we
are safe – or so it sounds. But even if, by replacing fossil fuels, we manage to seriously limit
greenhouse gas emissions, or even reduce them to zero, we are still on a collision course with the
planet on many fronts. 80

It will have to be more than replacing fossil fuels. And we will have to do more and other things if we
want to fundamentally change course – something we haven’t really done since we started worrying
about our planet, our ecology, our climate, and our energy supply about half that century ago. In any
case, a fundamental change of course is not what we see in the energy figures we just looked at.

We’ll come back to it, those deeper levers of change.81 But there is at least the no-brainer around
replacing fossil fuels. Whether for climate or depletion reasons. The transition to alternatives is an
economic and environmental imperative. And it is not that there are no alternatives, or innovative
technologies, or nice promises, or grand claims about what can and should be done. But there is also
confusion, chaos, lack of policy, disinformation, and false claims. And there are enormous vested
interests. And not to forget the common and well-known resistance to change: change is needed, but
it is preferably others that need to change, and the change should certainly not be in our lives or in
our backyards.82 And there is also, as is the case in times of transition, something like advancing
insight: what may have seemed like a very good idea around a brainstorming table may be much less
so when it is further explored in complex reality. And there are all kinds of things that must be
weighed against one another: after all, we cannot make an omelette without breaking the eggs.

Overly simplistic representations are not going to help us: that the sun is going to shine for a long
time to come, that the wind doesn’t cost anything either, or that we as humans are simply the
smartest on the planet and we – which actually often means ‘others’ – will find a solution. Often said,
by the way, by people who are not in a situation of energy poverty.

Let’s be sufficiently energy wise: knowledgeable enough to help us make sound assessments,
responsible trade-offs, and smart choices for the future. There are some energy basics it is best not
to lose sight of – so we should look at them. They pretty much form the core vocabulary of any
sensible energy debate. And in the process – through the examples added for clarification – we also
gain important insights around different energy alternatives.

Yes, what about: renewability, exhaustibility, stocks, energy flows and energy losses, eroi, net
energy, operational energy, hidden energy, energy payback, energy systems, path dependency, lock-

80See, for example: Eisenstein, C. (2018). Climate: A new story. North Atlantic Books. Consider also the framework of safe
operating space for humanity and planetary boundaries, as cited in the chapter on climate and ecology.

81For the idea of levers of change or leverage points, we refer to systems thinker Donella Meadows. It concerns
intervention points in the system: where can you intervene, and where in the system will your intervention have the most
impact? See further in this text, also for the footnote with references.

82A syndrome in land-use planning known as NIMBY (not in my back yard) symbolises the idea that change must or may
come, and that we want to be able to enjoy it, but we don’t want to suffer the nuisance, burden, inconveniences, or costs.
Wind turbines are OK, but not here. It shows once again that seeing the energy transition as a simple, technical issue is a
mistake. Just because something is technically possible does not mean we will or can make it happen in our society.

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ins, energy security, black-outs, smart meters, end users, grids, scalability, environmental impact,
risks, and more of that.

The nuances around renewable and non-renewable

At the top of the list is the important distinction between renewable and non-renewable (sources of)
energy. It needs nuancing.

It obviously makes a difference whether an energy source is renewable or non-renewable: non-

renewable sources are finite, it may become more difficult over time to exploit them further, and in
theory they will sooner or later be exhausted. However, for an economy and a society characterised
by speed, short-term thinking, and the importance of the now, that theoretical difference (for the
future) seems to make surprisingly little practical difference (in the now). Exhaustibility hardly plays a
role, and it is mainly other questions that come to the fore: how much stock of it you have, or how
much you can claim, and for how long.

But sooner rather than later, the fundamental difference does become the issue: those who delay a
phase-out or switchover for too long will face far bigger problems than those who take action and
are prepared. Because an entire system infrastructure is attached to these exhaustible energy
sources. Acting ahead of time is key. To keep subsidising and investing in what is by definition a story
that will end, may not be the smartest idea.

Non-renewable energy includes the fossil fuels oil, gas, and coal: large but finite resources that are
currently being sought in increasingly difficult places, in increasingly less conventional forms, and
with increasingly questionable techniques. Reserves that are also subject to lying and speculation,
stocks that represent huge financial interests, resources that are the subject of major geopolitical
manoeuvres.83

Even nuclear or atomic energy is non-renewable: uranium, plutonium, ... the supplies are finite, and
supply problems may lie in the not-too-distant future. In principle, the promise of yet another
generation or type of nuclear reactor will not change this: the fuel for it remains non-renewable. And
the dream of nuclear fusion, instead of the nuclear fission currently used in nuclear reactors, still is
(and has been for a long time) no more than a future fantasy.

As a matter of fact, nuclear power seems to be coming back to the fore. With the panic after the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 fading somewhat, necessity breaks new laws, old
promises and agreements made. Nuclear power is put forward as climate friendly and CO2 neutral.

83 One can think here of the quota wars within OPEC: between 1983 and 1990, one after the other of the major oil-
producing countries increased their oil reserve figures (without any new oil discoveries!) simply to increase their production
and exports (and thus their government revenues). After all, export quotas agreed among member countries were related
to declared reserves. Estimates by Campbell and Laherrère in 1998 are that the global phantom reserves created in this way
could amount to 300 billion barrels (out of a total of around 1250 billion barrels). (See: Campbell, C. J., & Laherrère, J. H.
(1998). The End of Cheap Oil. Scientific American, 78-83. The International Energy Agency itself also questions OPEC’s
official reserve figures in its 1998 World Energy Outlook, p. 91-92: "Between 1985 and 1989, worldwide oil reserves
increased by 43% or 304 billion barrels. (...) Given the above, it is clear that official oil reserve estimates cannot be
considered reliable indicators of remaining oil reserves.")
And there is more deception. Reporting rules for private oil companies lead to constant re-estimation of proven reserves.
Indeed, the system invites initial underreporting - creating the illusion of systematically growing reserves. (See: Campbell, C.
J. (2007, July 13). Peak Oil - A Turning Point For Mankind. ASPO Ireland.)

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That is, for an existing plant that is up and running. It is a quite different story if the whole chain is
looked at, including construction, uranium mining, maintenance, decommissioning and nuclear waste
storage. Or, somewhat more cautiously, it is put forward as a form of energy that has a (temporary)
place in the energy transition, precisely because it allows us to use less fossil fuels.84 But the
mounting cost price, the slowness of switching on and off that prevents it from serving as a back-up
for wind and solar energy, the dependence on cooling water, and the risks of a possible disaster or
accident, and of nuclear waste that needs to be stored, remain difficult issues. And above all, of
course, nuclear power remains in the non-renewable camp.

Renewable energy traditionally includes categories such as wind, hydro, solar, geothermal, biomass
and biofuels. Within wind energy, for example, wind turbines on land, offshore wind farms, and small
vertical axis turbines can be considered. Hydropower is extracted from dams on which hydroelectric
plants operate, or from run-of-the-river systems, water mills, tidal power, or wave power. For solar
energy, we can think of photovoltaic panels for electricity generation, or thermal energy for solar
water heaters, as well as solar towers (which capture solar energy via mirrors) or solar ovens. Under
the category of geothermal, there are the by now well-known heat pumps in their various versions,
but heat is also extracted from geysers and hot springs. The temperature difference with the deep
earth or deep ocean can also be converted into energy. Biomass, which we know as firewood, wood
waste, pellets, agricultural residues, or from waste incineration and biomass plants. And finally,
biofuels: biodiesels, bioethanols from energy crops, pure vegetable oil, biogas and so on. All
renewable.

Yet with this renewability comes an important caveat. Biomass may, by definition, be something that
renews itself and is constantly recycled in that very large ecological cycle of life, but the rate at which
that biomass is drawn upon as a source of energy can indeed deplete a natural system. So,
renewable energy is also depletable. Biomass, for example, in the form of firewood, charcoal, pellets
or the like, become unsustainable once the biomass used for it is not given time to grow back. The
danger of deforestation and unsustainable logging for quick profits is real. And with biofuels
specifically, there is the problem that they risk competing with nature, agriculture, and food
production. And even if they come from agricultural waste products: who says the country does not
need those waste products?

Other types of renewables come with an equally important caveat. The resources may seem infinite
and inexhaustible, but the bottleneck or limitation may sit in the systems used to harness energy
from the sun, wind, water, or geothermal energy, for example, or in the systems that store that
energy to further distribute it and make it available. The materials needed for that: are they available
in sufficient quantities, or how recyclable are they, and who has access to them, and how and on
whom do we depend? Lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earth materials, critical raw materials?
And what about the mining activities and the energy cost involved?

Renewability and exhaustibility – far from unimportant in the energy debate.

84A number of scientists studying the dangers of climate change advocate nuclear power. Consider, for example, James
Lovelock, James Hansen, Richard Betts. The reasoning: we had better switch from fossil fuels to nuclear power (and keep
our fingers crossed that a solution is found for radioactive waste), because we need to get rid of fossil fuels immediately
and now if we still want to keep the chance of averting serious climate disruption (with its frankly disastrous
consequences).

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Energy losses and net energy

There are more energy basics that are important to get a good grasp of energy issues. They concern
energy flows and energy losses of all kinds.

This brings into focus a concept with an importance that can hardly be overestimated: net energy.
From the point of view of the end user – families, companies, or schools, say – what counts is the
amount of energy that is made available at point of use. And not how much energy it cost to extract,
convert, store, or transport that energy; nor how much energy was simply lost along the way. But, of
course, all of that matters, even for the end user who may notice this in the price to be paid: the aim
is to lose as little energy as possible in the process (of making the energy available). From the
perspective of the entire energy system, what matters most is how energy-efficiently the energy
reaches the end user.

EROI – energy return on investment – is a commonly used factor indicating the ratio between energy
delivered and the energy required to do so. 85 The higher the EROI the more interesting of course – it
means more net energy in relation to the energy invested.

EROI can be examined at different points in the system. EROI at point of extraction, for example, only
measures how much energy is needed for the actual extraction. For bringing oil to the surface, for
example. And anyone who remembers that the first oil from a newly drilled field comes out naturally
under its own pressure should expect very high EROIs here – after all, it costs little or no energy, it’s
almost a matter of just catching it.86 But looking only at EROI at point of extraction is misleading. In
the conversion of energy sources to energy carriers, and between energy carriers, energy is spent,
and there are energy losses. In the conversion from tar sands to petrol, for example, or from gas to
electricity. In other words, the EROI drops when those processes are taken into account. And it goes
even further: distribution also requires energy, and energy is lost. For example: the energy cost of
shipping LNG (liquefied natural gas) across the world’s oceans. Or the energy lost through gas leaks in
pipelines, or through transmission losses on high-voltage lines.

85 Sometimes an (additional) distinction is made between EROI (energy return on investment) and EROEI (energy returned
on energy invested), but this is unnecessarily confusing. Both indicate the same thing: the ratio of energy supplied to energy
needed to supply the energy supplied. So, an EROI of 10 (sometimes written as 10:1) means: 10 units of delivered energy
for every unit of energy put in; that means an efficiency of 90%. An EROI of 2 (or 2:1) is 2 units of energy delivered for every
unit of energy invested; an efficiency of 50%. Another way of mapping net energy and energy losses is NER (net energy
ratio), and NEA (net energy analysis). All quite technical stuff, by the way.
It can also be quite interesting when (speculative) attempts are made to estimate how high the ‘societal EROI’ should be to
keep the kind of complex societies like ours running. Thus, it is no longer about the physical EROI or net energy balance of
energy processes or systems, but about what average EROI we need for our society. Overall net energy factors for complex
societies (with, for example, education, health care and the arts) soon seem to be well above 10:1. After all, there must be
enough energy left over to free up all kinds of people for all kinds of things other than energy/food supply.

86 That meant that very often people did not even care about things like pipeline leaks, or significant extraction losses.

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Therefore, the EROI that matters most is EROI at point of use. In other words, at the end of the line,
available for the end user. It is the fairest way to compare all kinds of energy in terms of their net
energy content.87

The picture, in terms of EROIs at point of use, seems to be pretty much as follows at the moment: the
EROI of oil, coal and gas is falling and will fall further (because their quality is falling while their
extraction, conversion and transport require more energy) and the EROI of solar, wind and water is
rising and will rise further (because technologies are improving to harness energy from sun, wind and
water). Moreover, point of use, the EROIs of solar, wind and waterpower are at or above 10, while
those of (most) oil, gas and coal are (now) below 10, and biodiesels and bioethanols even well below
that.88

But even with EROIs for alternatives now outpacing EROIs for fossil fuels, the energy transition itself
still has to be paid for energetically: the system conversion itself, from a fuels-based system to an
electricity-based system for example, requires energy – do we factor that in too?

Operational energy and hidden energy

Looking at EROI and net energy, and energy flows and energy losses in general, also makes us reflect
on the difference between operational energy on the one hand and hidden energy on the other.

Operational energy refers to direct, visible consumption. Examples: the energy needed to heat or
cool a building, to keep lights on, to run machines, to drive cars, to charge smartphones, to power
industrial processes. However, what is quite often overlooked is the hidden energy. It is the
embedded, contained, or embodied energy of those buildings, machines, lights, cars, and
smartphones themselves. Embodied energy means all the energy needed to manufacture and
dismantle products and services, and it sits in things like raw material extraction, transport,
production, construction, assembly, installation, decommissioning, degradation.

For those who normally only look at operational energy consumption, it can be disconcerting to gain
insight into these hidden flows. As for the embodied energy of cars, estimates run from 30,000 to
75,000 kWh, depending on the size and type of car. To get an idea: 30,000 kWh is, converted, the
energy contained in 3,000 litres of diesel or 3,370 litres of petrol. If the operational energy cost of the
car is about 7 litres per 100 km, then 45,000 km of driving is the equivalent of the embodied energy
of the car itself. For the larger estimate (the larger car), the embodied energy is equivalent to about
115,000 km of driving.

87 For a plea to make methodologies to measure EROI more consistent, and especially to look at point-of-use EROI in the
equations, see, for example: Murphy, D. J., Raugei, M., Carbajales-Dale, M., & Estrada, B. R. (2022). Energy Return on
Investment of Major Energy Carriers: Review and Harmonization. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 14(7098), 7098-.
A notorious example concerning net energy is how an internal combustion engine in a car shows less efficiency than an
electric motor. In the combustion engine, considerable energy is simply lost as heat in the conversion process to motion
energy. Converting electricity (from batteries) into motion is more efficient.
88 For details, see Murphy, D. J., Raugei, M., Carbajales-Dale, M., & Estrada, B. R. (2022). Energy Return on Investment of

Major Energy Carriers: Review and Harmonization. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 14(7098), 7098-. But see also
Brockway, P. E., Owen, A., Brand-Correa, L. I., & Hardt, L. (2019). Estimation of global final-stage energy return-on-
investment for fossil fuels with comparison to renewable energy sources. Nature Energy, 4, 612-621. Brockway et al
maintain a final energy-stage EROI for fossil fuels of 6:1.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.56
Embodied energy is the concept that leads to the idea of energy payback from installations that
provide energy. Of wind turbines, for example, or of a solar panel installation. If the energy payback
period of an installation is 2 years, say, then it needs two years to deliver the amount of energy it
cost to make or build. Obviously, that period must be significantly shorter than the economic lifetime
(how long the turbine or plant is in operation) – the reverse would mean a net loss of energy in the
end. As it happens, what people usually call the payback time is something else. It concerns the
financial aspect: how long does it take before the investment or cost pays itself back.

A striking figure to do with net energy or the idea of embodied energy takes us right to the heart of
energy itself: food. In our agro-industry that runs on fossil fuels (diesel, pesticides, herbicides,
fertilisers, etc.), we can apparently afford to spend 10 calories of (fossil) energy for every calorie of
food we ingest.89 A net loss of nine calories.

Energy density, intermittency, environmental impact, lock-ins and more

But there are even more issues at play when it comes to evaluating or assessing (alternative) energy
sources. So, even more energy basics and issues that deserve our attention.

Energy density, for example, plays a role. Energy density is the amount of power or energy per unit
volume or mass. Higher density is more interesting: after all, the energy is packed into a smaller
volume or mass. Transportability of energy plays a role. Especially if it is not used where it is
generated or extracted. Scalability of techniques plays a role, as do the resources needed. But we
already talked about that in the item around the material bottlenecks of technologies of wind, solar
and batteries.

Reliability and energy (supply) security are an important criterion. For example, there is the not
inconsiderable issue of intermittency of wind and solar energy: the sun does not always shine, and
the wind does not constantly blow. That means back-ups in power systems or energy supply are
required: they should be able to cope with temporary shortages. But peak loads and overloading of
grids is also a problem. In other words, back-ups and backup systems need to be provided as well as
storage and buffers, or load spreading – which could be the idea behind smart meters, for example.

And there is the issue of environmental impacts. We obviously see these first and foremost in the
climate disruption caused by burning fossil fuels and the environmental degradation involved in fossil
fuel extraction.90 But by no means does renewable mean that there would be no environmental
impact. We learn from the life cycle analysis of the facilities that provide green power that these are
sometimes not negligible. Mining activities are needed for the materials for new technologies and

89Professor David Pimentel, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, personal communication to Richard
Heinberg, quoted in The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre & and Post Carbon Institute. (2008). Preparing for Peak Oil. Local
Authorities and the Energy Crisis, p. 11. See also the figure of 70% energy loss in food production in Pfeiffer, D. A. (2006).
Eating fossil fuels: Oil, food and the coming crisis in agriculture. New Society Publishers, p. 19. Pfeiffer also cites a study
showing that almost half of the energy consumed in the food system goes into storage and preparation at home. (Idem, p.
21.)

90Gas is sometimes called the ‘most environmentally friendly’ of the fossil fuels and is therefore seen by some as what we
might be allowed to stick with for a little longer if we still need fossil fuels. But when everything is taken into account (the
many methane leaks in extraction and transport, for example) such a term (‘most environmentally friendly’) still masks a
harsh, climate-disrupting reality. For coal and gas, by the way, something similar to oil is occurring: extraction is becoming
increasingly difficult, with more environmental impact, and what is extracted is, on average, of increasingly poorer quality.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.57
batteries – there is an environmental cost associated with that. Hydroelectric plants built on rivers,
via dams, interrupt fish migration or compromise other ecological services of rivers: silt deposition,
water purification, food supply. Trade-offs cannot be avoided.

Separate attention should also be paid to the idea of energy systems themselves. By this we mean all
components together that deal with how (a certain form of) energy is produced, converted, and
delivered to end users. Oil extraction, internal combustion engines, petrol stations, oil-fired central
heating, pipelines ... are components that belong together. A society that has resolutely gone down
that road for its mobility, for example, and invested heavily in it, faces a real challenge when change
is needed. Because one component that changes means an adaptation of the whole system and its
corresponding infrastructure, the whole architecture of the system in other words. Electric cars, for
instance, belong together with batteries, charging infrastructure, power grids and high-voltage lines.
It needs little imagination to see that that is not an easy switch.

In systems terminology, people sometimes speak of path dependency and – its result – system lock-
in: once a path has been chosen and society is well and truly on that path, it is not so easy to change
if one turns out to be on a wrong or dead-end track. After all, everything has become completely
aligned in the meantime. Choices made in the past thus largely determine the present. And choices
we make now determine the future even before it manifests itself. Investment choices now have
great importance, and we can only spend the money once.91

As it happens, periods of transition typically show diversity in systems, methods, and approaches.
And let diversity also be precisely what makes systems more resilient and better at coping with
problems: after all, they are not vulnerably dependent on just one way of organising in terms of
energy. One-size-fits-all solutions do not exist. In fact, they are not even a good idea.

And a final energy basic to end with: major energy gains and savings are in the energy we don’t use.
An oft-forgotten basic principle: ‘less’ – an idea that does not sit well with a culture of (ever) more.

Or should the very last energy basic simply be cost or price? The mechanism by which we as a society
noticeably reduce our energy use when the prices become prohibitive, and only then? It goes
without saying that cost is an important and manipulable criterion when weighing up energy
alternatives. But what something ultimately costs, and what costs are passed on to others, is an issue
in itself: in addition to production costs, it is an issue of research budgets, investment capital,
subsidies or benefits at all levels, market mechanisms, price agreements, geopolitical decisions,
speculation, monopolisation and so on. Environmental (and future) costs tend to get ignored.

The light that cannot go out over an era

Time to pause and look back.

91Investment choices, for instance, related to the energy carrier: electricity or hydrogen after all? (Or perhaps a
combination, diversity, or mosaic of systems to suit a diversity of locales, sectors, or applications?) One example of path
dependency: significant investment in LNG terminals and infrastructure in the wake of a European energy crisis in 2022
makes us partly dependent on that path. Another: choosing nuclear power makes decentralisation (which several energy
specialists advocate) less easy: nuclear power plants belong to large, centralised energy systems. Staying committed to
individual car mobility (instead of, say, public transport) means maintaining, renewing, expanding roads and bridges and
corresponding infrastructure.

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We looked at the world’s energy mix: in terms of our primary energy, for about 80% we still run on
fossil fuels. Moreover, we remain on an unprecedented growth trajectory. Even though in several
parts of the world fossil fuel consumption is declining – or should we say: it is moving? – it has more
than doubled globally over the past half century.92 And when things falter or fail for a while –
financial crisis, pandemic, war, geopolitical rumblings – we do all we can to get back to business as
usual as soon as possible anyway. Growth, in other words. Which requires more energy.

We know that fossil fuels are finite and see signs of this expiring story on the horizon. We have
known that for more than that half century in which we have doubled their use. We know about
climate change. We have known about it for that same half century at least. We understand the link
between fossil fuels and climate change. And we know of plenty of alternatives for providing energy,
and how to use less energy, and how to cut our coat according to our cloth if necessary. The
alternatives work, each and every one of them, and they are getting better, though issues remain
and trade-offs are part of the deal. But we do not seem to have the alternatives on the scale and at
the speed that are needed.

Society as a whole also seems more and more genuinely aware of the climate problem as directly
linked to energy. Aware also of an unfolding ecological crisis. At least one entire new generation has
grown up with it. Every company, school, group, or institution that more or less respects itself talks
about sustainability, transition, or the need for change.

A lot is happening. An awful lot. People are making their voices heard, changing tack, working on
transitions, restoring resilience, protecting nature, changing economies, deciding to travel or eat
differently, raising their children according to other principles ... We are organising climate summits,
biodiversity summits, ocean summits, sustainable development summits. We make grand promises
and find each other (with difficulty sometimes) in our common concerns. Every so often we come up
with new frameworks to guide us: millennium development goals, sustainable development goals,
roadmaps, target plans, protocols.

And yet we are barely making headway: CO2 and fossil fuel curves don’t budge and continue to sit
neatly on their growth trajectories.

Why? Why is the light not allowed to go out over this era, so that something else can take its place?
So that what is needed can happen, and not only just what is feasible and affordable?

There must be more to it.

Ethics as a critical reflection on our prevailing morality

At this point in our exploration of the energy issue, we begin to understand that the energy issue, so
to speak, is not an energy issue.

Or at least not only an energy issue.

92To compare with earlier IEA figures for 1973 and 2019: during that time, fossil fuel consumption fell by almost 9% in EU-
27, the Europe of 27 member states. Shifting industrial activities elsewhere in the world will be no stranger to this.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.59
It is much more than a technical, a fuel or a replacement issue. It is an economic issue, a societal
problem, a cultural affair. An ethical matter. If ethics is the critical reflection on our prevailing
morality, then our energy situation holds up a mirror to us.

Ethics asks what is wise action, what is the right thing to do, and it does so in practice by asking
questions along the lines of: are we doing the right thing? By looking at the energy situation we are
confronted with the morality of our economy and money. We are confronted with the values and
norms prevailing in our societies, with what we consider acceptable and correct in our politics, and
with what we deem normal in our dealings with each other, with the rest of life and with the planet.
With what we pass on to our children.

Ethics invites us to ask questions: about the very things with which we reach a total deadlock, about
the things that undermine our long-term well-being, about the opportunities we rid others and
future generations of – also the future generations of other species. It is sometimes said: bad
questions never produce good answers. Perhaps this is our greatest strength as human beings right
now: to ask the right and pertinent questions. The questions, by the way, connect us more than the
necessary diversity of answers people come up with for those questions.

In other words, we should be looking for deeper levers of change, and delve deeper into the system.
Or we could also put it this way: anyone who wants to understand why the twin concerns of climate
and depletion have only slowed the growth of fossil fuel use in the world by a fraction at best, and
certainly not brought it down, will have to look below the waterline. There must be things down
there that get in the way of change, things that bog us down.

In doing so, we evoke the image of a system like an iceberg.93 Our society for instance, or our
economy, or our money system, or the combination of them, or the world as we know it today, they
are all large, coherent wholes – systems – that we can see as an iceberg. Only the very tip is visible;
by far most of the iceberg is underneath the water.

The visible tip, that is what happens in the world: someone cycles to school, a country invades
another country, a president is elected. Below the water line is why the things that are happening are
happening: why cycling, why that invasion, why does that person get elected? Why, in the issue that
concerns us here, is change resisted? And within the systemic representation of the iceberg, what is
below the surface is itself layered. Just below the water line is what we might call patterns and
trends: habitual behaviour that explains the layer above the water. Below that, in turn, are the
structures, forces and dynamics that underlie our habitual behaviour. And the bottom piece of the
iceberg, which provides its stability and carries all that is above, is formed by our mental models:
how we think about reality, how we see ourselves and the world. How we think about reality
becomes visible in cycling to school, invading a country, getting elected.

93See for example: https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Final-Iceberg-Model.pdf on the Donella Meadows

Project website. Donella Meadows was one of the authors of the famous The Limits to Growth in 1972. Meadows is an
authority on systems thinking. Meadows, D. H., & Wright, D. (2009). Thinking in systems: A primer. Earthscan. Meadows, D.
H. (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. The Academy for Systems Change.
http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ Meadows, D. H. (n.d.). Dancing
With Systems. The Academy for Systems Change. from https://donellameadows.org/archives/dancing-with-systems/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.60
But in the end, there is just that iceberg: one big, massive, tangled knot with a small piece that is
visible.

Inertia of a system

So, what is this massive tangle that is keeping us from doing what needs to be done?

What sits under the water line of our systemic iceberg that keeps us from changing course? What are
the reasons why we seem unable to say goodbye to an era, and make the transition to something
else? Reasons why a paradigm shift is not turning into a reality?94

Wicked. A wicked problem. That’s what we call such a tangled knot nowadays: a problem that
escapes even a problem definition.95 A problem that, if we want to pinpoint it, turns out to rather be
a symptom of another problem. A problem that changes face when the perspective changes: there is
no single explanation that is conclusive. A problem for which you cannot test a possible solution
without intervening. A problem that changes with every intervention itself. How to even start on
such a thing?

Our strategy is as follows. In a first step, we dive below the water line and try to make some of that
tangle visible. As a knot, as an interwoven set of explanatory elements belonging to all sorts of
domains of reality, ranging from politics and sociology to psychology and economics. A let’s face it:
just a part of it, in an attempt to begin to see some of the interconnected stuff. But in a dizzying
rollercoaster – as it will turn out. In a second movement, things will hopefully crystallize out, and we
will try to form an idea of the deeper root causes of the precarious and immobilizing situation we
find ourselves in. Form an idea of the cultural lock-in: how we may be stuck in certain ways of
thinking, in a certain kind of logic, in a certain world view. Change the way you look at the world and
the world you look at begins to change – it is said.

So, what is this massive tangle?

A first chunk of the tangle: a lot of policy and politics do not really show good understanding of the
severity of the energy/climate situation, and do not really show the wise and mature leadership we
would hope to see. At many levels, policy and politics are trapped in short-term thinking – elections,
among other things, or popularity polls and accompanying polling fever. As a result, uncomfortable
messages certainly do not help to win votes: they are not a good idea in view of the market and
power share that are ultimately at stake. And if in the end it is the voter who decides or the
constituency who has the last word, then perhaps they also do not really show an understanding of
the seriousness of the situation either. Even democratically, societies can effortlessly undermine

94 A paradigm is a coherent set of principles, values, and ways of thinking. A basic set of views on how reality works, so to
speak. A paradigm shift then is a revolution or reversal in our entire thinking, in our culture, in our worldview. It is an insight
from systems science that if we want to bring about fundamental and lasting change, we must intervene deep in the
‘identity’, the ‘logic’ or the ‘paradigm’ of a system.

95The term ‘wicked problem’ has become commonplace and is used for more issues than the social policy for which it was
originally coined. The term goes back to Horst W. J. Rittel & Webber, M. M. (1973) Dilemmas in a General Theory of
Planning. Policy sciences. 4 (2), 155-169. For the use of the term ‘super wicked problem’ and its application to climate
change: Levin, K. et al. (2012) Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to
ameliorate global climate change. Policy sciences. 45 (2), 123-152.

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their ecological foundations. Politics and policy, at many levels, in their legislative or executive
branches, are also often no match for the powerful corporate and financial lobbies. And because jobs
of voters often depend on those big players, politicians compromise or give in. Private capital that
defends private interests – which have everything to do with building that private capital itself –
manages to influence and change legislation, agreements, or treaties. And in certain places in the
political field, where power completely intertwined with that financial-economic top layer, lobbying
has made itself redundant: the former lobbyists now occupy the political chairs. A judiciary then
watches over compliance with the new laws. Constitutions and laws of the people that apparently
fail to deter or punish ecocide – crimes against nature that are as yet missing in the law books. And
as for the rules and laws that business and financial players must abide by, we see the opposite of
legislation: free tickets for financial capital and deregulation that leaves everything to the economics
of markets. A global economy meanwhile that uses more and more energy to concentrate rather
than distribute more and more wealth. And let us not forget that ‘politics and policy’ has become
almost synonymous with determining and channelling money flows. What is taxed? Who is taxed?
How heavily? And where does the money go to? What is subsidised? With all those direct and
indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry: are we not then subsidising our own climate change?

Markets, and the belief in them, is another point where we could have started. Markets work. There
is no doubt about that, although here we may mean something different from what mainstream
economists now usually mean by it. Markets work in the sense that they have particular dynamics,
steer behaviour, and result in a certain outcome. The important question, of course, is which way
they steer that behaviour, what the results are, and thus how they work. But they all function and
have effects: so-called free markets (which we now know are a myth or utopia), regulated markets,
local weekly markets, newly developed markets such as for greenhouse emissions, markets
characterised by oligopolies, cartels and monopolies, supermarkets, markets of supermarkets, factor
markets.96 Not to forget financial markets. None of these markets fail – again, in a non-standard
interpretation of ‘market failure’. Those markets do exactly what they do, or what we allow them to
do. Sometimes, and for some time, some of those markets are good for the common good and seem
to spread prosperity and make for progress. At least that is the narrative that surrounds them:
through the miracle of competition, things keep getting cheaper and cheaper, and technology and
science keep advancing. Quite apart from whether this is really the case, and quite apart from the
(human) suffering and environmental degradation masked by ‘cheap’, this is a disputable attribution
theory to say the least: that what we see around us (and especially its positive aspects) would be due
to (free) markets. There is a lot more that sits in the equation: social struggles, cooperation, societal
players like universities and research groups, social capital without which nothing works, and the
huge increase in available energy to name but a few. Energy: the overlooked resource of resources.

Above all, markets also seem to accumulate more and more money in a few places, and boost profits
phenomenally for some. Profit growth rather than profit. Abnormal or supernormal profits rather
than normal profits. Pharmaceutical companies cash in on a pandemic, arms companies cash in on
fear, energy companies cash in on geopolitics, financial players cash in on themselves. This is no
longer about a piece of the pie; this is a barely stoppable dynamic of the (shareholder) system itself.

96We speak of factor markets when not only products and services are traded through markets, but also the factors of
production themselves: labour, land, and capital. See historian Bas van Bavel’s analysis of how market economies undergo a
cycle where they finally and inevitably undermine themselves. See: van Bavel, B. J. P. (2016). The invisible hand? How
market economies have emerged and declined since AD 500. Oxford University Press.

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Concerns, worries and corporate responsibility fade into the background and become something for
losers, something for governments – so the story goes. If we can make money, we will make money –
so the market says. And with that, everything and everyone seems to come under the sway of the
most elusive of all kinds of markets: financial markets.

The deregulation we touched upon brings us to another part of the massive tangle under the water
line of the last 30 to 40 years. A special kind of narrative gained a firm foothold, and it consists of
several components: as little government interference as possible, reduction of corporate taxing, far-
reaching privatisation of public services, free movement of capital and goods, prices determined by
market supply and demand, cutbacks in government social spending, competition and
competitiveness as the drivers of progress, and if everyone takes care of themselves then everyone
will be fine. Aspects of the reality that this story has managed to create: a global economy, a massive
scale, erosion of decisiveness of governments, exploitation and exhaustion of people, climate and
ecology, the obliteration of everything that does not yield a profit, increasing concentration of wealth
and power in the hands of a limited circle, welfare of people under pressure, a rising tide that sinks a
lot of boats, and a supercompetitive game that results in miracles for some and a race to the bottom
for most. Many of these things, by the way, would not have materialised without this huge wave of
surplus energy on which it surfed.

Perhaps we could say that the story has also given us a lot. But then, again, we should not forget to
look at the energy that was the enabling condition for it, and at who exactly the beneficiaries are. So,
it brought us a lot: lots of stuff, material prosperity, comfort, and the wonders of modern technology,
for example. But above all, it has brought us – the big word! – progress. Indeed. Lots of stuff.
Material prosperity, though far from universal and certainly not well distributed. And comfort. For
some, life has even become uncomfortably comfortable by now. We really can’t ignore the many
wonders of modern technology: it is increasingly difficult to find places in the world where there is no
trace of it, ranging from satellite links over cutting-edge medical technology to open pit mines. But
progress? That requires at least some nuance or qualification. Even where it concerns the medical
science that has become the almost classic example of it. Has our physical health and mental well-
being, and that of the ecology we are part of, really improved? The least that can be said about the
progress we have made is that it is debatable. Anyway, everything depends on what we mean by
progress, now that we are in the situation we are in. And when we mainly look at the positive
aspects, the important attribution question arises again: what caused the progress, what made it
happen? Different ideologies and different (political) parties tend to attribute progress and periods
of economic well-being to their own narrative, programme, or ideology. Or if there are elections to
be won, they make promises that with them prosperity and progress will come back. Hardly anyone
can be found who gives credit where credit is due: to the almost endless stream of cheap energy
(and labour) that has made most of this possible. Successes are usually linked to ideologies, not low
oil prices. Because modern economic theories developed at a time when energy costs were
negligible, a few percentage points at most, energy was not even factored in as a limiting variable.
But if a system really does hit the physical limits of its energy supply, (political) ideology can do little
to change that. Nor, for that matter, can street protests, trade union action or rebellion. True
enough, all of these matter (greatly) when it comes to how to deal with the situation, how to shape
policy in the new circumstances, what course to take, but nothing changes in the fundamental reality
of the limits themselves. Maybe occasionally and in some places one generation is better off than a
previous one, but every generation?

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Let us stick with those attribution theories for a further moment. That – here, with us – quite a few
people are (materially) better off than in the early industrial revolution, is linked with social struggles,
and with people standing up for their rights within a system that in its internal dynamics denies those
rights as much as possible. Not totally – since, of course, the system needs the labourers. And
gradually also it begins to need these workers in their capacity as consumers. A typical, self-
reinforcing feedback loop emerges. Since we need to earn a living through our jobs and our incomes,
we have all become involved in the meantime. What we need must be bought in those markets. In
the form of products and services. Consumption must sustain production and services. Production
and services must maintain employment. Employment must maintain purchasing power. Purchasing
power must maintain consumption (and repayment of credit). The whole thing turns into a cycle of
production and consumption in which fewer and fewer questions are asked about what is traded,
consumed, and produced, or about the content and meaningfulness of our jobs. The only concern is
that everything must be sustained.97 This is logical when viewed from the inside, but from a broad
perspective it is a weird house of cards built on vast amounts of cheap energy.

Besides, the logic and self-reinforcing feedback in which we are stuck does not stop there: the cycle
of production and consumption just outlined must also keep up government revenues via taxes. To
maintain quality education. To maintain public infrastructure such as sewers and roads, to maintain
services, to maintain healthcare, to maintain pensions and so on. And preferably to improve all of
this too. Though with that last example, limits seem to have been reached. The facilities, services,
and material welfare levels that a post-war generation gradually began to enjoy in parts of the world
(especially because of the energy revolution): we have become accustomed to them. As if they were
normal, and a basic right. Many people insist, where they can, on what they consider their rights, and
are reluctant to sacrifice comfort and prosperity – especially when they see others taking more and
more, while they themselves have less and less. Increasing individualisation in many places
undermines a plea for solidarity, duties, and responsibilities. Have we become more selfish? Maybe
so, maybe not: people do help each other in situations of distress and certainly when things are at
their worst. But there is something about this increasing individualisation. For many, meanwhile, a
neoliberal and free-market narrative is no longer just a vision of economics, but a self-definition of
human beings: we are selfish, selfish genes, and we must think mainly of ourselves. Here and now,
because we only live once you know. A self-understanding that only reinforces the whole system.
And a gigantic collapse of the cosmic embedding of our human reality.

Money – which has already been touched on in passing – is also a substantial part of the explanatory
iceberg that sits under the surface. Our world revolves around money, and without money
everything grinds to a halt, and nothing happens. Money is unquestionably part of the tangle, if not
the connective tissue of it. Economy and business, especially the mega players, are increasingly
dictated by money, stock market quotation, shareholder value and the promise of high dividends.
Concern for people and planet often go no further than where it benefits profit. Not to mention that
jobs, incomes, and thus tax revenues for governments are increasingly dependent on these big
players who increasingly start setting the rules – in the interests of some. A financial world, which is
all about the flashy bits and bytes of super-mobile money, is not interested in ecology or energy or
(even) economy. Unless money can be made with it. It is a world that lives by value extraction: it

97 Here we hit the reason for much of the mist, confusion and (deliberate) misunderstanding in the sustainability debate. It
is a useless and unhelpful debate unless we focus on the critical question: what is it that needs to be sustained?

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.64
adds nothing of value and extracts money from everything. It is also a world that is the prisoner of its
own short-term thinking: quarterly figures rather than thinking generations ahead, and nanoseconds
when it comes to lucrative transactions.

Not only money, but the money system per se also plays a staggering role below our water line. In
other words, money is far less innocent than it seems: so it’s not just about what people do with
(their) money, but what money does to itself and to the world. Money that consists overwhelmingly
of debt, which has to be paid off with compound interest – by households, businesses and
governments alike – means that growth has to be realised in the future to earn back that extra
money for that compound interest. All in all, a deadly cocktail: to keep going, we need to keep
growing. Strange economic concepts like ‘zero growth’ and ‘negative growth’ show how growth has
indeed become the undisputed new normal. On top of our energy dependence, we are growth
dependent. With our jobs and incomes and credit, we are trapped in growth economies that cannot
help but assert the primacy of themselves over all (other, ecological) concerns. Economic necessity
repeatedly breaks ecological law, and election promises that capitalise on the rightful focus on
ecological concerns all too often get watered down when it comes to economic competition, and
jobs. It’s the economy, stupid!98 Growth dependency – on a finite planet, with a limited carrying
capacity, and with that huge surplus of fossil energy that sooner or later cannot continue to support
that growth: the thing is untenable. Assuming we even want to continue that path, ecologically and
climatically it makes no sense, because there is no such thing as decoupling. What goes up must
come down – the law of life. Growth dynamics that get out of control end in system crashes or
burnouts. And as for energy: even with energy replacement and energy conservation through
efficiency gains, a growth system remains a growth system. The dream that – in our paradigm – at
some point of development prosperity will automatically decouple from resource and energy
demand seems nothing but that: a dream. There is no empirical evidence for it. If material and
energy consumption are already falling in supposedly or so-called developed countries, it often
simply means that much of the (energy-consuming, resource-intensive, and environmentally
polluting) production has been outsourced to distant, other places.

With this last remark we are moving into other things below the water line. What we so nicely call
globalisation – something that in itself requires a lot of mobility and transport energy – often masks
realities no-one would like to find themselves in. Terms like neo-colonialism, exploitation,
exhaustion, exclusion, expulsion, extractivism, and plundering are often more appropriate. Large
parts of the world, because of mounting debts, because of imposed restructuring plans, because of
corruption, internal conflicts or policy failures, because of blatant foreign interference, because they
have fallen victim to financial markets, because they could not overcome a major drought or other
natural disaster on their own, or simply because luck was not on their side, have ended up being at
the mercy of an ideology and a value extraction system over which they have no control whatsoever.
This too is the history of the past decades: a diversity of local subsistence economies get further
dislocated and dismantled only to be sucked into a global economy dictated by financial markets, big
shareholders and all those eagerly waiting for return on investment and dividends. Not much else
remains for many, individuals as well as countries that have fallen into a debt trap, to simply sell out
their labour, their raw materials, their space to dump waste, their energy, their forests and other
natural resources in increasing numbers. Groups that benefit locally from this, now that they have

98Reference to a phrase by campaign manager James Carville in Bill Clinton’s 1992 US presidential campaign: the
importance of the economy above all else.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.65
the means, in turn join the global cycle of production and consumption. As a matter of fact, why
should people be left behind, or less entitled to the kind of material prosperity that is the norm
elsewhere in the world?

However, through dodgy schemes, tax havens and shadow banking, much of that wealth –
meanwhile in the form of cash – does end up somewhere else where people never seem to lack
opportunities to celebrate. And when big players are partying financially, the playmakers and
puppeteers are guaranteed to pocket bonuses. In fact, what wasn’t really allowed to see the light of
day before – all those shadowy things that were considered a bit unsympathetic anyway – can now
be open and exposed: whoever wins has played the game well, whoever loses should just learn to
play the game better. That is what many have quietly come to really believe. Winners appear in our
economics textbooks: as the great examples of how we could all do it, if only we play the game well
enough. But exactly what game are we playing? Our planet is finite, our carrying capacity limited, and
our ecology is a zero-sum game: someone’s gain is always someone else’s loss. All win-wins and win-
win-wins notwithstanding (there is an unholy bidding in that kind of terminology too): if the
collective totality does not grow, we cannot possibly all win. Except that a veritable energy bonanza,
and a sky that has become the limit, has put our sense of reality more or less on hold. Limits? We
don’t do that.

A different angle below the surface of our iceberg: the world we live in today has for many
increasingly become that of cities, buildings, cars, computers, and screens. Much more a
technological environment than a reality of trees, animals, rivers, and mountains. Natural rhythms of
day and night get disrupted, and seasonal differences are neutralised in our buildings through
climate controls and air conditioners. Virtual environments are becoming the new working
environments for many: our newest habitat. Our fascination with and confidence in technological
progress is immense. To the extent that it is mainly from that corner that we expect the solutions.
Whatever the problem: technology is going to solve it, and innovation is the magic wand. Innovation:
‘new’ or ‘different from before’ is almost by definition better than tried and time-tested. What is old
must and will be replaced. As a result, a lot ends up in the trash. Even things that have always
worked, be it tried and tested methods of agriculture or the next-to-last version of our smartphone.
However, hardly anyone sees the giant elephant in the technology room: without energy, no
technology. Technology does not work by itself. And when looking at technology, let’s not only think
of machines, industries, or appliances of all kinds, but also of information and communication
technology, data storage and data networks, internet, intranets, clouds, servers, digital currencies, e-
commerce, artificial intelligence, computing power, payment infrastructure. No such things without
the power to keep everything up and running. Because of energy consumption, and because of
vulnerable dependencies, technology moves, at least partly, from the solution side to the problem
side. Technology, by the way, suffers from the rebound effect or the Jevons’ paradox: energy savings
and efficiency are usually cancelled out in various ways by different behaviour, higher demand,
increased use or changes elsewhere in the system.

Above all, technology has also changed our perception of reality. Just as money did. And markets did.
And screens did, and still do. It feels like our world has become bigger and wider and more spacious,
but we could just as easily argue that the opposite is true. In fact, everywhere else we tend to
increasingly see the same as when we look in the mirror. Reality is threatened in its colourful
diversity, in its cultural diversity no less than in its ecological diversity. And the multitude of

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.66
perspectives that we ourselves can adopt is in danger of getting reduced to mainly one pair of
spectacles: those of economic, and here and there (pseudo)scientific lenses in support, if available.
Or we choose money itself as the measure of all things; and even when we don’t really want to so,
we are all but forced to do so – we need money for so many things. And through those glasses, much
disappears from view. And the things we still see risk being reduced to their usefulness in our
(economic) project: much of the natural environment simply turns into resources, people become
human resources – things that are deployed and managed. Even where we start to use money as a
measurement tool for assessing the value of important ecosystem services, for example, a harmful
kind of rationale arises. As if we can convert financial capital into ecological capital. A strange view of
the world to say the least. Money is worthless. Unless there is something of value to back it: if no
more value can be bought with it, monetary wealth becomes synonymous with tragic and deadly
poverty. When money becomes the end, sooner or later it ceases to be the means for which it was
intended. Spellbound (or held hostage) by money, our system fails to recognise and value the most
fundamental wealth of our existence: our nature, the sustaining ground of our existence. Our
ecological illiteracy is worrisome. And less and less do we have the sense and daily experience of
being part of nature. A disconnected existence. Often, we do not know, and do not experience, what
goes on. And ignorance is bliss, no?

To conclude our dive below the water line, let’s look at energy, and more specifically at an evolution
in the way we look at it – which in itself demonstrates its enormous importance. It may be a little odd
to say this for starters, but energy is first and foremost energy: it is what everything and everyone,
according to the dictionary definition, needs to ‘perform labour’. Everything runs on energy, and
energy is the source of all life: plants get it from the sun, for themselves, and for others, which they
in turn use for themselves, and for others. And so on, in endless circles and cycles of conversion and
recycling. Food. Muscle power. Animal power. With the massive consumption of old, stored solar
energy in the form of fossil fuels, our capacity to ‘do labour’ has increased massively. This, in tandem
with the industrial revolution, has changed the world. Of course, because fossil fuel reserves are not
evenly distributed around the world – some countries have a lot, others have little, still others none,
and all the nuances in between – this energy quite quickly becomes an important commodity:
something that can be sold on the market to earn revenue or profits. So, energy turns into way more
than simply energy: it becomes a commodity. An important and interesting commodity for that
matter: no one, and certainly no-one in the now highly industrialised world, can live without it. Such
dependencies create – to put it neutrally – opportunities: to obtain things, play markets, or shape
alliances, the flow of this kind of energy to the global market can be manipulated. In a geopolitical
game, oil and gas taps are turned off or on. Pipelines are built, and pipelines are sabotaged. Energy –
because it means energy, and trade commodity – has thus shapeshifted into strategic resource: a
resource so important that diplomatic wars, trade wars, and real wars are fought over it. By the way,
those real wars require an awful lot of fossil fuels: energy thus even becomes a weapon, because a
military-industrial complex without energy loses its power base. And energy and energy
infrastructure themselves become targets in wars – that is where the enemy is potentially weakest.
So, we see the enormous economic, strategic, geopolitical, and military importance of energy, and
more specifically of what constitutes its main component: fossil fuels. And just because they are so
incredibly important, and because in this interdependent reality no-one can go without anymore,
fossil fuels have also been in the cross hairs of the financial markets. Our simple energy shows yet
another face: it now appears as a crucial investment opportunity and has gradually also become the

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.67
object of shameless speculation. Fossil fuels represent dozens of percentages of the stock market
value of large companies, banks, pension funds.

Granted: such a dive below the waterline, it makes one gasp. And there may be even more to be
uncovered deep within the system. For instance, around the ties between energy, via big money, and
newspapers, TV stations, (social) media and (dis)information. All part of a massive tangle.

Changing fuel and changing systems

Such roller coaster below the water line of our system shows a number of things.

It shows that energy is woven into much more than we usually realise, and that the world as we
know it today is also partly the result of that energy: to touch energy is to touch everything. It shows
the miracles of it, as well as its darker shadows, and a dependency that may be alarming. But above
all, our plunge below the surface shows how everything is connected and how that connection
doggedly clings to itself, as it were, and maintains itself. The figures on ever increasing energy
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, despite the awareness of imminent depletion and the
reality of climate change, already testified to this. Systems thinkers are familiar with this dynamic: it
has to do with a complex pattern of feedback loops that lock a system into self-preservation. A kind
of lock-in.

In itself, of course, there is nothing wrong with a tendency to be self-sustaining, quite the contrary.
We all know things that we hope will sustain themselves, will last, or will not be undermined. But
systems often display other dynamics too: a tendency to adapt to changing circumstances, for
instance. Or they possess the resilience to absorb shocks. Actually, we can still see these too as an
expression of the dynamics of self-preservation. But systems can or sometimes do undergo real
transformation: then they become something else than what they were. They might become
something entirely different for the sake of preserving their original purpose or function. Change in
order to preserve – that is what we might then call it.

In the background, we feel the question around energy shifting. From ‘how do we keep our world
running?’ to ‘what kind of world do we actually want to keep running?’.

Indeed, the entire point is simply this: what do we want to preserve, what do we want to achieve,
and what do we need to change in order to do so? Admittedly, when we add time to the frame, the
issue becomes more complex: things we want to preserve in the short term are sometimes at odds
with what we want to achieve in the long term (at a different level). But if the system we are in no
longer helps us and does not result in what we want to achieve, or undermines what we want to
preserve, then a system lock-in is indeed a serious problem. We become, as it were, the prisoners of
ourselves, having stepped into our own trap. 99 Scratching the surface won’t do.

Of course, there is a diversity of views on what we want to achieve, and what we want to preserve,
and what we may need to change to do so. And not to forget, for some people there is quite simply
no issue: the system gives them what they want (or they manage to get from the system what they

99When you find yourself stuck in a hole, rule number one is to stop digging - Matthew Simmons. Simmons, M. R. (2005)
Twilight in the desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy. Hoboken: Wiley.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.68
need), and nothing needs to change at all. An additional difficulty, which may be hard to see and
uncomfortable to admit, is that quite a few views on what we do or do not have to do are simply
exponents of the system itself. A barely visible lock-in then bites its own tail, so to speak, and makes
itself completely invisible. We sometimes speak of bounded rationality: we take decisions and make
choices based on our perspective (which, by definition, is always a limited perspective). And within
our logic, of course, those decisions are logical – what else? A well-known quote that deals with the
difficulty of breaking through one’s own logic (or one’s own perspective) is Einstein’s: it is insane to
keep doing the same thing and yet expect different results – we cannot solve a problem with the
thinking that created it. Unfortunately, meanwhile, a lot of the people quoting Einstein (but having
no clue) simply continue down the well-trodden path.

Figuring out what matters, and getting out of a dead-end, it is quite a task. Hence, incidentally, our
exploration of the ecology and history of energy, and our plunge below the water line of the world
we know: to develop the broadest and most informed view possible when it comes to choices,
changes, and levers in the system. An important distinction we have picked up in the process is the
difference between natural systems on the one hand and purposeful, human systems on the other.
We may be able to stretch ecology to a limited extent in its capacity to provide energy and resources
and absorb waste, we may over-demand natural systems for a while when it comes to the many
ecosystem services the planet provides us with, but in the end, the planet is non-negotiable. It has its
own laws. Human systems, such as economies, money systems, food systems, political systems, and
education systems, are negotiable. They are all human-made: ways of thinking that result in ways of
doing. They are not laws of nature. Human systems can be changed – however difficult or impossible
that may sometimes seem. Natural laws cannot.

If we continue to view the solution to the energy issue as a simple substitution issue – we replace the
system’s fuel and leave the rest as it is – we will miss important lessons from the present and the
past. Moreover, the (economic, social, cultural) reality around us is so tough and so locked-in, that
this substitution is apparently not working for us, except for a few percentage points. What’s more:
in the depths of that reality lives an economic and instrumental logic that ensures that we will never
succeed in that replacement in the future either. Unless, of course, we change the logic, which
means change the system: systems characterised by growth and by the logic that growth has to
sustain growth are an anomaly or deviation when they are embedded in finite realities. No
alternative energy can, ultimately, compete with that. The whole energy issue therefore makes us
question economic concepts that do not allow us, not yesterday, not now and not later, to
fundamentally change course. It is an economy (and in its wake a society and a culture) 100 that in its
fundamentals is not based on a biophysical world, does not take into account the laws of

100Arguably, our economy has become our culture and our identity: it colours and defines our relationships, our education,
our healthcare, our environmental policies, our communication, our solidarity, and our research – to name just a few areas.
Economics dominates our societies, and economic thinking threatens to become the defining factor of our culture: thus, re-
thinking economics also means rethinking cultural values.
Schools can be good places for that. Interestingly, it was economist and philosopher E.F. Schumacher who said that the
greatest resource of all is education – that is, when it deals with the big metaphysical questions about who we are, and
what our place is in the universe. Schumacher, E. F. (2011). Small is beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered.
Vintage.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.69
thermodynamics, and defines the playing field and responsibilities for itself way too narrowly. It is an
economy that in its dynamics fails to realise that no ecology means no economy.101

If we humans want to be the best version of ourselves, then this could be what we are aiming for:
the well-being of all, and therefore the well-being of the planetary ecology and our immediate
environment that forms its foundational base. We need to honour that, possibly even regenerate it.
So, we will not only have to change fuel. We will also have to change system, and therefore engage
and intervene deeper within the system itself.

And levers to that end are everywhere: in how we travel, provide food, organise agriculture, build
and live, design cities, move around, dress, organise education, talk of and treat nature, engage in
politics, legislate, make news, deal with technology, use money, ... Simple (and overlapping) basic
principles that can guide all societal players are in no short supply: save energy, do things efficiently,
avoid waste, use energy where it is a priority, organise things locally, produce and consume locally,
honour the earth, switch from having things to using things, stop planned obsolescence of products,
turn products into services, respect nature’s cycles, make things that last, eat seasonally, eat plant-
based, keep seeing the big picture, reuse things, think collaboratively and cooperatively, think
circularly, throw away as little as possible, ask what makes us happy, avoid unnecessary transport,
safeguard diversity, ask what we can give instead of what we can get, think in the long term, ...
Alternatives to mainstream economic theories and practices are equally there, they are as many
levers for our thinking: ecological economics, steady-state economics, commons thinking, prosperity
without growth, post-carbon societies, bioregional economies, transition initiatives, degrowth
economics, local futures, circular economics, donut economics, earth democracy, economics of
enough, gift economies, sharing economies, foundational economics, regenerative economics,
biophysical economics, living economies ...102

They are notoriously also the hardest things to tackle, but the deepest levers, with the biggest
potential for change, sit where the energy issue holds up the most uncomfortable mirror to our
culture. It is where we are confronted with our distorted relationship with nature, our ecological
illiteracy, our shrunken sense of time, our inability or difficulty in accepting boundaries and death,
our linear ideas of progress, evolution, and growth,103 our anthropocentrism that puts humanity
centre stage and reduces all others and everything else to good-when-useful, our loss of community
and connectedness, ...

But in that mirror, we surely still also see how unique and wonderful we are as human beings. Just
like all those others with whom we share existence. And we see an imaginative, creative, and

101The etymology of the terms help: economics = oikos (house) + nomos (rules, manage) and ecology = oikos (house) +
logos (word, knowledge). No domestic science (economics) without knowledge of the house, nor without the house itself.

102Some names: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Robert Costanza, Joan Martinez-Alier, Herman Daly, Elinor Ostrom, Tim
Jackson, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Rob Hopkins, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, Charles Eisenstein, Kate
Raworth.

103 It is worth pointing out how deeply counterintuitive this is for many people: it is so common, so normal, so natural to see
growth and progress as the solution to everything, and not as (part of) the problem itself. Belief in progress and in growth:
it has become the supporting myth of our time. Ditto for money: it is common, normal, and natural to see money as the
solution to problems (even climate summits are basically about money), not as one of the root causes of that climate
problem, for instance.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.70
imaginative species that can live up to its name – homo sapiens, the wise human – and who knows
what their contribution can be to the ecology of life.

So maybe we should rediscover who we are. Or reconnect to forgotten parts of who we are. And
understand what our very own energy is.

Numerous indigenous cultures in numerous places had special rituals for this purpose. In a way, they
were perhaps their most precious rituals, because the future depended on them: at some point
children or young people had to make the successful transition to adulthood. That meant saying
goodbye to a certain carefreeness to discover their own unique responsibility and place in the bigger
picture that was not only that of their group or society, but also of the world around them and the
cosmos beyond it. It meant discovering who they were and what their unique contribution to the
world of that bigger picture was. If that did not happen, according to lore, sooner or later the group,
the world and the cosmos would fall apart. Meanwhile, in all our so-called cleverness, we tend to
laugh at this kind of practice, and at the kind of misguided belief systems that lie beneath it.
Misguided – really?

One of the ways in which such a rite of passage into adulthood was organised, was to send the young
person out to spend solitary time, sometimes for days, in an iconic place in nature: on a mountain,
near a waterfall, at the entrance to a cave, in the desert, under an ancient tree, by a river, at a spring.
Tradition knew, from accumulated experience of generation after generation, that ultimately only
nature can show people their place and let them discover their strength. Whatever the time was they
found themselves born in: peaceful and calm, or challenging and full of conflict.

A start

The end of a ride.

The exploration we made of the energy theme is just a start. It has taken us to many places and
hopefully given us some energy wisdom. And no doubt it has made us think about things. Above all,
it has become a firm invitation to understand energy in its socio-historical context. And especially
fossil fuels in their socio-historical role.

We so like to think that everything we humans have achieved comes from our wonderful own ideas,
our bright minds, our technological ingenuity, and our inimitable creativity. We seem to forget a very
simple but down-to-earth observation. As Heinberg puts it: to understand societies, we need to
understand their energy base. Energy is the defining factor in history and social revolution, rather
than technology per se, or ideas, or political struggle. Exponential growth as we know it has only
been possible because of a temporary and phenomenal expansion of the carrying capacity of our
environment through massive consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels. Societies built on the
limited energy of mostly muscle and animal power are quite different from what we might call fossil
fuel societies. But either way, in any society: its energy is what carries it. Energy is always of strategic
importance: the resource of all other resources. With less energy, we get less access to all other
resources. And without energy, we cannot even hunt, move, think, or educate.

Ecosystems and societies follow a primary metabolism. In a sense, we do not even have to learn to
stay within the limits of available energy: societies and ecosystems always do so, with the ups and

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.71
downs, and the downfalls and revivals that come with them. A society cannot use the energy it does
not have. A society can take money as debt from the future and use it now with a promise to pay it
back. But for energy, such a magic trick doesn’t work. There it is feet on the ground: we have what
we have. Full stop. Alternative energies are starting to appear in the tables and graphs, as they are in
the reality around us. But as we saw in the figures: the challenge is phenomenal. Equally phenomenal
– if we can put it that way – as the boost we got when we drew the winning number with those fossil
fuels.

Phenomenal challenges, maybe that’s what we like as humans.

The challenge to put alternative forms and systems of energy on solid footing in the short term. The
challenge to simply make do with less and distribute what we have in a fair way. The challenge to
work together for this instead of getting embroiled in escalating conflicts. The challenge to say
goodbye to economic systems that are well past their expiry date. The challenge to change schools
and education. The challenge to provide food in different ways. The challenge to rediscover the
energy of imagination, of creativity and of courage. The challenge to admit that we have made a
mess of things in a lot of ways. The challenge to – despite the dust money is throwing us in the eyes –
learn to see our true wealth. This planet. Us.

The phenomenal challenge to go and sit under a tree. Or on a mountain. Or at a spring.

And to listen.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.72
 Money and money systems, levers for the future

We will never create sustainability while immersed in the present financial system.
- Dennis Meadows, co-author Limits to Growth

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.
- Alan Greenspan, former chairman US central bank

There is no wealth but life.

- John Ruskin, writer and critic

Like fish in water

Money. Very few things define our lives more than money.

Without it, we won’t get far. It is what is needed to afford the things we depend on, be it housing,
medical care, food, education, mobility, a family holiday, compulsory insurance, taxes, energy,
internet, or new stuff. Even in a welfare state that to some extent provides some of these things, the
bills must be paid one way or another. Companies, institutions, organisations, and governments need
money continuously. Money, it seems, is what ties everything and everyone together: a constant
flow going back and forth.

For many on our planet, getting enough money to make ends meet and feed mouths remains a daily
struggle. It is a sad paradox that precisely those who provide that food lead a precarious existence:
small farmers around the world often find themselves in the worst form of poverty. As do destitute
countries. Often this is because they are heavily indebted, or at the mercy of systems and players
they cannot control. The fact that poverty is usually measured in money, is itself quite revealing: to
be dependent on money for our existence means to have less or no existence if the money for it is
lacking. Everything may be available, but if we have no money, it remains out of reach.

At other times in history, or elsewhere on our planet, people did not use or have money. They made
a living in different ways. But when people become the puppets in a game revolving around money,
with money opening doors for some while irrevocably closing them for others, it gives us pause. It
makes us wonder about the system underneath the money, about how it works – although the
peasants and farmers just mentioned will probably mostly just wonder how to get (more of) it.

For others on the planet, probably a bit closer to home, things may be a lot easier. There is enough to
meet basic needs, and plenty left to do all sorts of other things. But even closer to home there are
those who are on the less fortunate side: literally, fortune does not smile on them. And even for
those who do have some money set aside and can enjoy some kind of safety net, there are worries

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.73
related to money. Not infrequently, these are linked to the yo-yo movements of our economy and
our uncontrollable financial markets: waves and heavy seas that we have by now come to accept
almost as a law of nature. It can translate into housing that threatens to become unaffordable, in
energy bills and shopping carts that at times take big chunks out of the budget, in less that is left over
for other things, in savings that seem to go up in smoke, in cutbacks on all sorts of things, in debts
that get deeper and deeper. In dire straits, when people are on their own with no one to help or
intervene for them.

Even organisations, companies, governments, and entire economies, in which we all move, do not
come away unscathed: will we still be able to keep costs down, how will we survive a recession, will
we be able to keep pensions affordable, will we get inflation under control, how far will we allow
ourselves to go into the red? Every now and then, the money world shakes to its foundations, and
people are terror-stricken. Both those who participate in the game at that level and get to see every
corner of the stock market room, and those who for good reasons stay away from it but realise that
they are just as likely to be in the line of fire. Bubbles. Banks going broke. Banks that for all kinds of
reasons cannot and should not go broke. And in the end do not go broke. Recessions. Taxpayers’
money that is needed to keep things afloat. Increased debt. Diminished futures.

And all of this while some of us are only getting disproportionately richer. For some, things are
absolutely fabulous. Why can’t we all live in their world?

It all raises quite a few questions. There is almost nothing as ubiquitous as money. There is an
unimaginable amount of it. And at the same time, there’s never enough, or the money cannot be
mobilised: we constantly seem to have to do more with less. It’s exaggerated, and it doesn’t have to
be like that, but crudely put, in our world it never even seems to be about anything other than
money. Name an issue – climate adaptation, energy transition, better healthcare, quality education,
economic trouble – and at bottom we talk about money, and where it should come from. In a world
turning deeply economic, solutions seem to be found only in money. Money that seems to be both
the essence and the lubricant of those economies: money that is needed to buy and sell, to pay
people, to take on debt, to insure, to invest, to engage in innovation and research, to solve problems,
to meet societal challenges, to keep everything running. Without money, things stop.

And yet we notice, all in all, that we don’t really think about what exactly money is, what it does, and
where it comes from. Especially not when business is good: the money is just there, like water for
fish, and sky for birds.

Nor do we readily question whether it is a good thing that money has become so ubiquitous in our
world.

Turbulent times

Occasionally, things are a bit different. For a while. When things go wrong, we do ask questions
about money. Usually these are questions about where and why things went wrong (‘this time’).
Here and there, it leads to the question of whether things can be done differently. Rather
exceptionally, there are those who try an alternative in response to money misery.

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Every time banks or financial institutions are hit hard or go bust, and then through knock-on effects
people, jobs, businesses, governments, and sometimes even entire economies fall victim, we scratch
our heads. It is amazing how surprised we seem every time: our talent for forgetting the previous
crisis is well developed, and with hindsight we often say that we actually saw (or could have seen) it
coming. Thinking it’s different every time, we are less aware of the underlying pattern. 104 But such
financial crises tend to be waiting in the wings for the first opportunity to rush back onto the stage.
And, let’s face it: when that happens, it’s panic all over. Our vulnerability to what is happening with
banks, in financial institutions and in financial markets is frightening. After all, they work with our
money.

Then, when we are on the ropes, from all kinds of perspectives causes are formulated, and culprits
are sought. Reference is made, for instance, to the shameless greed of top executives, and
irresponsible risks taken by those at the controls in the financial world. With not too much effort, we
could label this as a lack of personal ethics or social responsibility. Or: regulators and supervisors
have failed, and somewhere someone should not have endorsed financial products that are toxic and
whose value or quality can no longer be determined. Then it rather is a lack of regulation. Or is it a
lack of enforcement of existing regulations? Which is something else entirely. Who knows, maybe it
is even simply the impossibility of such control – technically or politically. And there is another thing
that sometimes ends up as the scapegoat: lack of trust. Then the culprits are those who abandon
their confidence in their bank or institution, abandon the sinking ship via a bank run, and thus de
facto tip their bank or financial institution over the brink.105 With the inevitable cascading effects. So,
then it would be mostly a matter of mistrust.

Very occasionally, we hear that the situation has become an issue of uncontrollability. Money itself
then turns into the big bogeyman. Pandorra’s box. Almost literally: when computer systems, through
algo trading or black box trading,106 manage to continuously and without human intervention
monitor all kinds of movements in financial and other markets, to then buy and sell accordingly,
money itself seems to make the decisions. Money that suddenly starts moving around uncontrollably
and of its own accord: a genie out of the algorithmic bottle.

Bogeyman or not, as it stands now, money is crucial. It is the lifeblood of our economies and
societies, and because they suffer badly when things go wrong, it is more than justifiable to try to
find out where things go wrong. It is worse, however, when what happens goes a lot deeper than
irritatingly high bonuses, lack of control, errors of judgement by credit rating agencies or a lack of
personal ethics. It is worse when what happens is intrinsic to the money system itself. That means
that the misery that befalls us with these financial crises is just the logical consequence of how the

104 Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2011). This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly. Princeton University Press.

105A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many people ‘run to the bank’ (at the same time) to withdraw their money
because they no longer trust the business. Of course, account holders no longer have to go to a physical branch to
withdraw their money. But that kind of money (for so many people) isn’t there (and it isn’t there in more than one way),
and a bank run is like a splinter bomb that hits everything and everyone in the system: banks, savers, governments,
taxpayers, the economy.

106Algo trading, algorithmic trading, flash trading, computer investing, trading bots, black box trading, they all refer to the
same phenomenon: software, algorithms, computer programmes and artificial intelligence result in fully automated trading
on exchanges and financial markets. ‘Black box’ refers to the fact that it is unclear how the decision is made. In some
markets, 60, 70, to even 80% of transactions take place this way.

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money system has evolved or has been constructed over time. Accidents waiting to happen rather
than something that could have been avoided.

So, it is one thing to wonder whether the game was played according to the rules. About this,
financial experts and economists make all sorts of statements that are often incomprehensible to
laypeople. They deal with liquidity, solvency, credit default swaps, risk mortgages, capital buffers,
unrealised losses, shadow banking, interest rate swaps, repackaged bonds, interest rate politics and
other financial abracadabra. All have to do with the rules of the game. Of course, the distinction is
never sharp, but it is quite another thing to wonder whether we are playing the right game.107 For
that question, we should not turn to financial experts or economists, but rather to historians,
anthropologists, or philosophers: the people who try to understand money as a phenomenon in its
evolution, dynamics and manifestations. Or to people who chart the world of money, and do not get
caught up in what the textbooks on economics or financial studies say about it. They observe and
study how money flows: where it comes from, what it does, what it is used for, and where it ends
up.108

For a number of reasons, we may not read and hear much of this kind of critical analysis of the
source code of the money system itself, and of the undesirable system dynamics revealed in the
process. After all, the financial stakes and accompanying smokescreens are sky-high. On the other
hand, money itself is something notoriously inscrutable: once we dig a little deeper and want to pin it
down, it seems to forever escape our definitions. Money is a master of metamorphosis and the
perfect shapeshifter. And the financial world itself, in which all that money is involved, seems no less
enigmatic. And yet. Those who don’t at least try to come to grips with money give up a lot, and
bypass one of the most crucial levers for alternative futures. As for that future – climate change,
energy transition – we already tend to limit ourselves to what is feasible and affordable; are we now
also going to limit ourselves to what is understandable?109

And they are there, the flaws in the source code and the deep shortcomings that mean we
increasingly see a perverse and ruthless alter ego of the money that should actually be serving us.
That there are systemic flaws may be evidenced by the fact that ever more, and time and again,
regulation, adjustments and control are needed. The system does not ‘by itself’ do what we think it
should do from a societal perspective: serve economy and society. 110 In such a situation, cries for

107 The distinction is indeed not sharp: after all, as soon as the rules are (fundamentally) changed, we play a different game
in a sense.

108To understand money, you should look at what it does (rather than listen to the theories about it). ‘No one can explain
better than a capitalist how important his wealth is to the health of the economy,’ says Martin Wolf, Chief Economics
Commentator at the Financial Times. Wolf, M. (2023, March 14). Banks are designed to fail – and they do. Financial Times.

109A sad shortcoming: in many of our textbooks, reporting, discourse and media, this deeper analysis is simply missing. The
result is that as a society we continue to run ever faster in a particular (and arguably unwanted) direction. A matter of deep
financial illiteracy – though to use that kind of term is tricky. With ‘financial illiteracy’ here, we mean something different
from (and deeper than) what is usually meant by it in educational contexts where the illiteracy reflects the lack of
knowledge of finance.

110On the other hand, one could say that our system does exactly what it should do according to a small group of people:
concentrate more and more (financial) power. With a proper systems view, for all the commotion around financial crises
close to home, we should not forget that a large part of the world’s population and a lot of people within our societies have
been the victims of that system for much longer. The perverse effects of money have been apparent for much longer, in all
sorts of ways, and in all sorts of places.

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more (personal) ethics or regulation are doomed to fall on deaf ears: the deeper logic is
fundamentally different, and the system does what the system does. It hardly matters who is at the
helm. Even more sobering is it to realize that what happens when money trouble hits us is just as
much the result of the acts and decisions and the ‘logical’ thinking of a lot of (otherwise
conscientious) ordinary people. Ordinary people doing money things with limited resources, on a
small scale, and with so-called minor impact. Money things that we have come to regard as normal.

Emergency measures, bailouts, and the enormous amounts of money that are mobilised in turbulent
times – just to keep things afloat – do not usually lead to asking the most pertinent questions or to
making the systems analyses we propose here. Of course, there is always something to be said for it,
and it is not even an excuse: if the house is on fire, we have to put out the fire to prevent worse. But
with our world increasingly shaking to its (financial) foundations, the other thing needs to happen
just as well: to make an ethical-critical analysis or reflection of our money system.

Maybe some of the fiddling and the tinkering helps for some time. But not tackling a problem at the
root cause may prove a tremendous waste of effort and time. Money is too important to be left to
economists and financial experts.

But, what is money anyway? And what do we understand by a money ‘system’?

Money, banking and financial services

To begin with, let’s not make things any more difficult than necessary. In the direct experience of
most people, money is simply this: the standardised thing we accept as a means of payment or
exchange in our society and economy. In other words, we can use it – within the circle in which it is
accepted as a means of payment – to trade goods and services such as food, furniture, house rent, an
internet subscription, mobility, labour, healthcare, expertise, diamonds, technology, oil, or even
weapons should we need them. So, it is effectively a kind of understanding or agreement on what we
consider valid means of payment.111 The dollar, euro, yen, sterling, renminbi, dinar, franc, peso,
crown, rouble, and rupee are all obvious examples. As these are standardised units, which are also
often divisible into smaller units such as cents, they also immediately provide an obvious unit of
account with which to indicate the value or price of something.

Under what tangible or less tangible form such a means of payment then exists is of secondary
importance. For example, only a limited number of euros exist as cash: under the physical form of
notes or coins. We then speak of currency, or we speak of cash. Mostly, however, these days we
simply pay by transferring amounts between bank accounts or digital wallets. Then we speak of
cashless money – tracked electronically or digitally. This brings us to the many options for making or
authorising that payment: debit cards, credit cards, transfers, prepaid cards, direct debits, banking
apps, nfc chips, biometric identification and so on.112 The distinction sometimes made between so-

111Money specialist Bernard Lietaer’s standard working definition sounds something like this: money is an agreement
within a community to use something standardised as a means of exchange or payment.

112NFC or near field communication is contactless communication via a chip. A chip embedded in a smartphone, for
example, or in a smart card, watch, wristband or other wearables. Biometric identification combines, for example, facial
recognition, iris scans or fingerprints with payment authorisation.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.77
called real money and plastic, digital or virtual money has little meaning. A simple supermarket test is
suggested: if we can pay with it in the (online) supermarket, then it is money – it is accepted.

The money we are talking about here, which by now we are as used to as anything, has no intrinsic
value like gold coins do, for example. It relies solely on trust, which is why we also call it fiduciary
money, fiat money, or trust money. Governments play an important role by declaring it legal tender
and collecting taxes in it.

But, since money involves an agreement within a community, imposed or otherwise, we don’t need
much to imagine that it could be something very different from these euros or dollars. Marbles,
cigarettes, canned fish, SIM cards, beer, sensitive information, sex, and Kalashnikovs, for example,
can also play that role.113

Because it is a means of payment or exchange, money also quite easily becomes something that can
be hoarded or saved to pay for things later. Besides the double function of medium of exchange and
unit of account, money thus has a third function: that of store of value. Treasures can be hidden in
the ground, and money can be kept under a mattress, but for the money we mostly work with, this
savings function normally brings us to the banks.

In an overly simple, ideal or naïve world, people imagine that a bank is the place or organisation that
keeps some people’s surplus money safe in the form of savings or deposits, and (with it) meets the
temporary shortage of others through loans or credit. The banking reality, however, is much more
complex and dangerous than what this image suggests. Even on how this basic function is organised
there are differing opinions. We are getting ahead of our story. Especially so when we draw in the
entire financial sector. Again, in that overly simple, ideal or naive world, financial services encompass
several activities that serve real economies. They include or cover investing, financing, insuring,
managing, intermediating, risk assessing, and so on. But once more, the reality of this sector, or of
what has since become a financial industry in its own right, shows a quite different picture. And one
can rightly ask where and when the real economy is still being served in this abracadabra world of
flash capitalism, speculation and value extraction.

We are really getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we just wanted to explore the playing field of
what we can describe as a money ‘system’. It is – in our case now – the combination of, say, a
medium of exchange or payment, its hoarding function, the issuing agencies and legitimising
authorities, the associated banking system, and the broader financial framework. And, of course, all
the rules of the game agreed for it. Such a money system works in a certain way, it exhibits
recognisable dynamics, and it steers people, economies, and societies in a certain direction. It is a
system conceived and set up by people. Not a law of nature. It can also be organised or designed in
completely different ways. Let’s not forget: we revise and revamp the system on a near-constant
basis. Like for instance when we linked money to gold via fixed exchange rates in 1944, and then
removed money from that gold standard in 1971, and world currencies started floating. Or when we
introduced the euro in 1999 under the motto ‘one market, one money’, and a little later abandoned

113And bitcoins, time dollars, kWh-coins, airmiles or other self-designed systems of (digital) units. If people decide to, or
cannot help but pay with them, then we can speak of a money system. But we can feel it in our bones that behind these
systems many and very different agendas can be hidden (different from simple payment reasons, that is).

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our national currencies. No, it is a world in constant flux, and studying money is like walking through
an ever-changing landscape.

Before embarking on a critical analysis of our current money system, an excursion into the past is
inevitable.

A history of money

Let’s bite the bullet: no, money was not invented to facilitate barter.114 But that is the old adage that
is still repeated ad nauseam: first there was barter, then came money to make things easier, and
later people started to just use credit.

Not so. That money came to replace barter is nothing more than a thought experiment from
economics textbooks. A fiction, in other words. It is not that people in history never bartered or
exchanged things. They did, and we still do, but those exchanges or swaps usually were and are a
matter of recording, framing or formalising relationships between different people or groups of
people. To conclude marriages, for instance, or treaties between clans. However, there is no
archaeological, ethnographic, or historical evidence that anything like organised, commercial barter
or an exchange economy ever existed anywhere. If we do presume that there was, or unthinkingly
assume so, it says something about our own world view, and about our own ideas and experiences.
After all, we easily project our own reality onto that past: with shops and markets, for instance, with
interaction mainly based on economic transactions, and with people driven mainly by self-interest.
But that type of homo economicus is a recent and regional invention, and it is not because our world
is now thoroughly commercial and economic that the same must hold true elsewhere, or in the past.
That would be an instance of a notorious pitfall: look at the past with eyes of now, and assume that
others think and act the way we do here and now.

If money did not evolve from barter, where did it come from? We see a particularly complex and
fascinating history of things coming and things going, and we can only conclude that the origins of
money are somewhat hidden in the fog of deep time. To study the origins of money is like looking at
evolutions, dynamics, changing attitudes and cultural processes. To look at money is to look at
societies, and relationships between people. And to try to uncover the origins of money perhaps
comes down to unearthing the origins of economics or of an economic way of thinking.

Actually, it’s not quite okay, for instance, to just scour the past and look for things similar to the
tangible notes and coins of today’s commercial money – which is still pretty much the representation
of money. Then we fall into our own trap. It’s not that that doesn’t yield a rich harvest. For example,
we find all kinds of gold, silver, copper, leather, wooden or other coins with effigies or symbols on
them, and some go back more than four thousand years. And there is also knife money, spade
money and shell money. Underneath these types of money lie cultural developments within which

114See, for example: Graeber, D. (2014). Debt: The first 5,000 years (Updated and expanded edition). Melville House. And:
Humphrey, C., & Hugh-Jones, S. (Eds.). (1992). Barter, exchange and value: an anthropological approach. Cambridge
University Press. And for monetary history of Europe see also: Battilossi, S., Cassis, Y., & Yago, K. (Eds.). (2020). Handbook of
the History of Money and Currency. Springer Singapore.
Incidentally, in the modern global economy, there is indeed (a significant volume of) barter in the form of what we call
countertrade: products and services exchanged for other products and services. But that seems more like a reversal of the
order: barter that is preferred because it is easier or more interesting than trade via money for all sorts of reasons.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.79
the minting of an official coin, or the use of standardised tokens, or tokens for rather local needs
must have been useful. We might also learn from it that commodity money can be quite interesting
in large contexts: the value was represented by the gold or silver itself, and you did not necessarily
have to trust the issuing government for example.

Thus, there are periods in European history when small copper or leather coins (with no or little
value in themselves) were used for internal, local or regional transactions, and large silver or gold
coins for trade outside. Incidentally, especially for internal coins, the unit of account did not
necessarily coincide with the means of payment: most coins simply did not have a unit stated on
them. Authorities determined the value when it came to official coins, or groups of people agreed on
what they were worth when it came to their own means of payment. If necessary, agreements were
adjusted. So, all in all, saving in those small coins made no sense. While gold and silver did retain
their value. A dual system of internal and external money as it were, each with their own playing field
or scope: something stable for external trade, and something that could be managed for the internal,
local or regional household where trust was more of a key issue. By the way, we should not imagine
that that internal type of money has always and everywhere been there, but its importance did
increase as the importance of economic (and hence monetary) transactions in communities
increased over time.

Interesting to know: with the rise of modern nation states in Europe, a financial revolution, late 17 th
early 18th century, dismantled this complementary, dual system and its many local variants and
gradually replaced it with a system of one kind of money based on the interchangeability between
paper money and gold. The paper money was issued by national banks: one kind of money,
therefore, and a monopoly on its issuance. This evolution redesigned the entire money landscape.
Incidentally, from this period dates the widespread, but therefore quite recent idea that paper or
coin money is good as long as it is backed by gold.

Widening our scope, we see that coins or money eventually came to function within all kinds of
commercial relationships and transactions. But it is equally interesting to consider how money
initially may have functioned, or why coins were created in the first place. And for what kind of
things, and on what scale or levels they were used – especially where they started to have a clear
monopolistic character. To organise large armies and finance wars? To collect taxes? To establish
power and control? To sponsor campaigns of leading elites? For all of these questions history
provides examples that support an affirmative answer. So, besides the exchange, unit of account,
and hoarding function, now the undeniable power function of money?

However, instead of looking at the histories of coins and commodity money, we might as well, and
perhaps even better, look at the history of debt or credit. We then see money less as the material or
physical thing we imagine it to be, but rather as a kind of (abstract) accounting concept. The story
from economics textbooks – that first there is exchange, then money, and eventually credit – puts
that (paper or digital) accounting tool at the end of a linear development. Historically, this is not
correct either. When we look at credit, we look at the idea of debt. It is something we owe to
another party: the party with whom we are ‘in the red’ or have ‘chalked up’ a debt. 115 Debt seems

115The expression ‘chalk up a debt’ refers to something that was already common in the 17th century: innkeepers wrote
down unpaid services or consumptions with chalk on a slate or wall. The very idea of somehow ‘writing down’ or keeping a
record of debts is, of course, much older.

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less tangible, but the many historical documents, and all kinds of tablets on which such debt
relationships were recorded and kept, go back at least as far as the physical and portable coins that
could possibly (later) be used as tokens for it. They certainly precede the minting of official coins.
Units of account were silver, oxen, people, barley, camels and so on. Debt may be an abstract
concept, but it was as tangible as anything: history is replete with revolutions within societies in
which groups of people deeply and irrevocably in debt took up arms or stormed the palaces of
power. To the extent that we can even wonder if there is any other kind of social revolution than
such.

Things get somewhat mixed up, like a cat chasing its own tail, but as soon as debt or debt securities
become transferable, we are indeed not that far away from using an anonymous, accepted,
standardised form of it as in the tokens or coins of a moment ago. From this perspective, we can see
the money that circulates as the promise to repay a debt. And perhaps that practice – and the
anonymity that comes with it – is at the root of what is gradually developing into a full-on economic
view of reality. Securities or coins that represent a promise to pay a debt, by the way, are not really
different in idea from notes or coins redeemable against gold.

Actually, all in all, history shows an alternation or mosaic of money that sometimes circulates mainly
in the form of tokens or coins, and at other times means the bookkeeping and settlement of debt –
possibly quantified in a currency or unit of account that has little to do with it. Especially in smaller
communities where people know each other, they know who they owe something, and who owes
them something. If they look at these mutual obligations in economic terms at all, the accounting for
them – for a limited number of rather economic transactions – may just be in their heads, or it is
common knowledge and there is no need for physical money. We can imagine that in larger or more
anonymous contexts and trading networks, physically circulating money is the preferred form, as
long as it is reliable and trusted. But we also see large, centralised systems with sophisticated
administrations and accounting schemes that do without coins or means of payment.

Money appears in different forms and in many ways. History does not show any linear evolution, and
certainly not the so-called evolution spoken of in our economic theories. Money systems, currency
systems, debt systems: they come and go with the communities, empires, dominions, civilisations,
and cultures that emerge and disappear again. Money accumulation, poverty and debt problems:
these are issues as old as cultures, and they are even linked to some of our religious beliefs. If we
look at one cluster of traditions – those of the great monotheistic religions of the book, namely
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – we see notions like peace offering, debt repayment, penance,
reckoning, scapegoating, accountability, redemption, liberation. But even more of the world’s
religions arose at a time when markets, money and debt also emerged, and their language, views,
belief systems and teachings are indebted to them. Money and debt are deeply religious concepts.
To question money systems is to question religions.116

116 Money, cultures, and religions co-evolve, with money defining religion but religion in turn defining money. Neither
money, religion, nor culture are fixed, immutable entities. A striking example as far as money is concerned: all three
‘religions of the book’ traditionally disapproved of charging interest on debt, but these views are apparently also subject to
change. ‘While their foundational sources have largely denied the use of interest on moral terms, all three religions have
eventually developed new positions not immediately identifiable in these sources. Judaism’s conversion of loans into
business investments, Christianity’s acceptance of interest as means to help the poor, and Islam’s distinction between
charging and paying interest, all represent the transition towards a wider acceptance of interest.’ Amati, G., Buck, R. A., &

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Above all, we should remember that money systems, in whatever form, are human work. They are
not laws of nature that could not be tinkered with. Money systems emerge and co-evolve in and with
societies, to the point where money appears, for example, in phenomena such as asset backed
securities, the use of petrodollars, or cryptocurrency speculation. All things that we simply call into
being, but which then also come to co-determine our lives. Money systems are far from innocent;
they make worlds of difference. And they never come naturally. We call them upon ourselves.

Money before money was money

There is something we do well to realise about our exploration into history: that we are still more or
less spinning in economic circles. Like the goldfish that – even though it has been put in the big bath
– keeps repeating the rounds of its fish bowl. The danger of focusing on something like money in
history can inadvertently give the impression that everything in that history and in the societies of
the time is connected to money. Or that money is something that has always and everywhere been
related to commerce. Or that commerce is a separate reality or sphere that can be studied in its own
right, apart from everything else. Or that that separate reality is something that necessarily looks like
the economy, market and shopping reality of today.

There is no doubt: by now, money has become just about synonymous with a commercial view of
reality. But what if this essentially economic way of thinking only emerged and started to develop
later, and only in some places? Perhaps we should for a moment try to imagine that those currencies
or debt systems (initially, or often) had no commercial function. 117 And ask – to put it in a strange
way – what money was before money was money. For example, what about an inscription like
moneta distributiva – distributive money – on coins? Or the idea of bread tokens – tokens distributed
to underprivileged people who could redeem them for food? Let’s make a third excursion into
history.

Things can become interesting, surprising and inspiring when we realise that a host of other things
and practices are intertwined with the origins of money: stories, writing, tattoos, food, rituals, skins,
tobacco, sacred sites, hunting, identifying marks, taboos, jewellery, art, dances, sex, songs, amulets,
spices, cult objects, travel, special contacts and so on. In this way, more than just ancient coins and
clay tablets are brought to our attention: arm rings, whale teeth, potlatch ceremonies, tevau braids,
rai stones, wampum belts and the like make an interesting appearance. The question rightly arises as
to whether we can still talk about money. Perhaps, to avoid getting bogged down in circular thinking,
and to release our imagination a bit, we should stop talking about money for a while, and just see
how all these things show a way of life that is other than economic and commercial. Because as long
as we look for the origins of the modern money system in coins, debt, or in a combination of both,

Khalil, M. F. (2021, March 17). Between God and money: The morality of interest.
https://europeanacademyofreligionandsociety.com/news/between-god-and-money-the-morality-of-interest/

117Cultural anthropology can be interesting in this respect. Studying other peoples, groups, and cultures helps to see that
things can be (thoroughly) different. However, the idea that (some) indigenous cultures would form an older version of our
own culture in some kind of linear-evolutionary process is (particularly) problematic for several reasons. But discovering
diversity can at least help to unlock pieces of our own past that may still have been locked in ways of thinking today. So, to
change futures, we may also need to somehow rewrite or change our past. Especially where we use it as legitimisation for
our now.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.82
we won’t really discover that there are fundamentally different than economic ways of shaping
societies. Even if we know by now that aspects of trade and economics go back many thousands of
years.

Based on cultural anthropology and ethnography – of groups of people who still maintain old
customs – we get an idea of how these somewhat stranger, less obvious examples from our
monetary history work. In essence, so it seems, those systems are mostly concerned with expressing,
shaping and formally recognising relationships or relations between individuals or groups of people.
A marriage or marriage contract involves a whole ceremony with gifts and obligations, and that
includes, for instance, rings, tattoos and a dowry or bride price. But actually, both partners are also
included in the ‘gifts and obligations’ that come with the (new, or renewed, or redesigned)
relationship that two clans, groups, or families establish with each other. In this simple example of a
marriage contract alone, countless relationships and associated responsibilities are regulated. And
written down, noted or recorded – with rings or tattoos, for example.

A very different view of money: relationships are established, affairs settled, and a social network
forged. And a symbolic account or record of this is kept: in objects, signs, songs, ritual customs,
special places. There are countless examples of relationships that are settled and sealed: pacts
between clans, treaties with other peoples, the buying off of crimes, feuds that are settled, peace
agreements, agreements between moieties, acceptance of paternity, attendance at special
gatherings or rituals, inheritance law according to the female line, establishment of debt, recognition
of expertise or special status, removal of a member from the group, abdication of leadership or
responsibility, redistribution that goes with status, inclusion in the adult group, acceptance of
elderhood, and so on.118

In a deeply relational living world, by the way, this not only concerns relationships between people,
but also with other-than-human life in all its forms. Even more relationships to be arranged and
sealed come into view: with the animals that are hunted and the instruments of hunting themselves,
for example, with the land that bestows food, wood, metals, medicine and so on, and with the
elements of nature like water, earth, air, and fire that all play their part. With a cosmos that never
gives up its last secrets. And with this, it is no longer a big step to the kinds of relationships that have
to be entered into in what can be called the religious, spiritual or animistic sphere: with the gods,
with the masters of the animals, with the ruler of the forest, in short, with everyone who inhabits the
heavens, the underworld, the other world, the ancestral world, the dreamtime, the all-time or the
everywhen. Money – think of temple contributions and sacrifices of all kinds, from blood sacrifices
over first fruits to lighting a candle – again has a deeply religious origin.119

118The things from this list that may come closest to transactions – a temple contribution, sacrifice for meals, blood money
or the fine due after manslaughter – are also closest to the etymological roots of the word for money in Germanic
languages. These point to a meaning in the direction of ritual gifts, contributions to communal sacrifices, payments to the
community. Geld (Dutch, German) goes back to Protogermanic *geldą (fee, retaliate, settle, sacrifice, brotherhood). English
pay and French payer go back to Latin pacare (to make peace).

119According to popular etymology, the word ‘religion’ is said to stem from something that means ‘to connect’. Interesting,
but it does not seem to be correct according to modern linguistics. The latter holds it to derive from an original word
meaning ‘oblige’ or ‘observe duties’. Doubly interesting: relationships are built on mutual responsibilities.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.83
So, the roots of money are hidden in the deep fog of history, but they remain readable from practices
that are still common. And they have to do with facilitating, establishing, formalizing, and
maintaining relationships.

None of this fits very well with what money means to us now, and it perhaps forms a somewhat
uncomfortable mirror. After all, it also evokes a very different reality from the deeply economic or
commercial reality in which we move today. Is that the reason for the fables and myths about money
as supposedly replacing barter, or about money as an invention to supposedly facilitate commercial
trade? What world would we live in if an economy looked like that of the Haudenosaunee, for
instance? There, the longhouses in which several families lived formed the main economic
institution: in their long, narrow, rectangular buildings most goods were kept, and they were
allocated by women’s councils. Haudenosaunee, by the way, means ‘People of the Longhouse’. Or an
economy like that of Kalahari San: ‘the worst thing in the world is not giving gifts, we always give to
each other, we give what we have, that’s how we live together’.120

The original native land of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois – Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga,
Mohawk and Tuscarora – is what is now the northern part of New York State. Just to make things a
bit more tangible, let’s take a quick look at those Haudenosaunee, and more specifically at something
that held an important place in their society and culture, namely the already mentioned wampum.
These are belts or cords made of purple and white shell beads. They were sometimes regarded as a
money system by early anthropologists, colonists and settlers. That may be somewhat misleading,
even though under the influence of those settlers they later also changed into a money system. In
Haudenosaunee culture, wampum necklaces and belts worked in many ways: they expressed formal
affirmation of cooperation or friendship between groups, were presented as an invitation to a
meeting, acted as a person’s credentials or were a certificate of authority, were used for official
purposes and religious ceremonies, and for treaties and making peace between clans, families and
tribes. Meaning, stories, names, important treaties, and historical events were recorded in them or
depicted on them. So, weaving was also a way of writing, even of making history. Wampum wove the
social fabric of the Haudenosaunee: the practice regulated, arranged and formalised their
relationships, including with settlers for whom they made special wampum belts at treaties and
donated them as signatures of that commitment. Over time, European colonists and settlers began
to use wampum as money for trade with the indigenous peoples who were increasingly incorporated
into their trade networks. Wampum became legal tender during part of the 17th century. Colonists at
some point began mass-producing wampum themselves – a process that is time-consuming and
ritualistic in ancient traditions. This mass-production caused inflation and ended its use as currency.

What happened to wampum in North America also happened in other places around the world. It is a
known pattern: ancient, cultural practices were banned, corrupted, or changed beyond recognition
and incorporated into a different, commercial logic in the conquest of the world, and in the
colonisation of just about every place on earth. Something that in the past centuries mainly, but not
only, originated from Europe. The practices that came under attack were systems that regulated a
multiplicity and complexity of relationships between people and groups, and shaped the

120The first example is quoted by Graeber from L.H. Morgans League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, see: Graeber, D.
(2014). Debt: The first 5,000 years (Updated and expanded edition). Melville House, p. 29. The second example is quoted by
Boyle from William Bloom’s Money, Heart and the Mind, see: Boyle, D. (2009). Money matters: Understanding crazy credit
and erroneous economics. Alastair Sawday, p. 15.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.84
responsibilities and obligations that came with them. Which is not to say, by the way, that it was all
roses all the time. Quite on the contrary: precisely because things do go wrong in societies – we
would not be humans – there was a need to regulate social intercourse and relationships, especially
where they contained a high potential for conflict.

Social intercourse, societies, and relationships can and are organised in a diversity of ways: that is the
kind of diversity with which life thrives. But gradually some of that diversity was thus replaced by
modern money as it had become common and self-evident among conquerors and colonisers by
then. Our modern money – one might say – embarked on a conquest of the world. Money that,
partly because of its anonymity, undermines relationships and forgets responsibilities. It replaces
human relationships with purely monetary ones, which are often of dubious quality. As if money had
turned into its antagonistic self.

Money is politics

Money and money systems can put people and entire societies in a hold – that is more or less where
we left off before exploring some of the history of money. But there is nothing inevitable about such
a thing, because money systems are creations – inventions by humans – as are the economies and
societies associated with them. Perhaps we simply lack the imagination or decisiveness to give our
money and economies that shape that best suits what we need as societies right now. Examples of
different systems elsewhere could perhaps kickstart that very imagination.

From our brief excursion into history, we learn that money – in whatever form – is politics at heart.
Statecraft, policy, societal choices: money systems shape societies, just as societies shape money
systems. Or to put it in the words of money specialist Bernard Lietaer: money is far from the neutral
medium of exchange or payment we usually take it for, and it works like large-scale programming
software.121 Money drives people’s behaviour. In other words: change the money and you change
the world.

And at present, our money system is steering us in an unholy direction. It is Dennis Meadows, co-
author of the well-known and worrying 1972 The Limits to Growth report, who admits that for a long
time he paid scant attention to the importance of money but must revise his opinion: ‘We will never
create sustainability while immersed in the present financial system.’122

To fully grasp the import of such a quote, we need that deeper analysis of our money system we
talked about earlier: in what ways is money the engine of unsustainable behaviour? How does it hold
us and our future captive? Why can Meadows make the statement he does: that we undermine our
own future if we don’t change course with our money system? That some further tinkering with
interest rates, mere changes or shifts in taxes, or disclosure of data will not move us forward?

121Based on Bernard Lietaer’s lecture at Schumacher College (during the course "The Future of Money" at Schumacher
College, Devon, UK) in January 2006. See also: Lietaer, B. (2001). The future of money: a new way to create wealth, work,
and a wiser world. Century. The official website where most of his work can be found is https://bernard-lietaer.org/ (not:
www.lietaer.com).

122
In his foreword in: Lietaer, B. (2012). Money and sustainability: The missing link: a report from the Club of Rome-EU
Chapter to Finance Watch and the World Business Academy (First edition). Triarchy Press.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.85
In what follows, we will look at a number of issues or systemic problems, one after the other. 123 We
can think of them as ticking time bombs. They are issues intrinsic to the money and financial system
as we know it today, and to the rules of the game with which it is currently played. We list them
briefly before going into more detail. For systems thinkers, finding deeper flaws (within systems) also
immediately means discovering leverage points for change: there are no interesting interventions to
be made for those who do not know where exactly to intervene.

Money, because it operates with debt and compound interest, runs the risk of locking us into
mandatory growth – a problem on a finite planet. Bank debt money also intensifies the cycle of
booms and busts that is characteristic and disastrous for our economy – not interesting, such an
unstable system that makes things worse. Money accumulates at the top, with a small group of
people – not good for society, in the longer run not even good for the economy. A speculative
financial economy has emerged that parasitises on a real economy, it extracts value instead of
creation value – our real economies are suffering. The money system we run forces us to think in the
short term – it is unable to support long-term decisions. Money also increasingly unravels social and
environmental capital, only economic capital remains – no decent society or planet can run on such a
system. Free movement for big capital traps the whole world in a frenzied race to the bottom – a
competitive game that, in the long run, undermines the system itself. The money system being one
big, completely intertwined monoculture makes us all very vulnerable – we have lost diversity and
have little to fall back on.

We will look into all of this in more detail now, trying to untangle the knots as best we can.

Money, therefore: growth and short-term thinking

Where does the money in our wallets or bank accounts come from? Possibilities are plentiful: we
can, for instance, earn it by working for it, inherit it, win the lottery, steal it, or extort it from
someone else in a legal or illegal way.

So, we get it basically from others. And in an ordinary kind of economy and an honest kind of trade,
we get it from those others because we give something in return. All in all, then, we seem to assume
that there must first be something of value – a product, a commodity, expertise, a service, for
example – against which money can then be exchanged. Money that then begins to circulate and can
be earned, inherited, distributed, collected, won, or nicked. Something like this – that first there
should be something of real value – would be quite logical: a community, society or economic
network then has as much money as there is value in the form of those products, raw materials,
expertise, and services. If that community creates more value, or adds value and has more to offer,
then in principle the amount of money would (or could) go up with it. If value disappears, because
knowledge is lost for instance, or the trees are cut down, the lake drained or the oil depleted, then in
this thought experiment the amount of money should be adjusted downwards. There is something

123The identification of flaws in the system, is based on the work of mainly Bernard Lietaer, but also Richard Douthwaite,
David Boyle, David Korten, Margrit Kennedy, Colin Tudge, Mariana Mazzucato, Joris Luyendijk, Charles Eisenstein, Ann
Pettifor, Bas van Bavel, Peter North, and the New Economics Foundation. And on conversations with Bernard Lietaer, and
with the start-ups of complementary local currencies as part of my work in the Transition Towns movement. Where I miss
the money ball I am happy to take responsibility. For the main ideas of Bernard Lietaer, see, for example: Lietaer, B.,
Arnsperger, C., Goerner, S., & Brunnhuber, S. (2012). Money and sustainability. The missing link. Triarchy Press.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.86
healthy about value preceding money: in that case the amount of value determines the amount of
money, and there must always be something (of real value) before there can be money.

Probably to the surprise of most, in our society and economy it is quite the opposite, and by far the
majority of money is simply created out of thin air as debt by private banking institutions, by
governments and their central banks, and recently also by more and other financial players.124 To
physically print banknotes and mint coins may be the privilege of central banks or governments, but
that is a trifle compared to the amount of money created out of thin air by private banks. It hasn’t
always been this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way, but de facto it is what is mostly happening
now. Every time someone takes out a loan from a bank, fresh money is created in a mutual
acceptance of debt. Some people assume that banks can only lend money that others with money to
spare had deposited into their bank accounts; and that interest serves to cover costs. Or they assume
that money must be backed by gold, and someone must first check whether there is enough gold.
Neither is true. With the abandonment of the gold standard, our currencies have started floating,
and consequently there may be considerably more money than gold. 125 And with fractional reserve
or similar systems ever eroding, there is no real stop to money creation by the private banking sector
either. Here’s the thing: banks must always keep in reserve some of the money they raise or receive
– deposits, for instance. There are rules and minimum requirements around that, but in the facts
there are all sorts of ways to keep less and less in reserve in order to lend out more and more money,
or to dodge the rules and regulations. Banks and financial players, by the way, also lend to each
other, get injected with extras from the government, and even create money for themselves. In
terms of systems thinking, those are a lot of mutually reinforcing feedback loops.

Back for a moment to the strange logic of what is happening. Because in itself, there is nothing
necessarily wrong with money appearing and then disappearing if it is written off as soon as the loan
is repaid. The capital that is borrowed is pumped into the economy and fuels it: it is used to pay for
products and services, and start businesses, for example.126 After all, those who borrow money use it
to provide themselves with food, materials, labour, medical care, a car, holidays, robotics,
information systems or a place to live or work. And it is the economy that makes sure those things
are there. The more money there is, the more economy we can have so to speak. That seems like a
good thing, familiar as we are with the mantra that economic growth must be kept going at all costs
and for numerous reasons.

Yet, we get the feeling that the cart is put before the horse: more money may enable more economy,
but if there is more money than reality, then we are in for trouble. Trouble on the money side, with

124If money in our financial or monetary system is pretty much synonymous with debt, a surprising paradox emerges:
actually, money here turns pretty much into the opposite of what it is supposed to be. It is not wealth but something that
does not belong to us: we have to give it back to someone (in the future). Not what we own, but what we owe.

125In 1971, President Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold. The system of floating fiat currency was born, with its typical
instability: all kinds of market forces, and no longer gold, now determined what those currencies were worth. The 25 years
or so before – the Bretton Woods era – in which dollars were pegged to gold, and the other currencies to the dollar, knew
hardly any financial crisis. But even in the Bretton Woods era, there was already considerably more money than gold: the
gold standard was not a true gold standard either, rather a gold exchange standard, and the US hollowed out the system by
creating for itself far more money than the gold on hand actually allowed.

126Of course, things are different when the money lent is used for something other than real economy. We come back to
that in some of the other design flaws we discuss in this section.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.87
money devaluation for instance, but also on the reality side: the world may be big, but a finite planet
cannot keep growing in its raw materials and resources, and there are limits to its carrying capacity.
For that matter, there are also limits to the carrying capacity of people and societies. Just because
there is a lot of money does not mean it can be converted back into valuable (physical, real) things. It
may sound nice, but we cannot live off the heavenly dew of our money: basic human needs always
have a physical-material side as well. Money is only valuable if we can convert it into that value.

Back to the underlying logic. When the debt or loan is paid off, the money disappears again. If we –
for a moment – make abstraction of the duration or maturity of that debt, then it should be a zero
sum game, and as much money is destroyed as had been created: after all, that money disappears
again in the write-off as the principal is repaid. But even if borrowed money circulates only
temporarily, during that time it can be transformed into economic activity and growth. And a real
growth dynamic emerges when being in debt becomes the new normal: for families, firms,
institutions, governments. Government debts, for example, are normal, and deficits simply
accumulate – up to a certain level that is agreed or accepted. In other words, it is not bad to go or
stay in the red, as long as a certain shade of red is not exceeded. A shade that, incidentally, seems
flexible, and for some economies may be blood red by default and without problem.127 Debts not
being paid off, and debts piling up – all of it extra money that is added – are not a zero-sum game,
and they do drive growth even further: after all, all sorts of things can be done with it.

Meanwhile, by the looks of it, a new era of unbridled money creation has dawned, and the
responsibility for that no longer (only) sits with the traditional commercial or financial sector.
Governments and central banks do ‘whatever it takes’ to keep things afloat in times of (imminent)
trouble.128 Times of trouble, think: recession in the aftermath of the financial misery of 2007-2008.
Think: the economic downturn in the covid pandemic, the energy crisis following the war against
Ukraine, or banks threatening to collapse again. With the aim of keeping things afloat, bringing down
interest rates makes borrowing easier – after all, money costs much less that way. Consequence:
more debt is taken on. More money, in other words – although it does not necessarily end up in the
real economy. In addition to tinkering with interest rates, other ways of intervening on a large scale
are now also being used, namely the direct intervention in the quantity of money with the buying up
of government and corporate bonds or other debt securities in unprecedented programmes of
quantitative easing. These put large amounts of extra money into circulation, or literally into motion:
it becomes liquid. But there seems hardly any control over the direction of that money flow. In an
almost animistic interpretation of the facts, we could say that money is incorporating governments
and central banks for itself.

Curious how at least a double reading is possible each time. Economies have to be kept afloat to
keep a banking and financial sector afloat: an economy that is down or partially failing means debts

127 Fourteenth Amendment US Constitution – Section 4: ‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorised by
law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall
not be questioned.’ This allows the debt ceiling to be raised all the time. While some countries pay through the nose in debt
repayment, others seem to get richer mainly by going into debt without a problem. For those with power, debt means
wealth; for those without power, debt means poverty. ‘If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you.
If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.’ – American proverb.

128See, for example, the following statement: "The EU is fully committed to doing whatever it takes to protect citizens and
mitigate the negative social-economic consequences of the corona virus." – European Commission Spokesperson (October
2020).

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.88
that don’t get paid off, bank balance sheets that get into trouble, and financial giants with feet of clay
that start to falter. And that banking and financial sector must be kept afloat to keep those
economies afloat. They have thrown in their lot with each other. It creates a spiral in which the
money mountain gets bigger, and the debt pit gets deeper. Or again the reverse: the debt mountain
bigger and the money pit deeper. It doesn’t matter and boils down to the same thing: money is debt,
after all. A mountain of debt growing faster than an economy makes debt/money and reality move
even further apart. The least that can be said with certainty about this kind of situation: such growth
dynamics do not last.

But there is more, and there is a deeper logic that – almost by definition – turns out to be
problematic. Let’s go back to the money created at the moment it is borrowed. In our current
system, whoever borrows money from the bank returns it later, but does so with interest on top.
Incidentally, corporate bonds work the same way. Ditto for government bonds: the government
borrows money from others, uses it for its tasks, and eventually pays it all back with interest (by
taking on new debt, if necessary). Depending on the level of interest, that can be a hefty chunk extra.
This part of our money system – interest, and especially compound interest – generates worrying
dynamics. It creates exponential growth. Charging compound interest on a loan actually means laying
claim to extra money that is not yet present in the economy. At best, the capital or principal has been
injected into the economy and will be booked out again upon repayment. But to pay the interest,
somewhere, somehow, at the beginning or end of some exchange chain, ‘extra economy’ is
demanded that can provide that ‘extra money’ for interest. To claim interests means that even more
money needs to be created, which equates to even more debts or loans to be taken out. Deep down,
our system of money, which is mainly debt, and which must be paid off with compound interest, puts
a double turbo on our economy. By taking money from the future and using it now – that’s what
debt does – we enable growth. A lot of growth, especially if we also just keep accumulating debt. An
initial turbo. But by working with compound interest, our economy is also required to grow. That is a
second turbo: our money system, in order to ‘settle itself’ and thus stay afloat, forces our economy
into a spiral of exponential growth. Growth that must stay ahead of interest rates.

Just as a dye spreads over a volume of water, so too does this compound interest spread throughout
our economy. Everything and everyone is drawn into the bath and is constantly paying interest as
well. Even people who win the lotto, and never have to borrow a single euro again, help pay off other
people’s loans with what they buy. Because the prices of what is bought ‘naturally’ include the need
to be able to repay the loans made. According to Margrit Kennedy, this way we pay on average about
40% interest in the prices of products and services.129

We allow ourselves to digress a bit here, and link this to other system flaws we will discuss.
Exponential growth of debt can trap people as debt slaves for a lifetime, and even for generations. It
was the old wisdom of the three religions of the book that interest, and certainly the usury created
when interest on interest has to be paid, can have a destructive effect on people and societies.
History is replete with such situations, and with the call, or even just the economic necessity, to remit

129Kennedy, M. (2005). Why Do We Need Monetary Innovation? https://base.socioeco.org/docs/margrit_kennedy.pdf She

compares the figure (40%) to feudal times when people were better off (because they had to contribute only tenths – 10%
– of their income or harvest).

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.89
debts and start with a clean slate.130 What the problem of compound interest or interest on interest
means, is also clear from a statement made by President Obasanjo of Nigeria after the G8 summit in
Okinawa in 2000: ‘All we borrowed until 1985 or 1986 was around $5 billion. Right now we have
repaid $16 billion. And we still have to repay 28 billion. The worst thing in the world? Compound
interest!’ As we can suspect from this example, exponential growth of debt through vulture funds,
flash credit at usurious interest rates, or forced loans on all sorts of (cut-throat) terms, can be
merciless and creates a flow of money into the strongholds of a (politicised) financial industry. We
will have to come back to that.

The final steps. The cycle of unbridled money creation combined with compound interest can only be
maintained via constant economic growth. Correction: not constant growth, but exponential growth;
and the figure that sometimes circulates for this is 3% a year. That kind of growth is apparently what
we need to maintain to stay out of (money) trouble. 3% a year, that is not steady growth, not growth
that stays fixed, stable, constant or the same, it is growth that goes exponentially. 3% added in 2023,
for example, is a much bigger increase than 3% in 2000: namely twice as much in absolute figures.
Because according to the formula of doubling times, at 3% a year, the economy has already doubled
in absolute volume in those 23 years. The point is that this only works in the imaginary world of our
mainstream economic theory where that growth is supposed to create endless wealth, prosperity,
welfare, consumption and employment. That sustained economic growth, however, is by definition
impossible in the real world we live in if there is not enough ‘reality’ to realise it: our (fossil) energy is
increasingly failing us, and our societies and socio-ecological systems are becoming depleted,
crowded, or otherwise tested beyond their carrying capacity. When growth is no longer possible (or
desirable), our money system also hits its limits.

Incidentally, it was an economist, Kenneth Boulding, who cleverly remarked: ‘Anyone who believes
that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.’ And
a physicist, Albert Bartlett, who argued that the ‘worst failing of the human race was that we do not
understand the exponential function’.131 And among others, petroleum geologist M. K. Hubbert
showed himself to be a true systems thinker in 1981 when he foresaw that with world peak oil

130 For example, the Sabbath year from the Mosaic Law meant that people within the community cancelled debts to each
other, and those who had sold themselves as slaves were free after seven years. A jubilee year, after seven Sabbath years,
i.e. every 49 years, meant that all slaves were freed, and all former possessions were restored. (Not unimportant detail: the
commandment applied to the people themselves, and if they needed slaves, they just had to buy them abroad, and they
and their children could be kept in service forever). There is disagreement about whether that law was ever applied, but it
does show that people were aware of a problem. The idea of the Jubilee year inspired the global Jubilee 2000 campaign
(which resulted in the remission of $100 billion to the world’s poorest countries).

131 Bartlett: https://www.albartlett.org/index.html

Many of the world’s collected statistics show such an exponential growth curve. To get an idea of exponential growth, and
the associated concept of doubling times, it is best to look at an example. Sometime in autumn 2008, in the aftermath of
the financial crisis, someone on the radio said that we were on the brink of a major recession because we were in danger of
falling below 3% economic growth – globally, on average. (Even in 2023, by the way, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warns of
financial instability as we risk falling below 3% global growth). A quick calculation with economics students a little later in
class yielded that maintaining a minimum growth rate of 3% means that the economy doubles in volume by the time they
are in their early forties. The simple formula for doubling time is 70 divided by the growth rate: in our case 70 : 3 = 23.33.
So, every 23 years or so, the economy doubles if it grows at 3% a year: so double the number of cars, production,
consumption, pollution, destruction, climate impact. By the time students are in their 80s, the economy has multiplied
eightfold. [According to World Bank figures, the economy – World GDP – grew about 50% between 2008 and 2019. In other
words, the doubling is ‘on track’. And estimates on the number of motorised vehicles, by the way, also show about a
doubling every 20 years. IMF Datamapper shows a tripling of World GDP over 2000-2023.]

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production, and hence the threat of energy scarcity, large-scale financial instability would follow.
Exactly what the 2007-2008 crisis saw following what is arguably peak easy oil around the beginning
of the third millennium.132 Hubbert explains: our physical reality is a matter-energy system in which
limited growth is possible, but it is and remains a closed system with biophysical limits. The monetary
system has no such limits and needs growth to sustain itself. The two systems are incompatible.
Inevitably, something like this leads to zero interest rates or inflation, and the result is large-scale
financial instability. Hubbert’s conclusion: cultural adjustments are needed, and we need to reform
the money system.133

Our money system traps us into the treadmill of compulsory growth: to stay afloat in that big
wooden spinning barrel in which everyone else is also running, we need to go faster and faster. To
keep going we need to keep growing. At a minimum, we need to stay ahead of the interest rates of
our money system. That makes our money system growth-dependent.

Moreover, these interest rates, and by extension the whole system in which money can generate
money, also make us look fundamentally differently at value in the future and at the importance of
that future. In fact, it makes us look less at that future and more at the now. After all, TVM or time
value of money – a key idea of our money system – assumes that our money increases in financial
strength over time: a sum is worth more now than that same sum in the future because the money
can yield a profit in the meantime. In that logic, any delayed opportunity to make money yield more
money is a lost opportunity. Investment opportunities, for example, are weighed against each other
via a discounted cash flow model: something that typically programmes us for the short term.134 Of
course, interest rate fluctuations and inflation can become game-breakers in this process, hence the
attempt to keep growth going and inflation contained. But why would we want a system that is
intrinsically inflationary and that also systematically undervalues the future? In fact, our money
system threatens to shrink our time horizon to the point where local and planetary ecology are
checkmated. The money system makes us collectively myopic: benefits now always outweigh costs or
value later. This is what our system expects us to do: convert everything that is not too hot or too
heavy into money that can then just start growing on its own. For example, a remarkable study by
Colin Clark shows that, according to common logic, culling all blue whales immediately (to convert

132 Peak easy oil usually refers to when world production of easily accessible (conventional) oil reaches its peak, after which
it declines irrevocably. In our reality, meanwhile, that moment is of course masked by the (temporary) commitment to non-
conventional, tougher, and more contested oil. Conventional oil production peaked around 2005-2007.

133‘Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-energy and the Monetary Culture’ – M. K. Hubbert, see:
http://www.energycrisis.com/hubbert/monetary.htm

134For an example of how the future is discounted in this, and how our money system is partly responsible for short-
termism, see: Lietaer, B., Arnsperger, C., Goerner, S., & Brunnhuber, S. (2012). Geld en duurzaamheid. Van een falend
geldsysteem naar een monetair ecosysteem. Van Arkel, pp. 141-144. The reverse (negative interest rate, demurrage, a tax
on money held) brings about a very different dynamic, namely that opportunities and costs are valued in the longer term.
For demurrage, see especially Silvio Gesell. ‘Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like
iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron
and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for
money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of
the money. So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange.’
https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/part4/1.htm

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.91
them into money) makes far more sense than waiting until the whale population can be sustainably
fished.135

Our money system collectively traps us in that kind of short-termism: we look a year, a quarter, a
week, a day ahead. How different, for example, from the long-term thinking of some indigenous
peoples, where important decisions are explored and considered in their consequences for future
generations. In the Haudenosaunee culture, for example, leaders are exhorted to ‘have an eye for
the welfare of the whole people, keeping in mind not only the present but also the generations to
come, even those whose faces are still beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future
Nation.’136

A speculative financial economy

The very idea of growth and of short-term profits brings us seamlessly to the next cluster of sobering
dynamics in our money system.

If infinite growth and a real, physical economy are incompatible, then it should come as no surprise
that much of this growth today sits in some kind of virtual, monetary, financial or speculative
economy. This hangs like a dark cloud over real economies where people earn a livelihood, for more
than one reason. Financial worlds feed on real economies: none of what circulates there has value
unless it can be exchanged within the real economy.

As we have already seen, there need be nothing wrong with financial services: in fact, we can hardly
imagine our modern world and economies without the activities such as lending, insuring, investing,
financing and intermediating that we associate with banking and financial services. The point,
however, is that those services seem to have morphed and expanded into a financial economy in its
own right, with markets where financial products and services are traded. There are now so many
financial products and derivatives that specialists themselves can no longer make head or tail of
them; and the financial derivatives market is possibly ten times the size of world GDP. Of currency
transactions – where one currency is exchanged for another – some 98% are purely speculative.
Super-mobile capital is forever looking for the best possible return on investment, creating financial
markets that we find ourselves increasingly at the mercy of. As if the roles have now been reversed: a
real economy that serves (and is incorporated into) a financial economy instead of the normal course
of events.

This corporatised financial economy is speculative in the sense that it relies mainly on assumption
and mood, and hardly on reality. And it is speculative in the sense that it is geared towards profit,

135 Clark, C. W. (1973). The Economics of Overexploitation. Science, 181(4100), 630-634.

136From The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace which was passed down orally using wampum. Reciting it orally could take
days. Summaries of it have been translated into English, and are circulating. This ‘Constitution of the Iroquois Nations’ had a
not insignificant influence on the US Constitution. (See: Johansen, B. E., & Mann, B. A. (2000). Encyclopedia of the
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). Greenwood Publishing Group.)
We quote from one of the summaries circulating. Note the use of wampum. ‘When a candidate Lord is to be installed he
shall furnish four strings of shells (or wampum) one span in length bound together at one end. Such will constitute the
evidence of his pledge to the Confederate Lords that he will live according to the constitution of the Great Peace and
exercise justice in all affairs. [...] Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and always have in view not only the
present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground -- the unborn of
the future Nation.’ ( http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm )

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.92
rather than value creation. Indeed, it is a world that has in some ways become disconnected from
real economies where things of value get exchanged: a financial economy acts like a giant casino
where, according to some, up to 97% of all money circulates. The disconnect goes so far that
sometimes the financial economy no longer even reflects or tracks the real state of the economy:
stock markets and indices can reach record highs even if the economies below them are in
contraction or deep recession. And even if by all sorts of possible standards companies or pieces of
the economy are robust and strong, they can still fall victim to mood swings in financial back rooms.
The money that circulates in that world is akin to ghost wealth that can appear out of nowhere
(which a lot of people don’t mind at all), but which can also just as suddenly disappear back into that
vast nothingness (which those same people then suddenly find unfair).

As we have repeatedly suggested: it is a world where money can make money. And lots of money
can also make lots of money via all sorts of multiplier effects. Or evaporate lots of money. Via those
same multiplier effects. Maybe it all starts rather innocently, and stays within acceptable limits, if
money in a savings account or term account can make money via interest. And, sure enough,
investing can be done with the best of intentions, and even be a lever to kickstart a different kind of
economy. But where is the line between investing and speculating? From what point do we enter a
world in which intangible things like faith, trust or mood – and even posts, rumours and fake news –
will help determine the value of shares, the height of stock markets, the reliability of banks, and the
creditworthiness of countries? People who do not participate in the game in which money makes
money seem like laggards: surely it is convenient if our money can work for us, instead of us having
to work for our money?

That virtual, monetary economy, because it is clean and promises easy and nice profits, exerts a
special attraction. To ordinary people who have something to spare. But even more so to large,
transnational companies that often help set the rules of the game: after all, they are much less
confronted there with, say, workers insisting on their rights, or angry people complaining about
stench or polluted rivers. It is a world of numbers, spreadsheets, and colourful dashboards. These no
longer show anything of the realities behind them that, even if we wanted to, are still barely
traceable: rounds of layoffs, sell-offs of raw materials, destruction of nature, capitalising on demand
for weapons or vaccines, waste, exploitation of people, speculation with food, energy and water,
dismantling of social security. If the numbers flash green, there is nothing wrong.

There is a dangerous reversal in financialising the economy and the world. The focus shifts from
things and services (where the real value and wealth is) to money (which means nothing if there is
nothing in return). In a real economy, money is what is used to pass value from hand to hand:
products and services are exchanged through money so to speak. A real economy creates or
exchanges value, and money in it is simply the exchange mechanism. The basic building blocks of real
economies are ‘things of value’ and money helps to get them to the right person. A financial
economy shifts the focus entirely: the basic building block is money. There, we start with money and
we deploy it in one way or another to (try to) make more money. Products and services,
commodities and knowledge, but also a lot of derived and virtual stuff – it is all used to make money.
In essence, this kind of financial economy is not productive; it extracts value. In its worst forms, it
parasitises real economies and, strangely enough, also itself. We can explain the difference between
real economy and financial economy, a little too simply perhaps, as the difference between make
and take.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.93
They seem like two separate worlds. If only they were. At least, if they were separate, things would
be a lot safer and more stable. The dramatic part of the situation, however, is that the fates of these
two worlds are intertwined in countless ways. After all, there is no distinction between money used
in real, economic transactions and money used for purely speculative purposes. That phantom
wealth, then, is less unreal than we thought: the money made in financial economies is being used to
shop around in the real economy just as much, and it is sure to push up prices as well. For instance,
of housing in financial districts, or in cities, and in the new places to be. And, as if the financial world
in its top regions seems aware of the unreal nature of its own imaginary wealth, meanwhile, big
players are stocking up on real, tangible things that do matter and can make a lasting difference.
Things which may matter in the future even more should the financial system somehow suffer a fatal
blow and money become dysfunctional: real estate, information technology and big data,
manufacturing capacity, energy systems, and the systems of payments themselves that can produce
constant flows of money via transaction costs. But also things like large chunks of deep sea, farmland
and water. What about rights to water that are bought and then further traded on the stock market
– as in forest fire-ravaged and irrigation-dependent California? And of something that has been going
on for a bit longer: the phenomenon of land grabbing? The 2007-2008 crisis boosted what is called
LSLA – Large Scale Land Acquisitions – in which powerful financial players (nation states as well as
private players) secure large tracts of land for agricultural production and mining.137 Meanwhile, it
seems, they let the lesser gods speculate a little longer with gold, crypto, and a new flood of
inscrutable financial products. While some are still mesmerised by money, money itself seems to
move towards things of value that constitute real power.

But a financial economy blows up real economies in other ways as well. Not only is there the reality
of ever more money constantly scouring and scanning the (real and virtual) world for the next
investment opportunity – if something can make money it will make money –, that amount of money
also seems to be getting bigger and more unstable. Indeed, our financial economy tends to inflate:
when all goes well, it conjures money for itself out of its own hat in countless ways, and the sky truly
becomes the limit. When things go wrong, or there is an inkling of potential trouble, a firm hand is
kept on the purse-strings for the real economy, but nonetheless masses of money continue to flow to
the big financial players. Money that was actually intended for others through bail-outs or
programmes of quantitative easing by governments: to secure savings, keep credit lines open, and
restart economies. Here we see some of the deep interconnectedness: it does not seem an option
not to help the financial economy when it is in danger of toppling over. That sector is still also home
to the ordinary and justifiable services that deal with our savings, pension funds, sovereign debt and
lines of credit. In other words, the stakes are simply too high, even when we seem to have to save an
elephant to save a mouse. An unholy interconnectedness that often leaves governments with no
option but to cut into itself and its services, mobilise taxpayers’ money, form alliances with large
private conglomerates, and go deeper into the red. Only to see their own credit ratings downgraded
by the same players who they helped save.

A weird kind of interwovenness, all things considered. The financial and banking sector is private,
operates with a profit logic, and lobbies relentlessly to keep regulation as minimal as possible. But in
practice, that same sector has a government safety net so that the consequences of its own actions
and risks always fall on the public. So how private is the sector? Perhaps we would be better off

137 For data related to land grabs, see The Land Matrix public database: https://landmatrix.org/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.94
talking about a private-public partnership. Profits are privatised, losses are socialised. Governments
and central banks – lenders of last resort – often behave as if they are bending over backwards and
forwards to keep the financial system stable and afloat, but in the facts they are increasingly at the
mercy of it rather than in control. Moreover, they play a very ambivalent role because, at the same
time, they are themselves partly responsible in various ways for this overall instability of the system
and the bubble nature of the financial economy. Their rate hikes or rate cuts, to keep economies on
track so to speak and inflation in check, are also factors that have perverse effects on financial
markets that have not hedged against those risks. And through quantitative easing, they sponsor or
finance a lot of companies that then circulate that extra money on stock markets, in derivatives
trading, or in that neo-colonial race in the real economy.

In general, but especially at times when things go thoroughly wrong and financial bailouts are in
order, we see that our prevailing private-public money system only reinforces the typical boom-and-
bust cycles of the economic cycle. It makes the lows deeper and the highs higher – a procyclical
tendency: credit is generously extended and risk-taking high when things are going well, but that
same credit is much sparser when things are bad and everyone needs to hedge against risk. Good
times lead to bubbles. Bubbles burst.138 Economies suffer: they get to swallow recessions. Through
bull markets and bear markets on stock exchanges, our money system intensifies the waves of
booms and busts in economies into real storms. But they are storms that invariably also bash against
that money system itself. It amounts to unnecessary waste and destruction of all kinds of capital
(financial, human and natural), it creates unemployment, social problems and political instability, and
it harms the economy and eventually the banking and financial sector itself.

A safe haven for public money and a culture bent on profit and bonuses: they are hard to reconcile.
But it is real economies that matter in the end, not financial ones. It passes for Cree – native
American – wisdom: when the last tree is gone, the last river poisoned, and the last fish caught, we
will realise that money cannot be eaten.

A multiple catch-22

The first systemic problems we looked at in relation to our money already show a kind of catch-22. A
catch-22 is something that is utterly insane, but completely in keeping with prevailing rules and
regulations. Something that is too crazy for words, but which we still can’t seem to get out of – a
situation where there is no way around because we are stuck in a perfidious logic. 139

Such catch-22 sums up well the painful situation we find ourselves in. Forced by our current money
system, we need to grow the economy, but then we sooner or later run into biophysical and

138What goes up must come down. Frequently mentioned bubbles: the Dutch tulip mania (1634-1638), the roaring twenties
(1924-1929), the Japanese real estate and equity bubble (1980s), the internet bubble (1997-2000), the US real estate
bubble (2007-2008), bitcoin bubbles (2017, spring 2021, autumn 2021). Because so much value in stock markets is
represented by fossil fuels (which need to stay in the ground for the sake of the planet, and thus represent losses or
stranded assets), a possible carbon bubble is being taken into account. (For the latter, see Carbon Tracker’s work:
https://carbontracker.org/ )

139Catch-22, after the title of the novel by Joseph Heller. The main character is Yossarian, a pilot in the air force. Because of
the madness of war, he wants to leave the service. There is a rule that says this is possible: those who are not in their right
mind may go home. But another rule makes that impossible: because anyone who wants to go home actually testifies to
being of sound mind. Which means he cannot go home. That is the catch-22.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.95
ecological problems. Growth, especially exponential growth, and a finite world, they do not go
together. In fact, our relentless growth is already visibly colliding with those biophysical limits in
terms of energy, raw materials and the carrying capacity of the earth and life, and in the meantime it
is creating a host of ecological problems: climate disruption, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and
cultural diversity, acidification, deforestation, loss of fertile soil, chemical pollution. The
consequences can only be described as serious and they mean a dramatic loss of the wealth we used
to have: more or less stable climate systems, water, bio- and cultural diversity, well-functioning
oceans and forests, fertile soil, a healthy environment. Unstoppable growth that compromises all of
that should really not be an option. This kind of wealth can never be on the bargaining table. It must
be guarded and preserved at all costs. After all, no money in the world can bring it back.

But, when we do the opposite and abandon our economic growth, or let our financial systems
implode, then in no time our societies find themselves in a very painful, chaotic and conflictual spiral
downwards. It is a spinning motion in which money, purchasing power, and hence livelihoods
increasingly evaporate as a cluster of consumption, production and employment goes into free fall.
Swept up in that same free fall are, of course, government revenues because of less tax revenue,
when in fact, in that kind of situation, more government money may be needed to keep services,
education, health care, unemployment benefits, business support and so on afloat. Or in a different
reading of the same facts: governments may, because of debts mounting too high, no longer be able
to meet their obligations themselves, and find themselves in a state of bankruptcy. All this, this
spiralling downwards, results in a situation that for a lot of people is much more immediate, painful
and tangible than the issues around climate and ecology.

This catch-22, where we either hit an ecological wall, or end up socially crippled and counted out,
also translates into the impossible task of reconciling the long and the short term with our money
system. To secure our collective well-being, health and society in the long term, we seem to have to
say goodbye to those same things in the short term. And the other way round. It is like being caught
between the devil and the dep blue sea – we’ re damned if we do and we’ re damned if we don’t.

And the catch-22 also sits in the dilemma that resides in that dual and intertwined reality of a real
and a financial economy. In it, money must at times function as the stable medium of exchange or
payment that makes economies, trade and transactions possible, while at other times and at the
same time it becomes the end in itself in a short-term speculative game with itself. One and the same
money. Shouldn’t we choose: either play football or collect balls to make extra balls? Because if we
do not choose, and our savings and credit lines remain intertwined with the big casino, we will
continue to be doomed to cough up staggering sums in financial bailouts. The result? For a brief
moment we save our own asses, but the corporatised financial economy gets bigger because it has
even more money at its disposal. And within that world, a logic of ever bigger also applies to the
players themselves: they are forced to be resilient to the risks and shockwaves they themselves
create with their own unruly play. While at the same time, they are part of a bailout economy in
which they can operate frankly and freely: after all, the safety net is simply there. Are we waiting for
too big to bail, instead of too big to fail? The moment when politics really can no longer serve big
finance?

A deadlock. And it doesn’t help to point out that ecology is more important than economy, or that
the long-term should be preferred over the short-term. Our money is not open to (that kind of)
reason.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.96
The flaws reside deep in the system. When it comes to sustainability, our current money barely takes
us a step beyond what is feasible and politically marketable, but which is totally inadequate from a
planetary, societal and even economic perspective. Even worse, it now seems, is that for every step
forward in which we funnel money in the right direction, we possibly end up several steps backwards
because of how money works. Further away from our goal. If we uphold the money-debt-growth
system, we know where we will end up. Maybe even in the relatively short term. We seem to have
lost control over our own creation. In this way, we are fighting a losing battle.

But let us not forget that this deadlock we find ourselves in is not an inevitability. It is not a necessity,
because money systems are not natural laws but human creations, and so are the economies and
societies associated with them. We know by now that money steers people’s behaviour, so we had
better choose – through our money – in which direction we want to steer ourselves, because the
reverse is equally true. For all the palaver about big systems and their inevitable dynamics – systems
usually produce the kind of presidents and top people they require, for instance – those presidents
and top people remain people who can take responsibility, and who can change things. Just like all of
us, by the way – we really don’t need to get caught up in some conspiracy theory about money
systems.

The tsunami up of a race to the bottom

The study of systems works, among other things, with careful observation of stocks and flows. This
gives measurable insights into the dynamics and logic of those systems.

Applied to money: to see what money does and how it works, we need to see where stocks are and
how money flows. We need to map where it disappears and where it ends up. That exposes some
further, problematic logic of our money system. More flaws, in other words, although arguably the
issue is wider than just money alone.

Our money may never have had the tendency, in and of itself, to spread fairly among people. Unless,
perhaps, we try to picture less commercial forms of money in gift economies, sharing economies,
community economies, or other forms of not-for-profit household economies; or remind ourselves of
those early examples in our money history where we noticed a rationale fundamentally different
from a commercial or economic logic. No, money as we know it now does not seem to spread fairly,
and it leads to inequality and ruthless competition unless significant social corrections take place. A
simple observation: more or less egalitarian societies are the result of deliberate political
intervention – politics that thus tries to counter the self-serving game plan of money itself. General
levels of wellbeing and a society where it is good and safe to live can never be directly credited to
money or economic progress. If politics – anything concerning the shaping of society – does not
interfere with money, then there are no relatively egalitarian societies, or there is no such thing as
what some call broad, social progress. Because if not, then money mainly interferes with us
according to its very own rules. But the snake keeps biting its tail: politics shaped that money system,
and so money is itself political.140 So: change money or change politics amounts to the same thing.

140 A classic insight from systems science: if A is the cause of B, then perhaps B is also the cause of A.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.97
And here is another simple conclusion or observation: wealth, in our current monetary or financial
system, accumulates.141 The amount of wealth in the world is not just growing, and has grown at an
average annual rate of 6.6% in the first 20 years of the 21st century. That wealth also accumulates at
the top: the world’s 22 richest men, for example, meanwhile collectively own more than all the
women in Africa. Of course, overall figures mask a mosaic of differences and exceptions, but there is
no doubt about the underlying pattern itself: wealth is increasing, wealth is flowing upwards, and our
money system is deepening the gap between the rich and the poor. So, even an ‘average’ increase
somewhere at the bottom – a few mouthfuls quite literally – can mean that people simply fall further
behind. And increasing inequality is the spark that ignites social and economic instability. That is not
hard to understand.

Whether we look at UN reports, World Bank reports, financial sector information, briefing papers
from organisations like Oxfam, or the work of economist and inequality specialist Thomas Piketty, for
example, they all point in the same direction. Wealth may be growing, but it does so at the expense
of future well-being and through increased inequality. This is a particularly explosive cocktail for
societies, and it doesn’t matter what colour of vests they wear, what signs or fingers they put in the
air, what they set on fire or want to destroy, or what slogans, symbols or weapons they further
choose for their ‘we don’t take it anymore’. And what it is that they don’t take any longer may be
voiced differently – unjust decisions that hit people hard, completely failing politics, endless greed at
the top of society – but whatever form it takes, the underlying sentiment is one of being left behind,
of not being seen, of loss of dignity and recognition. Of unequal treatment.

But as we have already noted, under growth of wealth (which accumulates in few places) there is
also a ticking time bomb in purely economic and even financial terms: when money grows faster than
real economy we are in for trouble. It remains a strange system in which the amount of wealth
(expressed in money) can grow more than twice as fast as the amount of economy (which is also
already expressed in money). But the point here is mainly that a growing economy can also mask a
loss of wealth per person. The rising tide is quite clearly not lifting all boats. Despite what progress
optimists think or say, the rising tide has been lifting very few of the boats in recent decades. Which
brings us back to that socially explosive cocktail that is inequality.

This invites us to explore the dynamics under those money flows: what is it about our money system
that causes this inequality to increase? Where are the reasons for increasing wealth concentration at
the top, and for relative and sometimes even absolute loss at the bottom?

To answer those questions we need to look at – among other things – the system of interest. There, a
self-reinforcing loop is at work: those who have surplus money, or who can somehow create money
for themselves, have the ability to lend it at interest to those who need it or do not have enough of
it. This results in money transfer from those who do not have it to those who already have it, from
people who work for their money to people whose money works for them. Those who don’t have
enough not infrequently find themselves in a situation where beggars can’t be choosers: they often

141 ‘Wealth’ (or net worth) here means ‘the value of financial assets plus real assets (principally housing) owned by
households, minus their debts’; movable assets and real estate minus debts so to speak. (Global Wealth Reports – Credit
Suisse.) Figures that follow in this paragraph come either from Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Reports, or from Oxfam’s
Briefing Papers. Credit Suisse Research Institute. (2022). Global Wealth Report: Leading perspectives to navigate the future,
p. 5. Coffey, C. (2020). Time to care: Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. Oxfam GB for Oxfam
International, p. 8.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.98
have to swallow higher interest rates than usual for their loans. Sometimes it even concerns people
whose situation drives them straight into the hands of loan sharks who advance money easily but
collect multiples fairly quickly, and put people in a hold. Conversely, capital is also self-generated
from credit, but those with enough money (and thus collateral or assets) can easily, and at lower
cost, create money for themselves. To then lend it out at higher interest rates, or convert it into
wealth such as rental properties, real estate, land rights, patents, exclusive rights, market
monopolies, insider knowledge, or other wealth that can generate even more income. All of these
are self-reinforcing feedbacks that can converge in one big feedback loop of power: financial power,
lobbying power, political interference, legal interference, and ultimately the claiming of the political
chairs themselves. Which gives us an idea of the cluster of reasons for what is expressed so well in
scripture: ‘For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him
who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’

We should be reminded of President Obasanjo’s statement on the problem of compound interest:

Nigeria borrowing 5 billion and having to give back 44 billion in return. Economic anthropologist
Jason Hickel calls the phenomenon ‘reverse development aid’ and looks at the money that flows in
such ways from the Global South to the Global North: it concerns unequal exchange, and even
outright exploitation, with rich countries continuing to imperialistically appropriate wealth from
other countries to support their own growth and high levels of income and consumption.142 But the
poor-to-rich money flows that we see between countries are also seen within countries. Someone
who made this clear for a country like Germany some time ago was urban planner and money critic
Margrit Kennedy. She compared interest expenditure with interest income for German households
and was able to observe that the richest 10% of the population receive the losses of the bottom 80%,
and that every day in 2004 about 1 billion euros were transferred from those who work for their
money to those whose money works for them. That is, from the debtors to the capital owners. 143 By
highlighting differences between countries as well as differences within countries, we may also
become more cautious when talking about rich or poor countries. Perhaps it makes more sense –
given the free movement of capital that makes borders non-existent – to talk about global tops and
bottoms, irrespective of where they are. Ditto, of course, for something like middle classes.

While a tsunami of money is surging upwards and favouring a limited number of people, a downward
spiral is taking place in pretty much the rest of reality. A veritable sell-off. A race to the bottom
actually: in the supercompetitive and mostly deregulated game that our global economy has
become, workers, companies, societies, governments, and nature itself are being played off among
themselves and against each other. Here is the double mantra of the big game: increase profits and
reduce costs – a game that, like a vortex, sooner or later takes everyone with it. There is always

142See, for example: Hickel, J., Sullivan, D., & Zoomkawala, H. (2021). Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drainage
from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960-2018. New Political Economy, 26, 1-18. Hickel looks at the years
1960 to 2018. Exploitation and unequal exchange were highest in the 1980s and 1990s with the IMF and World Bank
structural adjustment programmes, but they remain significant even in recent years.
See also something like the Lucas Paradox: Lucas, R. E. (1990). Why Doesn’t Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries? The
American Economic Review, 80(2), 92-96.

143Kennedy, M. (2008). If money rules the world – who rules the money? A case for complementary currencies. Forum CSR
International, 66-69. Her main work: Kennedy, M. (1995). Interest and inflation free money: Creating an exchange medium
that works for everybody and protects the earth. (New rev. & exp. ed.). Seva international.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.99
someone who is willing to work for lower wages, someone who is less compliant with working
conditions or environmental legislation, a government that, in order to attract employment, applies
competitive tax rates and thus erodes its service functions. Always someone who wants to
compromise on quality and decency. Someone who – desperate and hopeless – then puts
themselves and the environment at risk. That is what our current unrestrained money system de
facto does: it sells out, impoverishes, and delocalises, it dismantles society and nature. Economic
activity moves to where the cost is lowest, jobs and employment move to where people, companies
and politicians are more desperate. And the desperate are left to fight each other: competition is
good for everyone – or so it sounds – because it pushes down costs. That bottom of the race, that’s
pretty much what the bottom of a shareholder economy looks like in which money flows to
shareholders and to those entitled to dividends and bonuses. And the people that find themselves
somewhere between top and bottom? Those, meanwhile and strangely enough, more often just get
to swallow higher – not lower – prices and discover with surprise that this too is part of the revenue
model of those above them.

In market economy terms, meanwhile, there is no problem whatsoever. In that business fantasy
world, free and unregulated markets are the best way to create prosperity and progress for all. But
there are at least two less fanciful objections to this. In reality there is no such thing as a market with
equal opportunities: those who take the strong positions and break open other markets protect
themselves through patents, subsidies, trade agreements, legislation and other forms of
protectionism. And, secondly, in the real world we cannot currently see the promised beneficial
outcome for all either: there is no trickle-down effect that benefits the bottom players. No, the
movement is the other way round and money flows to those who already have it in the first place.

An invisible hand

So, with this tsunami up and the accompanying race to the bottom, we have exposed even more
perfidious flaws in our money system: dynamics and rationales that are insidious, and ultimately do
not serve us as a global community. For many, that race to the bottom forms the hard reality of
everyday life.

But for some, it may all sound a bit out of touch with their direct experience: after all, we are all right
(here), aren’t we?

Indeed, it is not difficult to find a whole host of reports, graphs, documents and opinions that say
that things have improved or that on average we have made progress, and that we are better off
now than before. Every graph deserves to be studied. But the key questions with graphs and
statistics, of course, are always: who is this ‘we’ who have improved, what is that ‘past’ that was not
as good, over what period of time are trends being looked at, and what exactly are we comparing? It
wouldn’t be the first time someone used a graph or statistic to claim something different from what
the numbers on it actually show. Or different from what reality shows when the graph fails to
represent that reality. And graphs and statistics can also be misleading because they may show some
kind of vague average, or show progress at the expense of other things that then go downhill, or
progress of which we may doubt whether it means progress at all. As always, reality is more complex,
more nuanced, and different from many of the figures to which it is reduced. So, caution is called for,

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and statistics and graphs lead to conversations about them at best. For example: do we measure
longevity or rather quality of life? What is progress? And what may be good indicators of progress?

To take just one classic example that feels appropriate for our exploration of money: are we doing
better or worse in terms of global poverty? The number of people in extreme poverty – measured by
the dollar-per-day scale – declined between 1980 and 2020, but an indicator like multidimensional
poverty that looks at education, health and living standards then doubles that number and says
different things. It all makes a difference: we can try to measure poverty as absolute poverty (with
the dollar-per-day concept), as relative poverty (with concepts like poverty gap, poverty threshold
and poverty level) or as multidimensional poverty (deprivation on 10 indicators across three
weighted areas: health, education, living standards). So which measurement tool do we use? And
what do we do, for example, with people who used to simply live in a local subsistence economy and
had no money at all, nor did they need it? In the official dollar-per-day statistics they fell into the
category of poorest of the poor, even though they may not have lacked anything. Now that their
subsistence economy has been dismantled, and they have entered the local, regional, or global
labour market, they may be just above the bar and earn more than a dollar a day. 144 But are they
better off?

Even though poverty is as real as anything, there is simply no definition of it. Any definition, and
certainly the generation and use of data for it, is ideology-sensitive.145 Moreover, there is an equally
massive ideological problem as soon as we start applying weird attribution theories. For instance
when we unquestioningly attribute successes in reducing poverty to free markets, and how they
supposedly bring wealth and improved living conditions for all – our so-called progress. But there is
no univocal definition of progress either. Think of all those rankings and benchmarks: what is
pencilled in as progress in GDP – gross domestic product – appears in HDI – human development
index – as something way more nuanced, and may be turned completely upside down in HPI – happy
planet index. Do we measure ‘better’ and ‘progress’ in the amount of money involved (GDP), or in
people’s life expectancy, education, and income (HDI) or in reported well-being, life expectancy and
ecological footprint (HPI)?146 It makes a big difference.

A striking observation: even in the most rigorous rankings, welfare, living standards and even life
expectancy have been declining for a while in many rich countries. A whole generation of people will
soon no longer be optimistic about progress at all – quite the contrary. And if any (imaginary) idea of
progress still survives, it seems to be surfing on information and communication technology –
smartphones, computers, and artificial intelligence so to speak, and what you can do with them. Let
that be precisely the reality that is most illusory. No, there are signs that an end of an era is

144The dollar-per-day concept means a poverty line at $2.15 per day in 2023. (2017 Purchasing Power Parity exchange
rate.)

145There is, for instance, some progress bias in quite a few reports from (high-level) organisations that deal with poverty:
they have to back up that progress – to which they themselves have to contribute as an organisation – with figures. We
know the pattern: those who do not deliver or cannot show progress usually do not write the next report.

146GDP measures what it measures: monetary transactions. So, also income and spending related to things like traffic
accidents, deforestation, mining of ores, depression and burnout, warfare, prisons, lawsuits, and even pure financial
trading.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.101
imminent. However, one can only begin to see trends over longer periods of time, and history will tell
us whether the time we live in was the moment of peak prosperity.

Our day-to-day experience, the news from around the world, our assumptions about economics, and
whatever else is said about progress: it together produces a complex, semi-contradictory and
confusing picture to say the least. And yet it needs to be repeated: our money – in terms of that
progress, and if the money system is not fundamentally altered – has a certain future in store for us.
A future that, incidentally, is unevenly distributed: what is to come for some people has already been
the reality for others for a lifetime, or even for generations.

Our future, and that of the market economy of which money is the hard core, is steered by an
invisible hand. But it is not the hand for which reference is usually made to Adam Smith and to his
ideas that formed the basis of economic liberalism. It is, in other words, not the invisible hand of the
self-regulating effect of markets in which, if everyone just pursues their own self-interest, we
collectively benefit and create progress and prosperity. No, there is a very different invisible hand at
work: market economies, along with the money systems that shape them, ultimately bring
themselves down. It pays to study history: it clarifies the confusing and contradictory picture of the
time we live in by situating those contradictions as chronological parts in a larger cycle.

That’s what economic historian Bas van Bavel does: he studies market economies, as old as they
are.147 But let’s define a couple of things before we look at the dynamics. Markets – as an allocation
model – are one way societies organise themselves to have access to resources, utilities, materials,
food, labour, skills, medicine, livelihoods and so on. Typically, markets work with money transactions
to exchange or distribute things. A market system thrives on competition between players seeking
advantage and profit, and supply and demand play an important role in determining price. We know
of markets for products and services, but – and here is the definition – only when the exchange,
allocation or distribution of things like land, labour and capital is also done through markets do we
speak of market economies. Market economies deal with economic goals. Not with other things.

Let’s keep the broad perspective: markets are not the only allocation model, or the only way
societies or cultures rely on to organise distribution and allocation. And even though the market
model is particularly dominant in our current world, pervasive market economies are the exception
rather than the rule in history. Let alone that something like a market economy would be the
inescapable outcome or endpoint of a linear evolution of progress. For example, we see centralised
systems where an administration, government or leadership decides what should go to whom. Or
exchange happens mainly in a ritual way or is based on tradition and its mythological framing. It can
also be done on the basis of all kinds of coercion or oppression, or conversely, on the basis of choice
and voluntariness. Among the Haudenosaunee, as we have already seen, goods were stored by
families in their longhouses, and they were allocated by the (council of) women – their culture is
matrilineal. In Inuit cultures, it was even perceived as strange when someone thanked another for
the meat distributed after a successful hunt: that was the most normal thing in the world, and

147
van Bavel, B. J. P. (2016). The invisible hand? How market economies have emerged and declined since AD 500. Oxford
University Press.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.102
thanking someone for it was tantamount to an insult – as if it could had occurred to the hunter to do
anything other than share. 148

Where market economies are limited to a purely economic function, we see that many of these
other allocation models can serve a wide range of social and environmental goals. Those goals can be
related to, for instance, security and connectedness, continuity and concern for the future, justice
and balance, well-being and stability. But also to other things of course, like the perpetuation or
expansion of power.

Back to the market economies that van Bavel examines. He identifies several that go far back in
time,149 but mainly studies those for which there is sufficient historical documentation: the market
economies of the heyday of Arab culture in Iraq (500-1100), in the Italian cities during the
Renaissance (1000-1500), in the Golden Age of Antwerp and Amsterdam (1100-1800), and the now
global market economies of the modern Anglo-Saxon world (1500-2000). The pattern he discovers is
that of a well-defined cycle of rise and decline, rather than of linear evolution or progress. A cycle
always begins with growth of prosperity, increasing freedom, wealth distribution, well-functioning
economies, relatively high living standards and broad political participation. These are all acquired in
social struggles where existing, feudal power elites are broken. This favourable social and economic
context provides fertile ground for the emergence of market economies – partly because their old
allocation models erode. So, it is not the reverse, as if market economies are at the root of that
increasing prosperity, freedom, equality or broad, political decision-making. No, on the contrary:
market economies need them to emerge.

And full-blood market economies emerge, as already indicated, as soon as, in addition to the
ordinary markets for products and services, markets emerge for the factors of production
themselves: land, labour and capital. In other words, when these are also gradually and increasingly
traded through markets: land markets, labour markets, capital markets. From then on, it is more or
less certain what happens next. This is what each of the market economies studied teaches us: there
is first a period of growth, with initial welfare gains, and with eventual replacement of slavery and
serfdom by wage labour. Factor markets are kept in check in that initial phase because, for now, they
are still embedded in a broader social ethos, and in a balance of interests. Things are going well. But
then, gradually, wealth accumulation follows, giving rise to new market elites. With their wealth,
these economic players also acquire more and more political and legal power, which only
strengthens their grip on everything. Inequality now grows, and freedom fades. Financial markets,
which in the beginning helped drive innovation and growth in the real economy, are now morphing
into something that becomes an end in itself with capital paying off through mainly financial
operations. In a tangle of speculation, monopolies and the gradual de facto merger of state and
capital, the real economy is choked and society is being eroded.

In all the cases studied by van Bavel, the downfall of the whole system then follows. The market
economy undoes itself, together with the society on which it has lived. That is its logic, that is its
system dynamics. Sometimes a market economy resurfaces elsewhere and later, when social

148 The example is somewhat elaborated in Graeber, D. (2014). Debt: The first 5,000 years (Updated and expanded edition).
Melville House, p. 79 et seq.
149 Probably meet the requirements for what we call market economies: Babylonia in the first centuries of the second

millennium before our era, Iraq in the neo-Babylonian era around the sixth century before our era, northern China and
classical Athens both in the fourth century before our era, and Rome around the beginning of our era.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.103
upheaval creates a properly functioning society with sufficient prosperity, equality, participation, and
freedom. Which can become the fertile breeding ground for a new market economy. But right now,
there does not seem to be any immediately available ‘elsewhere’: the Anglo-Saxon market economy
model has become our export product of choice and it is now global. Just about everyone has been
pulled into the bathtub, and there is no sign of any self-correcting mechanism.

Does it end badly? Those who know history may not need to repeat it.

Social capital, basic communism, and ecologically irreplaceable wealth

We pick up the thread: what are deep flaws in our money system? Why is it steering us in a direction
that is unsustainable, and that we will regret sooner or later?

In yet another way our current money system is an invisible driver of unsustainable behaviour: it
threatens to knock the bottom out of societies. For it severely challenges the social fabric that holds
together everything – the sense of community that makes living together and the economy possible.
And it does so in a number of ways.

In the most concrete and visible way, it does so where a ruthless global economy undermines entire
countries or regions, and the victims are on the losing side of imperialism and colonialism. The main
weapons deployed for colonisation and conquest are the means of payment and money systems
themselves: force a people to pay in the oppressor’s currency – whether through trade, taxes, or
debt repayments – and without exception local societies become severely disrupted.150 Resilience is
broken: their systems of self-sufficiency are lost when people, with only their labour and raw
materials at hand, find themselves at the mercy of large centralised money systems and the
accompanying market operations. Simply because they need to earn that foreign currency.
Colonisation is not something that belongs to the past: it is a phenomenon that is constantly
changing name and cover. Essentially the same techniques are used and repackaged under the IMF
and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes. Countries are still forced to pay their foreign
debts in foreign currency. Not just by the West, but on at least as large a scale meanwhile also by
China: the world is being scanned for opportunities to deploy financial capital.151 Countries at the
lower end of the power spectrum get bogged down in a system where they sell out their raw
materials or labour to multinationals to simply get that currency. Much of the money that goes to

150 Think of hut taxes – the example comes from Bernard Lietaer. For instance, in Ghana, which was a colony as well as an
outlet and new market for the British Empire, a new, official Ghanaian currency was introduced along with a tax on their
huts that Ghanaians had to pay in that currency. A tax on each hut meant that Ghanaians, in order to acquire that new
currency, had to start trading outside their normal, local networks – and particularly so with the British. The sad
consequence was that communities collapsed, and the new currency meant the end of sustainable, regional subsistence
economies.
The tactics that are employed at present may no longer be colonialist in name, but they remain the same. They trap many
countries in the Global South because they become financially dependent on other countries or players whose currency
they are forced to use. See, for example: Hickel, J. (2021). Money – the ultimate decolonizer? New Internationalist, 533, 66-
71.

151For an insider’s idea of more of these dynamics, see, for example: Perkins, J. (2023). Confessions of an economic hit man
(3rd edition). Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. ‘I was an economic hit man. What we do is not, in essence, illegal, but it should
be. We find third world countries with some resource that can be developed and then give a huge loan to that country. The
money, however, never goes to that country, but to our own companies within that country – companies that benefit only a
few very rich people.’

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those poorer countries, by the way, often does not actually go to those countries, but to the
(colonizer’s) own ‘transnational’ corporations that use it in those countries. Guru-status investor
Warren Buffet once called the financial abracadabra of derivatives trading a weapon of mass
destruction – which proved correct in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. But here we see that even
without the financial hocus pocus, our money is a lethal weapon. It rips apart existing societies and
reduces much of the world to outposts for cheap (human) resources.

Countless societies, mainly including those of indigenous peoples, have experienced it: once they are
sucked up into the big money systems, and their cultures and traditions have been deliberately
undermined, it is not long before they dangle hopelessly at the poorest end of the statistics. Though
many also display a resilience and dignity that may truly surprise. The paradox: we are eradicating a
cultural diversity of lifestyles and allocation models that have preserved the kind of wealth we are in
danger of losing. Opēgtaw Matāēmōh, a young Menominee first nations woman, once expressed it
this way, in front of a group of well-meaning activists who wanted to help the natives with their
problems: ‘The traditional Indian people are protecting something that is important to everyone.
They are trying to keep the country alive, and the world in balance. Sometimes I get the feeling that
you guys [looking at the audience] don’t really get it. You guys don’t really help us. We are helping
you.’152

We see the same thing happen within societies: local economies and social fabric are being affected
there too. Someone like David Boyle, for example, makes that very clear in what he says about it. 153
Whether they like it or not, all people in our societies use the same currency. After all, apart from a
few places where it is different, there is no alternative to the euro, pound, or dollar. The problem,
however, is that the value of that money – and thus the price of products and services – is
determined by traders in financial sectors. And not by ordinary people, not by the amount of energy
and time put into it, and certainly not by calculating its environmental cost. These traders form their
own world that has lost all touch with the real reality of ordinary life. They can afford anything and
live in the cities that house the big stock exchanges and that are the mecca of big money. Ordinary
people who used to live and work there have to give way because they can no longer afford the
housing and other prices. So, at an observable level, a monetary or financial economy takes over
from a normal or real economy, which nevertheless still needs to function as the input and guarantee
of the financial hocus pocus. The whole dynamic resembles what a cuckoo does: it barely does a
stroke of work and lays its egg in the nest of another who then has to work its ass off to maintain the
cuckoo’s young. At the risk of going under itself.

This brings us to yet another, more insidious way in which money is knocking the bottom out of our
societies: money has little regard for those things that do not represent immediate economic or
financial value but are nonetheless of vital importance for everything and everyone. Things without

152Opēgtaw Matāēmōh, or Flying Eagle Woman and The Spirit Watches Over, are the first nations names of Ingrid
Washinawatok. The conference took place in San Francisco in 1986. See: Mander, J. (1992). In the absence of the sacred:
The failure of technology and the survival of the Indian Nations (Sierra Club Books paperback ed). Sierra Club Books, pp.
221-224. Ingrid Washinawatok was murdered in Colombia in 1999 when she came to help the local community preserve its
own culture and resist oil exploitation.

153What follows is his line of reasoning. David Boyle, Local Currencies and the Wizard of Oz, Speech given at the Local
Currencies for the 21st Century Conference, organised by the E. F. Schumacher Society, at Bard College, New York, 27 June
2004. See also Boyle, D. (2009). Money matters: Understanding crazy credit and erroneous economics. Alastair Sawday.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.105
which societies fall apart. According to David Boyle, we need to be more aware of this unnoticed and
unappreciated economy that is increasingly falling victim. It is the social or family ‘economy’ of
human ‘transactions’ where the foundations are laid of a community capable of taking care of itself.
It is the ‘economy’ where old people are looked after, and experience listened to, where children are
potty-trained, where the neighbourhood is taken care of, and nature preserved. Where honesty is
taught, and trustworthiness, craftsmanship and expertise are appreciated, where people know how
and where they can contribute to the community. Where diversity and quality are valued, as well as
humour and the ability to put things in perspective. Where sense is made. Where people look after
each other’s health. And after each other’s children – as in African wisdom: it takes a village to raise a
child. Where skills, social and otherwise, are passed on with care. And where families,
neighbourhoods and communities are built that way.

Without this social and family ‘economy’ – the real wealth – there is no properly functioning society,
let alone we can run an economy. Many seem to assume that the things we’ve listed in the previous
paragraph arise ‘for free’ or come into being all by themselves, but that could not be further from the
truth: they demand effort, discipline and dedication. However, reality also tells us that more and
more of those things are washed away in a culture where money values other things much more, or
where other things provide a much higher return: the social and family economy is bypassed by
money that has its eye on the sky. And then social fabric unravels. Tellingly, while top incomes often
have a socially destructive balance – at the end of the day they destroy more value than they
contribute – many of the jobs and occupations that contribute strongly to that social fabric remain
underpaid.154 In fact, the latter often remain completely unnoticed and unpaid. We even forget to
call them jobs because, in a strange inversion of the logic, they do not generate income, so they
cannot be jobs. While they build societies. Not infrequently, they concern the long term, such as
building neighbourhoods, maintaining our ecological wealth, looking after each other, or raising
children.

If we think about it for a moment: we shouldn’t be concerned over money, we should concern
ourselves over wealth. And in the broadest and most diverse sense of that word. But our focus
shifted, and the means has become the end, and money focuses on itself. Boyle: our money system
lets us down and fails when it comes to appreciating the intricate web of that real, local wealth of a
community. Our mainstream currency systems – euros, dollars, yens – are very poor measures or
gauges of value, they are tinted glasses we put on – a way to view the world – and they increasingly
determine what we see and don’t see. And when we stop noticing certain things, they not only
disappear from view, they disappear from reality. When social fabric is no longer appreciated, it
simply disintegrates. There is a big silence descending on the world: our big money monoculture
manages to gradually but surely eradicate the diversity of wealth. Big money is pushing out the
wealth of lived life. While there is no wealth but life itself.

154See, for example, the NEF report ‘A bit rich. Calculating the real value to society of different professions’ in which The
New Economics Foundation, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, tries to quantify the contribution of six
professions to society in relation to how much they earn. The ratio between what people contribute and what they get in
return is quite revelatory. Two of the occupational groups: ‘Bankers. While collecting salaries of between £500,000 and £10
million, leading City bankers destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate. Parents and childcare. For
every £1 they are paid, childcare workers generate between £7 and £9.50 worth of benefits to society.’ The other
occupational groups looked at are advertising executives, hospital cleaners, tax accountants, and waste recyclers. See:
https://neweconomics.org/2009/12/a-bit-rich

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Some call this overlooked economy social capital, others prefer to talk about something like basic
communism, but whatever it is and however we talk about it: they form the foundation and core of
living together. Social capital or basic communism is what makes societies and economies possible. It
is what constitutes living together.155

Dare we widen the scope of this hidden and supportive social economy? Then the ‘economy’ of
nature or the ecology of existence itself comes into the picture: it too is often seen as ‘free’ and self-
evident, it too is completely undervalued in our monetary system, and that fabric of ecological
‘capital’ is also severely affected. This primary ‘economy’, which is the absolute and undeniable basis
of any possible further economy, involves the production and circulation of all kinds of goods and
services by nature itself.156 Goods such as water, air, nutrients, raw materials, energy, natural
medicines, biochemicals, fertile soils. Services such as pollination, climate regulation, erosion control,
disease control, water purification, decomposition of substances, maintenance of air quality, soil
formation. And all this circulates in complex networks of water cycles, ocean and air circulation,
cycles of carbon, nitrogen, nutrients, and countless more. So, if we want to look at the world through
an economic lens, we had better admit that our planetary ecology is also a form of economy. It is
best not to try to imagine what would happen if our money system undercut that economy and
knocked the ecological bottom out of our society. Unfortunately, it seems to be what is happening:
we recognise a pattern of extraction, plunder, and overexploitation. And in general, we see the near
inability of our money to recognise the vital importance of a healthy primary economy: it is valued
only where it is useful and can deliver.

Should we then put a higher price on it? Calculate what it will cost if bees disappear and we lose one
of the champions of pollination? What the expenditure will have to be if we allow sea levels to rise
further, or what the final cost will be if heat waves and multi-year droughts make forest fires virtually
uncontrollable? They are indeed done, such calculations. Mostly with the intention of inciting action.
For instance, Nicholas Stern and his research team calculated in 2006 that the benefits of vigorous
and early action on climate change are many times greater than the economic costs of inaction.
According to formal economic models, we easily lose 5% of world GDP per year, and up to 20% of
that world GDP per year when risks and impacts are assessed more broadly.157

And yet, despite the best intentions and the appreciated wake-up call of this kind of approach, we
should be careful here. If we begin to speak the language of money or capital we may be bringing in a
Trojan horse. For this is the deeper paradox: when we (in an attempt to value them) put an economic
value (and thus a price) on things from that primary economy that constitutes nature, we embed an
economic way of looking even deeper into our culture. But an economic point of view only sees what
can be seen from an economic point of view: it impoverishes reality into utility and profit. That is why
the previous paragraphs contain so many inverted commas: ‘transactions’, ‘free’, ‘capital’, and
especially ‘economy’. That can only be metaphorical use of words; and even then the imagery is not

155‘In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability.’ See: Graeber, D. (2014). Debt: The first 5,000 years
(Updated and expanded edition). Melville House, p. 96.

156 See, for example, what Vandana Shiva writes about this in the chapter ‘Living Economies’ in Shiva, V. (2006). Earth
democracy: Justice, sustainability, and peace. Zed Books.
157 See: Stern, N. H., & Great Britain (Eds.). (2007). The economics of climate change: The Stern review. Cambridge University

Press. Seven years after the study, Stern indicated at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he was wrong, and that he
had even underestimated the risks.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.107
innocent. Before we are aware of it, water and air will have been privatised and commercialised,
plants and animals lose their rights, and ecosystem services are traded through markets. In the
market economies that van Bavel studied, a fourth factor is then added that is traded through
markets (and ends up with a small market elite): the ecology itself, in addition to land, labour, and
capital.

A similar paradox, incidentally, also holds true for the ‘undervalued’ social ‘capital’ we looked at.
Human interaction and relationships that are brought into economics by ‘valuing’ them as
commercial transactions may fundamentally change in character. Things may yield a profit or earn
one an income, but to do things because they pay is different from doing things because we simply
think we should do them, or because they make sense in themselves, or fall under the ethics and
responsibilities of our relationships.158

Monopolies and monocultures

A final ticking time bomb we want to discuss here deals with the vulnerability and the danger of a
money monoculture.

We know what monocultures are, we are familiar with them mainly from agriculture and forestry.
Monocultures typically involve vast areas of land planted with just one crop: wheat, rice, banana,
Douglas fir, potato, soybean, maize, oil palm, eucalyptus, sorghum. Often it even concerns one
specific variety of that crop species. In much livestock farming, we do the same thing. As the
rationale behind monocultures is (industrial) efficiency, and efficiency has become the code word for
every form of organisation, we begin to see monocultures in many areas of our society. More or less
the same everywhere: we often trade diversity for efficiency.

Leaving aside the question whether they really are more efficient, and certainly whether they are
more efficient in the long run, we should be aware of a serious danger of monocultures.
Monocultures make production, and therefore also yield, harvest or output particularly vulnerable:
after all, monocultures involve one, large, interwoven, and uniform system with no buffers, lifelines,
reserve players or plan B. Relying solely on the for the outcome supposedly most efficient or easiest-
to-manage species resembles keeping only bees for pollination. If we abandon functional diversity, if
in other words we dump all other species with the same function (pollination in this case), then when
things go wrong with the bees it goes wrong for everyone, because no one is left to pollinate: no
substitute players left. Monocultures with thousands of plants of the same species close together,
that is almost by definition asking for trouble. It is asking for an outbreak of some disease or plague,
it is asking for wildfires that, in forests of one species and of uniform age, no longer have natural
stoppers or buffers. One spark, one little thing that goes wrong and things may get seriously out of
hand. In those forests, a spiral of (chemical) pest control, incidentally, has in many cases only made
things worse. This is simply how nature works: it will try to restore diversity. In systems terminology,
we call such a thing a corrective feedback mechanism. It is triggered to counteract the unnatural

158Our money, as well as our market economy accompanying it, constantly turns things upside down. It even turns ethics
into a commodity and into a business strategy: ‘Ethics is the new competitive environment’. Doing ethics is profitable,
unless, for instance, you can operate completely in the dark or have a monopoly on something – then it’s not even needed,
and you can get away with what you do. After all, corporate image is an asset, i.e. money, and that corporate image is
sensitive to public opinion. Only then, in a similar reversal as indicated in the text, it is no longer about ethics, but about
profit and gain. To be ethical is profitable, but to be ethical because it is profitable is not ethical – Peter Koestenbaum.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.108
situation of the super-efficient monoculture of one dominant species, and to restore diversity to the
system so as to make it more resilient again. If things hang by just one thread, we don’t want it to
snap. All eggs in one basket is not a good idea either – there is quite a bit of system wisdom in our
expressions.

What we just described is exactly the situation we find ourselves in with our money system. So, here
is another flaw, which has everything to do with monocultures and monopolies.

We know what can go wrong – worldwide – in an overconnected and intertwined system consisting
mainly of one kind of money. We look at it with anxious hearts every time a financial crisis or panic
breaks out. Let’s be clear here: with one kind of money we are referring to debt – money created and
managed in the banking and financial sector, and increasingly in its interconnectedness with
governments, central banks and large transnational conglomerates. It is not because there are
different versions of debt money in circulation – dollars, yens and roubles, for example, but also
government and corporate bonds, and all sorts of other forms of debt securities – that we do not
have a money monoculture. All those currencies and things are linked and simply exchangeable for
each other. They are not parallel or complementary things but essentially one and the same thing.
Had they not been interchangeable, there would have been walls or buffers between them, and what
happened with the 2007-2008 crisis, for example, could not have happened.

A failing money monoculture can not only wreak havoc in real economies, the havoc can also easily
spread if there are no buffers. In a world of free movement of goods and services, but especially of
unhindered movement of super-mobile and exchangeable capital in a financial world where
everything is connected to every other thing, a little push can topple surprisingly many domino
blocks. Issue risky mortgages somewhere, bet on their default at the same time, package the two
together into one financial product, then resell it as if it were just money, and circulate that money in
a world without borders: that is all it takes to create something we saw happen in 2007-08. Our
financial sector, which had first sent an economy into overdrive, collapsed. A financial meltdown.
With a near-global economic recession following it.

Correction. Or nuance. At the time, that economic breakdown is undeniably real, but the financial
sector does not collapse at all. At least: we don’t let that happen. Behind the scenes, a few players
quickly change seats or names and the big party simply and merrily continuous. People cash in on the
crisis: if something can make money, it will make money. After all, a tough crisis means a dream
opportunity for big finance and big business to tighten their grip. No, although the financial world is
in a bit of a mess at that time, there is no question of a total financial meltdown: it is mainly its
service function to the economy that collapses and vanishes into thin air. And indeed, shock waves
thunder through our world – our societies, our economies – a short while later. More than 15 years
later the effects are still being felt: eroded public services, mounting sovereign debts, a long period of
zero interest rates, economies that have not quite caught their breath yet. And then the next issues
are already presenting themselves: a pandemic, wars, energy concerns, inflation. These are huge
challenges for societies, which become even more indebted, and even more vulnerable in their
dependency.

In systems terminology, a failing money monoculture is a major shock when combined with a rigid,
fragile, and vulnerable economy that no longer has the stamina, imagination and adaptability of a
diverse and resilient system. A crisis typically requires flexible minds and the capacity to change gear

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.109
rapidly. But a monoculture means there is nothing to switch or change to, no horse on which to jump
from a runaway train. There is no complementary second, third or fourth money alternative we can
fall back on to escape the danse macabre. Economists and politicians do not usually invent
alternative money systems in their spare time so they can be pulled from their drawers when need
be. We are into econometrics rather than into imagination that sets us free. If everything depends on
money, and there is only one kind of money, we are left empty-handed in such a situation. The sad
reality: we can only throw in more debt and promises. Only to expect them back like a boomerang.
Perilous swings and ever-increasing yo-yo movements are the inevitable consequences: they are the
volatile dynamics of the system’s own overcorrections.

Systems thinking not only points to the dangerous lack of diversity of money systems, it thus also
calls attention to the lack of modularity. In other words, it warns against the excess of
interconnectedness, and the lack of buffers, shock absorbers or dampers. What is needed to avoid an
all-out crisis, is a design or architecture in modules, in smaller units that are more or less
independent and between which there are buffers, with currencies that do not operate as
communicating vessels. This way, almost literally, a problem can be contained when it occurs. Our
global money system performs particularly poorly when it comes to this: it is over-connected in such
a complex way that a lot of the interconnections can only be suspected. We see most connections
only after the facts, when the dominoes fall.

Monocultures are only one way of organising systems. Other, less vulnerable ways include
polycultures, alternating cultures, mixed cultures, permacultures or multicultures – the terms
practically speak for themselves. When we talk about monopolies, we rather refer to the players
(within the monocultures) who have the power to set the game – the rulers in the monocultural
systems, so to speak. The ones to whose piping the others must dance. In a somewhat broader way
of looking at it, we could now say that (our) money seems to acquire a monopoly on economic and
even on human transactions, and that it narrows down our culture to one kind of relations. But even
within that money monoculture itself, we can still look at possible monopolies. That brings us to the
dollar. After WWII, the United States managed to establish its dollar as the world’s pre-eminent
reference and reserve currency with the Bretton Woods Agreement, and after that agreement
expired in 1971, they managed to get the dollar recognised as the currency in which OPEC countries
would trade their oil worldwide. A de facto quasi-monopoly. But after a long reign – and in a
changing energy world with climate concerns and geopolitical muscle-flexing – that petrodollar is
now coming under pressure. When we know that the dollar represents some 60% of global currency
reserves, and is one of the major trading currencies, it is not hard to see the fragility of the system,
and to see that a profound reshaping of the financial landscape is underway, trade wars included.
There are all kinds of things going on, some of which can be summed up under what is sometimes
called dedollarisation – breaking the hegemony of the dollar by adopting other reserve or trading
currencies, for instance. BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China – and mainly China, but actually
many non-Western countries have wanted to get out from under the hegemony of the dollar for
some time. Though for now, it remains mostly speculation about what will happen if the dollar really
starts to waver.159

159 It seems inconceivable that the biggest financial players are not preparing for that moment. Or even anticipating or co-
orchestrating it. Bernard Lietaer already pointed out the unimaginable commotion that would ensue if the dollar crashes
(personal communication). See also, for example, Bendell, J. (2023). Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to
collapse. Good Works.

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Money as a mirror, and a fundamental win-win

There is an awful lot more to be said about it, and there are other perspectives and readings of some
of the facts, but by looking at these dynamics and fundamental flaws of the system, we have lifted a
tip of the money veil.

In doing so, we looked mainly at how money moves – the stocks and flows – and tried to uncover the
connections with economic, social and (geo)political realities. Money is and remains a wicked reality
par excellence and escapes any possible complete description or problem definition. Testimony to
this are the various theories that exist about money, and about the workings of the financial system.
Besides, every intervention in the system – whatever orchestrations anyone plans with it – seems to
steer money, economy, and society in sometimes unexpected directions. More and more money
seems to escape any control. Money is round, and it rolls away – Confucius.

By stepping back and identifying the system dynamics and compelling logic of it – underlying
conditions, constraints, internal contradictions, external limits so to speak – we may have become
more aware of what money is, what it does, and why and where it is so problematic. Money is the
water in which we swim like fish, and so it requires this kind of bird’s eye view to gain some insight
into it. For good reason Bernard Lietaer speaks of his lifelong study of money as Credentials of a
Flying Fish.160 The result of that bird’s-eye view may be called disconcerting and perhaps
disheartening, but for those willing to look, it also holds up an uncomfortable mirror to our society,
economy and culture. But there is no harm in giving up some naivety, and becoming more aware of
how money works. After all, there is a lot of future at stake. And mobilising even more money to
tackle climate or energy issues, for instance, sounds a bit wry when we know by now that our money
is partly responsible for those issues. We remember Dennis Meadows: ‘We will never create
sustainability while immersed in the present financial system’. Sustainability: that’s not much future,
that’s all future.

Money, and money systems, can be organised and designed differently. As was already mentioned:
money is political. So even the disillusionment and discouragement do not need to overwhelm us,
because money is not a law of nature. As long as our exploration provides the insights and guts for a
different or modified system, we are on track. In fact, it seems that in our situation money is one of
the most powerful levers for change. It arguably is the acupuncture point that can trigger change on
numerous levels: change money and we change the world. The real, decent win-wins – the win-wins
worthy of that name – can be found where money in its dynamics and logic itself comes to serve
value. And serve wealth, but in a much broader sense than what our money has narrowed that
wealth down to. Unless we are born cynics, we assume that money can serve economies that provide
for decent livelihoods and human well-being. Can serve societies where it is good to live. And can
serve a healthy planetary ecosystem that is the fundamental and irreplaceable wealth underpinning
all of that.

160 See: https://bernard-lietaer.org/about/a-flying-fish/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.111
What all of this boils down to is an unmistakable invitation for systemic change: a change in the logic
and source code of money, an updating of its fundamental deontology, and perhaps even a
redrawing of its identity. Possibly in a parallel circuit. An ethical issue, through and through.

If ethics is the critical reflection on prevailing morality – on the morals, customs, values, and norms
that define a society, economy or culture – then we can already glean much of our prevailing
morality from our money system. As if it were our mental software, our money system guides our
behaviour and colours our decisions. Even if we deploy money for all sorts of well-intentioned things,
it produces perverse effects. Our current money does not maintain a double standard: all in all, it
looks after itself. Maybe in everyday reality our hearts, or our conscience, or our concerns want to
steer us in a particular direction, we can bet our lives on it: our wallet often makes us walk in the
opposite direction. Perhaps, in the meantime, our wallet has become our conscience.

What is this morality of ours that we see in the money mirror? Let’s summarise the fragments of the
image in a moment. These should help to identify leverage points where intervention is desirable,
makes sense, and has impact. After all, few things are as energy, time, and resource consuming as
rearranging furniture on a boat heading for an iceberg. And for those who are puzzled by such a thing
as systemic change: such change, by the way, does not mean that we simply throw out the idea of a
convenient and reliable means of exchange and payment with the bathwater. Au contraire: perhaps
that is exactly what we should preserve and safeguard. If we do not demonstrate entrepreneurship
for our future on that point, where does that leave us?

Fragments of the money mirror image of our times and our prevailing morality? Only the short term
matters. Everything as cheap as possible. Take what you can. Competition drives progress. The
business of business is business: profit is the bottom line. The planet is interesting when it yields up.
So are people. Keep the social fabric out of the accounts. The ecological fabric too. Profits are
privatised, losses socialised – a double standard after all? Only growth can save us. Whoever does
not win the monopoly game is a loser. People are free to do what they want. No taboos: if something
can be done, it is allowed. Money opens doors. Wealth is more interesting than income. Thinking like
a selfish gene makes us all better off. Value is expressed in money. What we have defines who we
are.

Homo economicus into free fall?

Change the way money works

The combined climate and energy issue, but by no means only this, poses huge challenges to the
financial system and to society.

How can money be steered onto a socially fair, economically interesting, and ecologically beneficial
track? How on earth can we escape from the straitjacket of compulsory growth? From the grip of a
catch-22? How can we avoid the debacle of the market economy? Or how can we preserve well-
being and safeguard societies in such a situation? How can finance once again become the service
sector of our real economy? How can the next systemic crash be avoided? How can we programme
money so it favours the long term? So that it fully values and strengthens that basic communism,
that social and ecological capital? How can we create that vital kind of diversity of money systems?

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And how deep into our culture are we willing to dig for that?

From our exploration of history we learnt that looking for the origins of money may have meant
looking for the origins of our economic way of thinking and acting. And we noticed that this
economic view of reality is deeply woven into the world religions that emerged in the womb of
societies of the time, along with money. Questioning money rightly feels almost like questioning our
religion, orthodoxy, or culture itself. Are we willing to do that? And what price are we willing to pay –
or make others and future generations pay – if we don’t?

In broad brushstrokes, in what follows, we examine how money can be designed differently. They
form perspectives on change – and what is presented is far from exhaustive. Anyone who
understands the deep flaws can come up with their own alternatives that avoid the unwanted
dynamics. We start with easy, obvious, and immediately deployable things we can do. Systematically,
we dig deeper. Following the scheme of the system iceberg: from actions, to patterns, to structures,
and so to the underlying mental models of our cultural identity. We can already see the storm
coming: at that level, we have no choice but to abandon our predominantly economic way of looking,
thinking and acting. At that deepest level, changing money feels like changing identity. And it might
as well be exactly that: exchanging homo economicus for homo sapiens perhaps – economic man
again for wise man?

But let us look at the low-hanging fruit first.

Even without systemic change – that means without adjusting it or changing rules in the current
monetary system – change can take place. And it can have a surprisingly large impact. Especially if
many do it together or at the same time: then a real movement may emerge. Here, the money at
hand is itself a lever, and it is simple: everyone who has money – individuals, companies,
communities, organisations, institutions, funds, governments, banks – can make countless choices
about where to spend it, whether to spend it at all, how to save it, and where to invest it or take it
away, if necessary. The power of money can create financial breathing space for things we may want
to promote, such as local production for local consumption, quality healthcare, economies
embedded in societies, affordable housing, liveable neighbourhoods, workable work, holistic
education, cultural exchange, reuse, recycling and circular initiatives, quality public transport, nature
restoration and rewilding projects, clean and cooperative energy, culture, art, and connection,
research into alternative money systems, experiments with basic income. Conversely, with the power
of money, by taking it away or not spending it there, the financial breath can be cut off from things
we may not want: clothes made by children, fossil fuel extraction, unhealthy food, gambling and
speculation, products or services of big monopolists, throwaway stuff. A concrete example of the first
possibility is buying food through some CSA network – community supported agriculture – or the
local short supply chain. An example of how money can be kept away from something unwanted is
the divestment movement in which institutions, funds, companies, universities and governments
shift their investments away from fossil fuels.161 In these ways, we help decide – through our money
and purchasing power – what future we want to live in: what we want to keep or grow, and what we
want to get rid of.

161 See: http://www.csa-netwerk.be/ for the CSA network and https://gofossilfree.org/ for the Fossil Free movement.

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We descend one level deeper in our systemic iceberg, just below the waterline, and explore what
change might mean there. That is the level where we – in debate, consultation, and through political
decisions – intervene in the rules of the game of the mainstream financial and banking system. In
practice, that amounts to re-regulation following the waves of deregulation we have seen in recent
decades. Indeed, we have seen attempts to increase the robustness of the system by lowering the
risks of bank runs or other panic reactions.162 But with every attempt at further regulation we see a
corresponding tendency by the financial industry to erode or weaken it (again), or propose self-
regulation instead. Anyway, much of the re-regulation only raises some of the buffers and ratios
fractionally, but does little to change the very instability of a system with a deeply split personality.
After all, money is expected to engage in safe services while itself operating in a world of high-
competitive logic. Moreover, the sector proves resourceful enough to dodge the obligations of new
agreements or accords by repackaging its traditional banking institutions into a different kind of
financial player to whom regulations then do not apply. A loan or debt then morphs into yet another
kind of corporate bond, for example, and the financial game always stays one step ahead of
regulation. Precisely those forms of shadow banking should also be regulated – but the idea of
shadow banking says enough. And the sheer question of whether regulation can be monitored and
policed at all is possibly the elephant in the room: rules are wasted effort without proper monitoring,
enforcement or sanctioning. By the way, there is no question about who will take the brunt of
possible sanctions: passing costs on to third parties is second nature to our money system.

In other words, regulation must also aim at simplification, and at reducing a sector to the core
functions of financial services. Regulation needs to dig deeper in the system, and cover the broader
sector of shadow banking as well. Unfortunately, ideas and proposals for re-regulation quickly
become quite technical issues that are incomprehensible to a lot of people, and sometimes even to
the insiders. But they deal with the following, among other things: shadow banking itself and its lack
of transparency, scale and overconnection, excessive solvency and liquidity risks, tax havens,
concentration of power, passing on problems to savers, to real economy or to governments, rampant
money creation, flawed credit and risk assessment, bonuses and fee systems, securitisation,
operation of hedge funds and insurance companies, derivatives and derivatives trading, and all
transactions in general that are purely speculative. This enumeration in itself makes one dream of
dismantling a complex, virtual and speculative financial economy that as a spin-off has outgrown
many times over the real economy it is supposed to serve. Any rules that slim it down to ‘of service
to’ are welcome. This kind of intervention in the system also comes down to deciding what is
acceptable and what is not, or what is no longer acceptable, based on what kind of world we want to
live in. Although many doubt whether we have much chance of succeeding at this level.

A deeper route that is sometimes taken when it comes to change is one that does not just change
the rules of the game, but also intervenes more directly via two key leverage points: how much credit
can be extended, and what that credit can be used for. The system is also sometimes called window
guidance, moral suasion, credit controls or framing of credit. Again, this assumes a properly
regulated sector, otherwise things may be to no avail. Framing of credit comes down to this: the
government – for example through its central bank – sets guidelines related to the amount of credit
that may or should be provided to achieve a certain thing. In other words, guidelines on the quantity
of that credit are linked to guidelines on its quality: what that money may or should then be used for.

162
For example, with the Basel III Accords ratified by the G20 in 2010. Basel III has been difficult in terms of
implementation, and even in terms of its effects now it seems to not have turned out to be entirely positive.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.114
This way, financial resources are coloured and quotas may be set for specific targets (producing
goods, for example, or real services, renewable energy, quality education, innovative technology and
building know-how) while other things could possibly be kept in check (no excessive consumer credit,
for example) or even excluded with that money (pure speculation, for example). This intervention
amounts to deciding how much money a society needs, and what that society wants the money to
do. So, it shapes the economy, and almost literally colours the future. Or in a slightly more nuanced
fashion: if it is governments that decide, it is the assumptions and convictions (and voters, and lobby
groups, ...) of those governments that determine the quantity and colour. We are back to politics:
things can go in all kinds of directions with those coloured resources. But that the technique works is
clear: it was applied in several countries and often happened without coercion – hence moral
suasion. Banks were easily persuaded to go along with this story, it meant stability and security for
them, and they were seen as financial service providers to the real economy. 163

An even more thorough reform of the money system could involve switching from the private-public
money of today to a system of purely public money. Let us not forget that in our current system a lot
of money is created as loans by the private sector, whether by private banks whose credits are
recognised as legal tender, or by large multinational or financial players whose securities are
converted into money in quantitative easing programmes. In this purely public money system,
money creation would be taken away from commercial logic and placed in the hands of the
government or a public institution such as a newly-designed central bank.164 This would address the
fundamental problem that a secure service function to society and the economy is housed in a sector
that operates in a world that is by definition at odds with that service. Taking money creation and
money management away from this sector and bring them under the control of society means
turning money into a commons again – literally: something that belongs to all. Public money systems
come in many forms, but key elements could include the following.165 New money cannot be created
by private institutions, only by an independent public institution like such a newly-designed central
bank. That is why, by the way, it is called public money – sovereign, plain, pure, chartal, state, 100%,
public or constitutional money. The money created is held at that central bank, or it may be held in a
system of payment banks or institutions that hold 100% central bank reserves. Private sector credit
institutions or banks are separated from payment banks, and those credit institutions have to raise
existing money before they can lend it. The public money is safe – it is even safer than with the
deposit insurance as we know it today.166 And the normal risks apply to the credit banks: both for the
banks themselves and for their customers, investors and shareholders, in short for all those who
borrow or hold money there. Here, understandably, there is no government insurance: these are the
normal risks that everyone assesses for themselves, and possible losses have to be taken.

163The most cited examples: US (1920s), Japan (1950s to 1990s), Taiwan (1940s), UK (1950s), China (which adopted and still
sees the idea as an important tool for monetary policy – China did not have a banking crisis in 2008).

164‘Newly-designed’: it can be misleading to talk about central banks precisely because there are all kinds of central banks.
And often they are not even government-owned. The US Central Bank, for instance, is not really a government institution,
and the least that can be said of it is that its independence is not guaranteed.

165See, for example: Scientific Council for Government Policy (Netherlands), & Hoog, J. de (Eds.). (2019). Money and debt:
The public role of banks. Scientific Council for Government Policy.

166The deposit insurance scheme (€100.00 per account holder) should maintain confidence in the system, but the insurance
fund under it is inadequate for severe crashes. Taxpayers pay the deficits.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.115
Indeed, why should money creation and money management not be done by governments – as a
public service? In the facts, governments already guarantee or underwrite money in all sorts of ways
anyway, and governments and central banks are up to their necks in money creation and money
flows.167 After the great crisis of the 1930s, such reform was already suggested in the US with the
Chicago Plan: a proposal to separate the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, with
money creation sitting with the government at 100% reserve for deposits, and banks only as
intermediaries.168 Basically, pretty much what most people imagine the functioning of a bank to be: it
keeps assets safe, acts as a liaison, and cannot lend more than what it has. It is not at all surprising
that a 2012 IMF Working Paper, following the 2007-2008 financial crisis, picks up and studies the idea
of the Chicago Plan again.169 The paper does not represent the IMF’s view, but the researchers can
confirm that key claims regarding the Chicago proposal make sense in their study model. First, the
plan realises much better control over a major source of cyclical fluctuations, of sudden increases
and decreases in bank credit and the amount of money created by banks. Two: complete elimination
of bank runs. Three: sharp fall in (net) public debt. And four: sharp fall in private debt, as money
creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. Moreover, the researchers say inflation can
fall to zero without posing problems for monetary policy. They add that there is no evidence in
monetary history that a government monopoly on money creation necessarily leads to high inflation
– a fear that is clearly prevalent. Something à la public money system or à la Chicago Plan clearly
seems promising if we want to address some of the system’s flaws. It is not surprising that the idea
keeps popping up in panic situations or after crises: it promises stability, avoids bank runs and goes
for debt reduction. Some ideas or assumptions related to money as a public or government
monopoly also do circulate under the umbrella of MMT – Modern Money Theory. 170

Substantial reforms of the money system should quite rightly also intervene in the logics related to
inflation. Some caution is needed. We typically speak of inflation when there is a general increase in
the prices of goods and services, and thus when the value of money decreases and purchasing power
goes down. This is how inflation is defined, for example, by the European Central Bank. Inflation is
then measured against an index: a representative and well-considered basket of goods and services.
Inflation is not necessarily a problem for everyone, but it is a serious problem for a lot of people:
money can only be spent once. So, it is also a problem for economies. Inflation, in the conventional

167Governments provide deposit insurances and safety nets. Central banks, which are last resort, guarantee that
commercial money is valid, extend credit to commercial banks, buy up bank and corporate bonds – but also government
bonds for that matter – in programmes of quantitative easing, or try to adjust the amount of money available to the
economy in still other ways.

168
The Chicago plan was not adopted. What was adopted however, in 1933, was the less far-reaching Glass-Steagall Act,
which separated commercial or merchant banks from investment banks: it was intended to reduce speculative risk in
merchant banks. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by President Clinton in 1999. The link with the 2007-2008 crisis seems
obvious.

169Benes, J & Kumhof, M. (2012). The Chicago Plan Revisited. IMF Working Paper 12/202.
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12202.pdf The claims they check are those of Irving Fisher, their study
model concerns the US economy and financial system.

170MMT or Modern Money Theory. Countries that have full control over their fiat currency (‘unsecured securities’, like the
floating currencies that became the new normal after the abandonment of the gold standard) do not have to worry about
government deficits or public debt in this theory. They do not need to rely on taxes or borrowing elsewhere to meet their
expenses. This kind of government (the US for example, but there are others) has the de facto monopoly on money, they
have an unlimited credit card.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.116
story, needs to be contained or sustained: the European Central Bank, for example, tries to keep that
inflation at 2%, and it does so, as we have already seen, partly by tinkering with interest rates: not
too much, not too little, in a market game where it tries to keep supply and demand in relative
equilibrium and economies more or less stable and running, with just the appropriate amount of
money flowing.

Fighting inflation remains important, but central bank policy is bumping into its limits, often has
perverse side effects, and even seems to somehow contribute to the inflation problem itself. In the
long run – through its programmes of quantitative easing – it puts even more money into circulation
while the economy is not necessarily growing at similar rates. Inflation-related solutions had better
be well thought out, and they should start from the realities underneath inflation. In other words, it
is not a good idea to simply sweep general price increases all into the same inflation heap. Even if
some form of monetary devaluation is almost by definition the result of it – after all, we can buy less
with the same money – price increases can mask very different realities.

Prices may go up when, in market economies, supply and demand do not match. Markets believe
they can deal with that through competition. But prices can also increase if there are real scarcities in
some areas, especially when it comes to key things like energy, raw materials, or food for instance.
Real scarcities cannot be eliminated or solved with simple market models. It basically pushes prices
up. But there are all sorts of further reasons why the real cost of products or services may rise and
thus result in a price increase for the end user. Costs related to labour and personnel for instance, or
to administration, quality requirements, extended responsibility, technology, data management and
security measures. Increasingly, however, price increases must also be attributed to a spiral of ever
higher corporate profits, and they have nothing to do with scarcity or rising production costs. In fact,
they have very little to do with reality: price increases can go hand in hand with falling costs without
any problem. The result is sometimes described as me-culture or corporate greed: a shareholder,
dividend or bonus economy traps itself in a logic of profit growth in a web of stock markets, indexes,
rankings, and speculation. In our economy the idea of profit seems to have been replaced by the
newer concept of profit growth, and price increases are part of that dynamic. Not: a company is
doing well when it generates profits, but rather: a company is doing well when it generates more
profits than the previous time it reported on those profits, and especially when it has more profit
growth than others. Trying to reverse or stop dynamics like this is of a very different nature from
what is usually understood by reducing inflation. And as for reasons for our price increases, we can
go even further: they may be due to monopoly positions and market rigging. And to (geo)politics
involving – directly or indirectly – all sorts of deal-making, subsidies, injections, embargoes,
blackmailing and other interventions.

No, price increases and inflation are not a one-to-one relationship, and reforms or interventions had
better not assume an over-simplified problem formulation that ignores those various realities they
mask. It may be better to approach a problem like inflation not from the side of price increases, but
from the side of the money supply. From the dictionary definition in other words: inflation is
depreciation of money due to the widespread existence or issuance of uncovered money. We know
the often-quoted examples of countries that have run into serious trouble on that front: the Weimar
Republic (1922-1923), Hungary (1945-1946), Zimbabwe (2007-2008, but with persistent upsurges),
Venezuela (2016-now) and a whole list of others. Their hyperinflation has to do with all sorts of
circumstances, but also often with unfortunate decisions by governments. Whether cornered by

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.117
financial markets or not, or by the dominant players in the global economy, governments can
participate in triggering hyperinflations if they put too many unsecured securities into circulation.
Wherever it occurs, inflation seems to affect mostly the (financially) weak, and so its effects are also
unevenly distributed. However, the examples may distract from the true facts of our global money
situation itself: if inflation stems from the widespread existence or issuance of ‘unsecured securities’,
it is no more or less than the structural problem of our current financial and money system itself.

That is the deeper problem of inflation: if the quantity of money becomes too large for what can be
bought with it, unless the surplus money is systematically kept out of the economy, prices will go up.
But if money is unsecured, sooner or later – in a corrective move – it adapts to that reality by
depreciating. We already saw that our money system, in its dynamics, is almost by definition
inflationary: growth is intrinsic to our money, and it inflates until it bursts like a bubble in a financial
economy, or interferes with the real economy via inflation. Again and again. Bursting bubbles and
rising inflation are two feedbacks that try to keep money close to economic reality: something that
has overheated must cool down. Countering inflation is therefore not more or less than going against
the nature of (our) money (system) itself. For a systems thinker, this means that the intervention
must take place at the level of the nature of money itself: fighting inflation means changing money.
Surely, there must be more sensible and better ways to keep money close to reality – more sensible
than opting for the bursting bubbles and the inflationary economies.171

Among those deeper kinds of adjustments to the system are proposals such as no longer using
unsecured money, and the system of demurrage or negative interest rates.

As we recall, money was once backed by gold – or so we believed. Or it simply was that gold. In
recent post-World War II history, with the Bretton Woods Agreement, we had a period when the
dollar became the world reserve currency that could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. All
other currencies were given a virtually fixed exchange rate against that dollar. What followed was a
period of some 25 years of relative economic stability, and of few financial crises. The abandonment
of that gold standard in 1971 put an end to that and resulted in floating currencies or fiat money:
currencies have no fixed value, there are no fixed exchange rates, people have to pay their taxes in
them, and they are otherwise backed by nothing other than the trust placed in them. That means
there was also no longer a stop to money creation when money was decoupled from gold. That has
its advantages – money can be created when needed – but, as we saw, it also has a lot of
disadvantages, and financial markets soon went all over the place.

So, for obvious reasons, there is something to be said for a system of fully backed money and the
stability and robustness such money can create or preserve. Typical: in the wake of every serious
money-related crisis, someone will say we should do something like Bretton Woods again, and there
will be calls to stockpile more gold – the safe haven in uncertain times – or even to return to a gold
standard. Something we can observe at the moment: more gold is being stockpiled here and there
(by central banks), especially in economies that at the same time want to escape the hegemony of
the dollar and prefer to have their currencies backed by something else. But, if push comes to shove:

171In the short term, for example, boosting purchasing power again (index adjustments to wages, for example, or keeping
basic services affordable) may and does help people, but it can also anchor monetary devaluation or rising prices via
purchasing power-price spirals. Feedback loops like this are not a good thing. Which, by the way, does not mean that some
‘decoupling’ or ‘disconnecting’ should be done here (of wages for instance), no: rather, a money system should be sought
that does not exhibit such feedback loops.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.118
does gold actually have the value we are giving it now? Isn’t it also a bit of an odd floating currency
whose value is determined mainly by things other than its real use value (which is undoubtedly there
too)? We would perhaps be wiser to link the quantity or value of money not to gold but directly to
the quantity of the economy. This may sound incomprehensible at first sight, but there have been
proposals along these lines in which money is backed by an underlying basket of goods that matter in
our global economy, for instance wheat, copper, energy, units of international transport, data
communications. Moreover, a proposal to introduce such Trade Reference Currency as a global
complementary payment system alongside mainstream currencies, and under the name Terra, also
uses the system of demurrage that addresses further problematic issues.172

Before we look at demurrage, let’s dot the i’s and cross the t’s. The Bretton Woods Agreement is far
from unblemished, especially in terms of the roles of the IMF and the World Bank that arose in the
lap of the agreement: developing countries were given a hard time, although that kind of practice did
not end after the agreement ended. And above all, and related to the roles of IMF and World Bank:
the system established the hegemony of the US, as it demanded that other countries did not ask for
the conversion into gold, while the US itself, in order to finance the Vietnam War, among other
things, accrued dollars that many times exceeded their amount of gold. So, it was a gold standard in
name only, not in practice.

Let us turn to demurrage. Working with negative interest or with a system of demurrage constitutes
another profound intervention in the money system. For most of us – familiar as we are with the
current system of positive interest rates – the idea is simply too crazy for words. Indeed, it amounts
to saying that, for example, our savings can no longer yield anything, and on the contrary there will
be a cost on keeping them or having them kept. Demurrage of 5% a year, for example, or of 1% per
month. So that is what demurrage or negative interest does: 5% of our money then disappears every
year in the examples, or 1% per month. That is blasphemy for savers. In order not to immediately
give up on the idea of the demurrage system, it is important to keep seeing the bigger picture, and
the longer-term positive effects of such a thing. (By the way: those are percentages of loss that are
simply already real in times of low or zero interest on savings accounts combined with inflation.) In
any case, we saw in our exploration of ticking time bombs the perverse effects of a system of
positive, compound interest rates: it traps the world in growth, causes it to focus on ever-shorter
time frames, and shifts attention away from the goal (value) to the medium of exchange itself
(money). To then make the money work for us. In this way, the short-term goals of people with
financial interests undermine the long-term goals of societies: it pays off to not think of our children,
and especially not of our grandchildren. Unless, of course, we want to leave them as much money as
we can, and as little planet as possible. Negative interest functions as a charge on money that is not
being used and it generates a fundamentally different dynamic. One that encourages us to keep
money in circulation, because by lying idle it only loses value anyway. Using the metaphor we used
earlier, the system invites people to play football instead of collecting balls that then hatch more
balls in some hocus-pocus manner. Balls that occasionally burst like soap bubbles because of the
dynamics of the system.

172See its description in Lietaer, B., Arnsperger, C., Goerner, S., & Brunnhuber, S. (2012). Geld en duurzaamheid. Van een
falend geldsysteem naar een monetair ecosysteem. Van Arkel, pp. 223-233. See also: https://bernard-lietaer.org/wp-
content/uploads/2022/07/2008-The-Terra-Interview-Silvestre-Lietaer-annotated.pdf for an interview on the Terra with
Bernard Lietaer following the 2007-2008 crisis. The Terra actually amounts to standardising the existing countertrade.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.119
Using things sparingly and setting things aside for times of need are undoubtedly sensible ways of
dealing with reality. But, as sensible as it is to save up, the hoarding function of money – especially in
a system of compound positive interest – makes that activity problematic. It becomes even more
dangerous, as we saw, when saving, or taking money out of the economy, also gets combined with
other, speculative ways in which the money can then make more money. Too much money taken out
of the economy and disappearing into savings or into financial economies creates an unnecessary,
artificial scarcity of money as a means of payment and exchange. As a result, all sorts of interventions
are necessary. The reality of this system? Time and again, a lot of money is pumped into the world
only to pause for a moment – for a few transactions – in a real economy, to then be taken out again
and end up in a financial economy that benefits very few. If it pauses at all in a real economy: often
the new money just enters the financial economy right away.

Perhaps saving or investing needs to be done in other things or different ways? Demurrage pushes in
that direction: into ‘saving’ or ‘investing’ in things that do keep their value. In spending money on
things like decent, energy-friendly housing, sustainable products that last as long as possible in
materials that are recyclable, food systems that do not deplete the natural fertility of the soil, reliable
technologies that do not involve hefty and unnecessary overhead costs, healthy nature that
maintains its ecosystem services, infrastructure which is permanently kept in good condition, or
quality education. The dynamics in a nutshell: if money does not yield anything anyway and, quite on
the contrary, we lose it if we keep it, then as soon as we have it, we had better not wait to spend it,
and spend it on things that do not lose their value, and in general on anything that reduces costs in
the future. Those who think it through will find that systems of demurrage indeed produce very
different dynamics: actually, in that kind of system saving morphs into investing in the future through
things of real value and saving – or surplus money for that matter – becomes much less sensible once
that future is secure. Above a certain level of ‘having’, what we have just disappears again via
demurrage anyway: not really an incentive to work our asses off then, and an invitation to do other
things than work for money. Perhaps our society will benefit from that too, from this cooling down of
the money system, and the possible warming up of social contacts.

Demurrage. An idea too crazy for words? Perhaps reality has recently caught up with quite a few
sceptics: in the wake of a major financial crisis, periods of low and even negative interest rates have
become part of the new normal, and ordinary people are losing money in various ways while
standing by. If it happens to us anyway, why not organize it, and organize it in such a way – as part of
a larger redesigning of the system – that it even makes sense in the long run? Because those low,
zero or negative interest rates now push even more people towards a financial economy: no more
(safe) saving for the children or grandchildren but (risky) investing/speculating for the children or
grandchildren. There is something sad about such a thing if we dare to see the destructive dynamics
of our financial system for these generations to come.

We have come closer and closer to the boldest reforms of our money system. These will take some
of the above ideas and interventions and integrate them into money systems that are fundamentally
different in nature. This integration – the total package so to speak – proves crucial: changing one
element or part of the logic, however interesting the idea, is often pointless if the rest of the logic
does not change along with it. With this, we actually sink another level deeper in the system iceberg.
Our exploration will take us, bypassing crypto currencies, to a diversity of social and economic
complementary currency systems. As it happens, there are still two woeful flaws in the current

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.120
money system for which few remedies have been put forward so far. The first one is the fact that our
money system erodes social fabric and destroys communities. And the second concerns the
dangerous, reductive, and vulnerable dependency that is linked to its monopoly nature: there is no
safety net when too big to fail eventually becomes too big to bail.

Sorry, monopolies are not usually broken by organising competitive markets. Those just lead to
monopolies – we know that from history. We need to mobilise a different kind of money. But how
high its crypto character will have to be remains to be seen.

Crypto money and the metaverse

When it comes to alternatives to our money system, crypto currencies are the talk of the town.
Crypto money, and the technological innovation on which crypto coins are built, has caught the
attention of many. From the lowest to the highest so to speak: from people whose own currency has
collapsed and who turn to crypto for everyday transactions, to those who want to make easy money
or see in it the solution to many problems, to even the players in the highest inner circles of the
financial universe.

The first crypto currency – bitcoin – became a reality in the immediate aftermath of the 2007-2008
financial crisis. It is a purely digital peer-to-peer currency managed without the intervention of banks
or governments and whose transactions are verified through a decentralised network of computers.
Transactions of encrypted data are processed in blocks, whoever has the computer power to put the
right puzzle together earns something, and all the blocks are added to the log: the blockchain. There
is a limit to how many bitcoins can be mined that way, and therefore how many can be in circulation
in total. This decentralised network of computers that is used for verification makes it possible for
ordinary users to make transactions or payments in bitcoin. From one digital wallet to another. Since
we can pay with bitcoins, and receive payment with them, according to our very simple definition
bitcoin is money: after all, as soon as there is a community that accepts something as a medium of
exchange, we have a money system. Bitcoin became popular quite quickly, and it was not long before
some companies, shops, municipalities, or even entire countries jumped on the bandwagon. In 2021,
for example, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador declared bitcoin official and legal tender, and the
country bought a quantity of bitcoins.

So, anyone looking up the exact date and amount can watch El Salvador’s roller coaster since that
moment. Or for those who turned to bitcoin themselves: to their own roller coaster. Things go up,
things go down – and there is no predicting. Because that is what bitcoin, and the by now hundreds
or even thousands of other crypto currencies have become above all: speculative tools. Because the
number of bitcoins is limited, and it is mainly a game of investment or speculation, bitcoin is also
called the digital gold. Except that there is no gold: the currency is backed by nothing, and it is traded
or exchanged for mainstream currencies. Bitcoin therefore has no value per se, it only has exchange
value. Fickle market moods and herd behaviour of speculators drive its price upwards or accelerate it
downwards. Forums, websites and blogs around crypto-currencies are teeming with justified, semi-
justified, and sometimes twisted criticisms of our mainstream money system: of its undemocratic
and centralised nature and therefore its power character, of the fact that there is no limit to the
amount of our money in circulation, of the fact that a lot of money serves financial players through

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.121
transactional costs, and so on. But the criticisms seem to act mainly as a sham: soon enough it’s the
old tune – how one can profit from price fluctuations. The old, familiar stock market game.

Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, are not as rebellious and system-changing as is usually
believed, and they certainly are not the complementary alternative that could work independently of
our existing money system. Rather, it is a new, hip version of it, as cryptocurrencies are simply
exchangeable against the other currencies in our money system. They dress up something very
simple – buying at the right time to sell at the right time – into something mysterious and idiot-proof.
But as we know, the emperor wears no clothes: only in hindsight does it show whether one was right
to buy or sell or not. Cryptocurrencies thrive a little on systems criticism, surf along on a kind of
techno-mysticism, but all in all the volatile cryptosphere is mainly a new, additional playground for
speculators. And what happens to crypto exchange markets and platforms is what has happened to
stock markets for a very long time: they know their bear markets, after which a next wave only
seems to surge even higher than before. And they can crash. Because cryptocurrency transactions
cannot be traced, the cryptosphere has also become the dream space for anything that shuns the
light of day or wants to cross borders of some sort. Incidentally, the high energy cost of the proof-of-
work mechanism used in blockchain is also under heavy criticism.

But, even if in the facts it is mostly a speculative tool, there are places in the world where people use
bitcoin – or other digital or cryptocurrencies – for everyday transactions in real economies. In some
cases that is because their own currency has collapsed in hyperinflation, or because it does not allow
them to move their money freely. If bitcoin then offers the only or the easily accessible alternative,
the digital wallet does not take long to make. In the meantime, speculators, with their very own
agenda, have no clue of what their buying and selling results in for the people that use it as a means
of payment in real economies. Sounds familiar, no? So, in these cases, too, it comes down to hip (and
by now also many plain ordinary) traders determining the value of crypto with which others try to do
their housekeeping. Cryptocurrency is fiat money – a floating currency – backed only by the trust we
place in it. All in all, except for the underlying technology, the system is very similar in its dynamics to
our existing money system. And it also remains grafted onto it: here and there it is a means of
payment, but people buy and sell crypto mainly in the hope of getting richer. In order to shop around
in the real economy with the cryptocurrencies they have made, quite often they need to convert
them back into the dollars, euros, rupees and so on of our mainstream system.

Crypto is an interesting phenomenon because in turbulent money times, it makes us mull over what
money is and how economies and financial systems work. Incidentally, so do the attempts by major
players to launch their own digital currencies. These too can set us thinking: Facebook’s Libra,
successor Meta’s Diem, the AmazonCoin, the European Central Bank’s CBDC – Central Bank Digital
Currency – the Chinese Central Bank’s e-CNY or digital yuan, Wall Street bank J.P. Morgan Chase’s
JPM Coin. Just to name a few of the projects. And then there are the developments such as
stablecoins (crypto-currencies linked to fiat currency, as a counter-movement to its volatility and
price fluctuations), DeFi or Decentralised Finance (a kind of open finance based on blockchain
technology), NFT (non-fungible tokens, a virtual non-replaceable ownership contract of digital
collectibles, blockchain-based), and, for example, Web3 (the internet, but with pervasive distributed
ownership via blockchain, which greatly increases its commercial potential). It takes the very idea of
ownership (that is convertible into cash) itself to unprecedented, virtual heights.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.122
Yes, indeed: what about the tokenisation of everything – meaning that data can be bundled and
replaced by a unique, encrypted combination of numbers and/or characters? In the process,
everything can be tokenised or monetised in a decentralised internet. The next level of finance? In
any case, the gaming terminology is far from misplaced: the gaming industry is also decentralising, as
blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens make their way there too. It was written in the stars
that speculating with cryptocurrencies would sooner or later merge with the practice of gaming. P2E
– play to earn gaming – means the emergence of economies where virtual worlds become directly
linked to real economies via cryptocurrencies and tokens: in-game items with real-world value. Game
markets are no longer just in the game world, they are now also outside the game where game
earnings represent real, spendable income in the physical reality of real economies. So, food and
clothes – anything really – can be bought with it. Cryptogaming means breaking open closed virtual
gaming worlds to intertwine with physical economies. Digital and physical worlds merge. It creates
what some call a metaverse: a reality in which a digital identity, numerical possessions, virtual
relationships, and imaginary experiences in game-like landscapes seem to become more meaningful
than their physical counterparts. The virtual reality version of the hocus pocus and abracadabra of
the financial world as we mapped it before? There too, the ‘reality’ of reality had been reduced
considerably to numbers on screens.

But we still need to eat, and dress, and see to a roof over our heads – to point out just a few of the
basics. Those don’t roll out of our computers by themselves. For that matter, those computers don’t
roll out of other computers all by themselves either. It seems that with crypto, blockchain, tokens
and play-to-earn gaming the money world is becoming even more encompassing, strange, and virtual
than it already was. And in the process, a reality emerges that – if everything can be coined, owned,
and monetised – is commercial to the core, and is made up of loose selfish atoms. And it all works.
And a lot of money is involved. A whole lot.

These evolutions may give us food for thought about money. But do they? Perhaps by now we have
become like the gamers who are so sucked up into the game, and so elated by the next level, that we
no longer look through the window and do not realise that – mesmerised as we are by our own
avatars – we have lost sight of ourselves and our real world.

While cryptocurrencies are digital marvels and the underlying blockchain technology offers all sorts
of possibilities and applications, these alternatives do not really succeed in operating outside the
existing perfidious logic. Decentralised or not, they embed the logic even deeper in our culture. We
cannot but conclude that they are not really alternatives, but sophisticated variations on the same
theme. And in a way, they take us even further away from what real economies are about. And they
take us very, very, very far away from the concrete, living reality of our social-ecological existence.

An orchestra of new futures

Before we got sidetracked by cryptocurrencies, we had been wondering about money systems that
maintain and strengthen the fabric of our societies, while at the same time safeguarding against the
fragile dependence on the monopoly money of today’s public-private conglomerate.

A diversity of well-chosen and cleverly designed currency systems, examples of which we will look at,
can provide ideas here. The systems can be complementary, meaning that they run in parallel and

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.123
complement each other in all sorts of areas and for different functions, without being convertible
into one other. Different ‘moneys’ in our wallet, card holder or phone, for different things? At first
glance, it seems inefficient and clumsy: why not combine everything in one currency or system? Why
not a one-size-fits-all solution? Careful: let us not forget that it is precisely by combining different
and incompatible functions in our current money system that we get into trouble: exchange,
counting, hoarding, speculating, exercising power. And that we thereby also reduce reality to
economy. The benefits of a diversity of currencies are considerable. Complementary currency
systems not only make people and societies a lot less susceptible to what goes wrong elsewhere or
at another level, but also a lot richer because a diversity of wealth can be valorised.

Or let’s add some caveats right from the start: they can provide such things when they are designed
to do so. At present, there are hundreds, even thousands of complementary currency systems, each
with their own goals, ambitions, and finality. And complementary currencies have been around for
much longer than today. All of them have in common that one way or another we can pay for things
with them. They work as motivational systems or incentives – Bernard Lietaer: money is mental
programming software. They steer (buying) behaviour in a certain direction, and so – depending on
how they are programmed – they can steer in all sorts of directions. From supporting local
economies, over customer loyalty, to pure tax evasion and power concentration. From providing
healthcare to causing addiction. So, just because something is a complementary currency does not
mean that it strengthens the social fabric or serves a social or environmental purpose.

One of many complementary currencies, for example, is the air miles system. Like many similar
systems, it involves points that can be saved from affiliated partners, which can then be redeemed
against all kinds of things. It is one of these complementary currency systems initiated as a customer
loyalty programme by a company or business group. Anybody can start a complementary currency.
Again: as soon as there is a community that accepts something as a means of payment or exchange,
we are rolling. By the way, anyone can also start their own cryptocurrency or token. Of course, what
is of real interest here to us are the complementary money systems that provide an answer to the
flaws and ticking time bombs of our current system.

In numerous places this kind of alternative or complementary currency systems are being used, or
people are experimenting with them. Many communities have gained valuable experience.
Inspiration galore. To name but a few: Chiemgauer (Germany), Sarubobo Coins (Japan), Eusko
(France), Bartercard (New Zealand/Aotearoa and Australia), Beki (Luxembourg), Sardex (Sardinia),
Zeitpolster (Austria), Ithaca Hours (US), Banco Palmas (Brazil), Sarafu (Kenya), Berkshares (US), Tumin
(Mexico), Klavers, Buurtijd, Mechelse Koekoek, TalentO, Torekes, Zinne and Sengzen (all Belgium).
Not to mention more general concepts or systems that run under these currencies: techniques to
make money circulate better, for example. Or mutual credit systems. By making money appear and
disappear in the transactions themselves, these manage to closely follow the rhythm of real
economies. This is very different from the reverse pattern that we are familiar with: economies in our
current money system have to swallow the ups and downs of money.

There are a few cases of quite large and impactful complementary currency systems that are more
than worth looking at here, precisely because they have an economic-social purpose beyond direct
self-interest or customer loyalty. That is first of all the Swiss WIR: a cooperative bank as well as a
network of entrepreneurs (Wirtschaftsring or economic circle). Calling itself the largest alternative
currency in the world, WIR originated at the height of the economic crisis in 1934 as a B2B or

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.124
business-to-business system. The initiative came from some 16 businesspeople who, facing
bankruptcy and with credit lines from their banks cancelled or reduced, decided to set up a mutual
credit system together. It works like a simple accounting system: purchases go in the minus column,
sales in the plus column, and healthy trading means that income and expenditure are (at least) in
relative balance. Money, in their system, can only be spent if it is matched by a value from the real
economy. There were some teething troubles at first, and as might be expected there was major
opposition from the banking sector, but by now one in six Swiss companies accept the WIR as an
alternative currency to the Swiss franc. In the meantime, the cooperative has also started to issue
loans at very low interest rates. The WIR, which does not use cash, and which is worth as much as a
Swiss franc, is especially popular with small and medium-sized enterprises. But private individuals
can also become members of the cooperative. Participating businesses post that (a certain
percentage of the purchase) can be paid in WIR. By the way, bank balances cannot be exchanged for
cash and do not earn interest: the WIR is meant to circulate. Research shows that the WIR system is
highly complementary and provides a kind of spontaneous, counter-cyclical correction to the
fluctuations of the ordinary money system: during periods when the Swiss franc is doing well, the
volume of transactions in WIR falls, and it rises when the Swiss franc is doing worse. In other words,
the much talked-of stability of the Swiss economy can be attributed to this complementary
currency.173

Another interesting case is the so-called miracle of Wörgl, an experiment in Austria around the same
time as WIR emerges in Switzerland.174 In 1932, Wörgl was suffering from high unemployment rates
due to the Great Depression. For the small town, that meant less revenue from taxes and more
spending on supporting those who were not well off. High unemployment, while there were so many
needs in the municipality: reconstruction of roads, extension of the waterworks, planting of trees
and so on. Inspired by Silvio Gesell’s work175 on demurrage, the local mayor decided to start paying
people in vouchers that lost 1% in value per month. So, with that Wörgl shilling he put into
circulation stamp scrip: a stamp of 1% of the face value of the freigeld was needed per month for the
note to retain its value and validity. With the money, he mobilised and paid people to do a lot of the
work, and the fine on keeping or hoarding the receipts meant that people made sure they were
spent again quickly, creating work for others. Or they even started paying their municipal taxes
earlier than needed. The local middle class also accepted the money. The issue of this circulation
money proved a success: the city did not need to borrow money from the government to pay its

173For the WIR website: https://www.wir.ch/de/ See also: Lietaer, B., Ulanowicz, R. E., & Goerner, S. J. (2008). Options for
managing a systemic banking crisis. Working Paper. On the countercyclicality and resulting stability of the Swiss economy:
Stodder, J. (2009). Complementary credit networks and macroeconomic stability: Switzerland’s Wirtschaftsring. Journal of
Economic Behavior & Organization, 72(1), 79-95. And: Stodder, J., & Lietaer, B. (2016). The Macro-Stability of Swiss WIR-
Bank Credits: Balance, Velocity, and Leverage. Comparative Economic Studies, 58(4), 570-605. Also: Phillips, E., &
Desmoulins-Lebeault, F. (2019). The Financial Stability Board and Switzerland’s WiR-Credit Mechanism. Journal of Economic
Issues, 53(4), 1152-1169.
An interesting further avenue lies in Lietaer’s proposal to not only introduce this kind of b2b system in other places, but also
to advocate the possibility of paying (part of) taxes in the currency. (More on that in the working paper mentioned in this
footnote.)

174
The Wörgl experiment is described in Lietaer, B. A. (2002). The future of money: Creating new wealth, work and a wiser
world. Random House Business, p. 153-155. See also: https://bernard-lietaer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2010-The-
Worgl-Experiment-Austria-1932-1933-Lietaer-annotated.pdf

175See his ‘Die natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld’ (Bern, 1916)". (For the translation into English by
Philip Pye: https://www.naturalmoney.org/NaturalEconomicOrder.pdf .)

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.125
expenses, and an economic boom ensued due to the rapidly circulating currency. This kind of
circulation money could create 12 to 14 times more jobs (and hence wealth) than the equivalent
value in ordinary shillings. All the projects on the mayor’s list got done, and new houses and even a
new bridge were built. Unemployment fell while it rose everywhere else in the country. The
experiment attracted attention, a few municipalities started to follow suit, and more than a hundred
others wanted to copy the idea. But the National Bank of Austria successfully litigated against
Wörgl’s experiment, as strictly speaking only the National Bank itself had the authority to issue
money. Under threat of military force, the project was terminated in August 1933, and with the
outbreak of World War II, it largely fell into oblivion. A sorry outcome, while people had just taken
control of their own money and economy. A self-reliance with miraculous success. Until that was no
longer allowed. Does our current money system hold something against people taking control of
their own destiny?

Both cases, WIR and Freigeld, are examples of how an alternative complementary currency can be
used in a regional or local economy. But it is also possible to think of complementary currencies that
can be used in healthcare, education, or environmental protection for example. An interesting and
relevant example of a care currency are the many systems of the Japanese Fureai Kippu or ‘caring
relationship tickets’.176 To face the combined problem of a rapidly ageing population and a growing
shortage of nurses, all kinds of local initiatives of paid voluntary work were set up from the 1980s
onwards. They were complementary, in the sense that they supplemented regular programmes of
health and elderly care with extra hands. Paid voluntary work is something that matches well with
Japanese culture, which traditionally attaches great importance to mutual help: it is the custom to
return a favour or service. Often it was elderly people helping other elderly people (of even older
age), paying each other for care tasks or services in hours written down: not money but time is the
currency. Hours that were written down could then (later) be used for themselves, or people could
pass them on. Yes, sometimes it amounted to voluntary work by people who never used their time
credits, but for whom the reward lay at a different level. In some places, the system turned a bit
more formal, and a new kind of currency for healthcare was devised: the hours that (also younger)
volunteers spent helping elderly or needy fellow citizens earned them care tickets or coupons (the
fureai kippu). Later, in many places the tickets were replaced by a digital currency via an app.
Different types of tasks or care have different values, but the unit of account is hours of service
instead of yen. Some of the systems are also more hybrid, and payment can be made in both time
credits and yen – yen which is then used to support the organisation itself. The time tokens can
(later) be withdrawn by the volunteer to use for themselves or to be passed on to others, to parents
in need of care, or to family or friends for example. Remarkably, this kind of currency also reinforces
the wealth and social fabric of a community in yet another way: elderly people prefer the services
provided through fureai kippu because the quality of care is higher than with professional care

176Fureai kippu. See: Lietaer, B. (2001). The money of the future: A new vision of welfare, work and a more humane world.
Forum. See also: van der List, B. (2016). How Japanese are tackling ageing: Care close to home. TVZ, 126(6), 31-33. Fureai
kippu, like a lot of complementary currencies, is not a miracle solution and faces significant challenges. For research on the
details, and results, and complexity of the challenges, see, for example: Hayashi, M. (2012) ‘Japan’s Fureai Kippu Time-
banking in Elderly Care: Origins, Development, Challenges and Impact’ International Journal of Community Currency
Research 16 (A) 30-44.
Another example of a sectoral coin (a coin dedicated to a specific purpose such as care, environmental protection,
education) is the experiment with the Torekes in the Rabot in Ghent: with the coin, the initiators want to make the Rabot-
Blaisantvest neighbourhood more pleasant to live in, and appreciate the people who are committed to it. Cooperation,
meeting and social cohesion are envisaged. See: https://www.torekes.be/nl/home/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.126
services paid for with yen. The currency – and the time banking system on which it is built – are
situated somewhere in between pure voluntary work and organised and yen-paid elderly care. The
many schemes form a mosaic of complementarity, with still a lot of differences between the various
local caring relationship ticket groups. It is an inflation-free system: an hour remains an hour. And no
money is needed to start the system: it creates its own money. On top of that, it meets a major care
need, strengthens the social fabric, and functions as a complementary form of pension fund. Maybe
we are a poor society if we entrust our retirement savings and pension funds to the financial players?

As might be expected, since the big financial crisis of 2007-2008 we have seen complementary
currencies shoot up like mushrooms in quite a few places. The questions that the financial debacle
raised among people, and the indignation about it, will certainly be no stranger to this. Outrage was
and remains high: about how bailouts cost loads of taxpayers’ money, about how the economy and
ordinary people take the blows while big capital often just walks free again. About how public
services are eroded by troubled governments and even more money disappears into financial
markets. About a world where shareholders and dividend hunters drain economies. About this very
strange way of being entitled to benefits.

New complementary currencies that emerged in response to the crisis were often local community
currencies set up by people who often drew inspiration from each other and exchanged experiences
and ideas. Perhaps we can roughly divide them into two categories, depending on the situation that
gave rise to the start of the complementary currency system. In some places the currencies were a
kind of emergency tokens, and it were mainly pragmatic issues that came up for discussion: how to
proceed? That was the case where people were completely left to themselves because of a crisis that
took out their economy and social security in no time. In other places, it concerned groups within
communities who, out of conviction and because they saw the potential of the alternative systems,
proactively wanted to keep their local economies afloat or strengthen their communities. Idealism
rather than necessity so to speak, and pragmatism in the long run.

In terms of ‘emergency’ currencies, the Greek town of Volos, for example, made BBC news in 2012
because they had created their own local currency with the TEM (topiki enallaktiki monada – local
alternative unit).177 They did so to cope with the worst of the crisis and stay afloat as a community. In
the downward spiral of the euro crisis, more and more people lost their jobs, their income, and their
access to (their) money. Directly. Or indirectly: the social security net was gradually being stripped
away. They could no longer count on a government forced to make heavy cuts by financial markets
and the Troika (EU, ECB and IMF) either. People thus lost (access to) the money that made their lives
and their world go round. People may lose their job and thus their income, but they do not therefore
lose their skills, knowledge, experience, and talents. Or their solidarity. But when they lose the
money, they lose the means to get all of this circulating. At a protest demonstration against the
austerity measures imposed on Greece, some people found each other, and decided to start a local
LETS network. In such a Local Exchange and Trading Scheme, a new means of exchange is started
with which products and services can be traded within the network.178 Users – members of the

177For a reflection on the TEM, see, for example: Streinzer, A. (2018). Doing economic relations differently: Everyday
politics of solidarity in the TEM currency network in Volos, Greece. Ethnologia Europaea, 48.

178LETS – Local Exchange and Trading Scheme – originated in Canada in the 1980s and spread around the world. For LETS
Flanders: see https://www.letsvlaanderen.be/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.127
network – create an account via online software where their deficits or balances are tracked, but
sometimes transactions are also done simply with tickets. The LETS network, for which TEM was
chosen as the currency, helped sustain an important chunk of the local economy. In this way, the
products and services the members could contribute continued to circulate: from bread and
vegetables, to plumbing jobs and childcare, to tutoring and tattooing. Not that everything was
immediately and continuously running smoothly, and there were ongoing discussions about the
system and how to deal with free riders, but in the meantime many people were providing each
other with a real, disposable income.

An example of a local complementary currency that did not emerge in a time of recession or
pervasive austerity measures is the Totnes Pound. The money experiment that was launched in 2007
formed a key part of the broader project of Transition Town Totnes. Totnes, a small town in Devon in
the UK, proclaimed itself a ‘transition town’ in September 2006. Transition Town Totnes was – and
still is – the project of a bottom-up movement seeking to boost the local economy, reduce
environmental impact, and strengthen community resilience in the face of climate change. 179 One of
the ways they wanted to achieve those goals was an alternative currency. The impetus partly came
from ‘Plugging the Leaks’, a report by the New Economics Foundation that concluded that most
money that enters (deprived) neighbourhoods quickly disappears from those communities after
changing hands only once or twice in a transaction within the community. 180 In launching their own
Totnes Pound, they took the report’s subtitle seriously: ‘making the most of every pound that enters
your local economy’. Money can indeed leak away and do the opposite of supporting local
economies: it all too quickly disappears into the tills of big, international players that operate in a
global economy and not infrequently only provide (at most) some poorly paid McJobs locally.

An initial run of their Totnes Pound was particularly modest in volume, but big in impact: they mainly
wanted to urge people to think and talk about money, and hoped to generate plenty of attention and
visibility for the transition they envisioned with Totnes. And yes, people got fascinated: can one really
just print one’s own money? How’s that? And can one really use it as a means of payment in local
shops and market stalls? A second, and a third run followed in which the system was gradually scaled
up, but all in all it remained too modest to have a big economic impact.

It had been more about gaining experience with the money system, and about creating momentum
and attention: as a marketing campaign for their broader Transition Towns concept, this experiment
was a success. It received extensive press coverage and inspired countless others. In the years
following, the movement of Transition Towns and Villages has spread to more than 30 countries. The
Totnes Pound experiment itself was stopped after 12 years, but every Totnes Pound banknote that
has ever been in circulation – with a £21 note as the joker in the pack – has generated its own value
many times over. It forged bonds, strengthened a sense of community, and made countless people –
also outside Totnes – think about money, and about how to get closer to the future they dream of.

179For an introduction, see: Dhont, R. (2008). Transition Town Totnes: Een verhaal van aanstekelijke sociaal-ecologische
verandering in Engeland. Oikos, 45, 38-48. Website TTT: https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/ And for the transition
handbook, which was also translated into Dutch by many volunteers: Hopkins, R. (2009). The transition handbook: From oil
dependency to local resilience. Chelsea Green Pub.

180Ward, B., & Lewis, J. (2002). Plugging the leaks: Making the most of every pound that enters your local economy. New
Economics Foundation. Downloadable: https://neweconomics.org/2002/11/plugging-the-leaks

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.128
And it was taken up in other transition initiatives with, for example, the Lewes Pound, Bristol Pound
and Brixton Pound.181 There are now many of these local complementary currencies worldwide, and
the widespread use of smartphones and easily accessible software makes setting up such a system
easy. They are all variations on the same theme: money designed in such a way that it can only be
used to spend locally, and that it keeps circulating. Hoarding or holding on to it makes no sense.
Speculating is even less possible. It works in parallel with and complementary to an existing money
system with which it maintains as few links as possible: otherwise it may too easily get poisoned by
the old logic. Each time this money passes from hand to hand, in real notes or in its digital version, a
local person is provided with a (piece of) income. Because that income can only be spent locally –
and must be spent locally because keeping it comes down to losing it – there is a reinforcing
feedback loop that benefits local economy and employment. Resilience of the community goes up,
and the social and economic fabric are the better for it: people are less at the mercy of big players
who usually relocate their businesses if things are cheaper elsewhere or close them down if not
enough money can be made with them. Because they help to embed important parts of the economy
locally, local currencies also save on transport energy and are therefore good when it comes to
climate change. An extra boost is given to local currencies if they can be used to pay local taxes. After
all, local governments can also only do one thing with that money: spend it in their city or region. An
additional, empowering feedback.

Complementary local currencies appear, they adapt to changing circumstances, and some fail or
disappear again.182 Not every instance is a success story, and starting and running the currencies
involves more than we often suspect. After our exploration of money, it should hardly come as a
surprise that plenty of discussions arise in those pioneering groups, and that there may be deep
disagreements about money and about how to organise an alternative for it. Much seems to depend
on the initiators and inspirers, on know-how, courage, and expertise, and on people willing to invest
time and energy. But also on how democratic the process is, and how involved all kinds of people
are: if people are generally not engaged, then growing awareness around money issues will not
happen. Relative success also depends on the social fabric itself, and to what extent it is still more or
less intact. Thus, there is sometimes the observation that alternative local currencies seem to work
mainly in places where they are perhaps less needed: in communities where that social fabric is still
quite strong and people simply understand that they must take care of each other and of their local
economy – and act accordingly, even without an alternative currency. Of course, there are the places
where a local currency is introduced out of necessity by a local economy in survival mode.
Understandably, the dynamics of awareness are quite different there. But even those initiatives can
of course benefit from the experience gained elsewhere, in calmer economic waters.

There is no two ways about it: it remains a major challenge to implement into concrete practice a
vision that rubs the existing money system up the wrong way. This is never a walk in the park. But
even where they disappear again, alternative local systems and complementary currencies do their
work. Mostly simply because they are food for thought: about money, about us humans, about our

181Interesting observation: in 2021, the Brixton Pound announced that it will switch to blockchain technology for a
tokenised version of their local currency. See: https://www.algorand.foundation/news/brixton-pound-algorand

182For an overview and discussion of types of complementary currency systems, see, for example: Gelleri, C. (2020). The
Phenomenon of Complementary Currencies. Just Money. https://justmoney.org/the-phenomenon-of-complementary-
currencies/ For local currencies in Flanders and Brussels, see for example MuntUit which promotes, supports, and develops
community currencies across Flanders and Brussels. See: https://muntuit.be/

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.129
communities, about what economy should be for, about a healthy living environment, about
meaningful work, about a connected existence, about what future we want to give our children and
grandchildren. And they make us talk to each other about that. Perhaps the whole process with all
those questions is much more important than the alternative money system as its possible outcome:
what’s the matter is not the money technology but the relationships. What’s the matter is who we
are.

To change money systems is to imagine a different future. It means reflecting, making the effort to
disagree, and yet finding each other in how to bring that future closer. Already now. And in a
concrete environment that operates according to a very different logic, where resistance may quite
simply be the sign that we are dreaming in the right direction. It means blending our wealth,
creativity, knowledge, skills and insights with our solidarity, concerns, and willingness to listen, and
circulating all of that in our communities. Along with the ancient wisdom that reminds us that we
exist because of everything else that exists. It means building and shaping relationships with each
other, and with all that exists. A bit like the oldest money – in the time before time, when money was
not yet money, and we had powerful stories that kept us where we belong.

There is infinitely more to say about money, but perhaps we have come home. In our community.
With our origin stories.

Wealth: the richness of lived life itself. This planet. Us.

climate energy money – ethical reflections on economic morality – text under embargo, rudy dhont, p.130
 Selective bibliography

In my role of sustainability researcher and ethics lecturer in a business school context, the planetary
ecosystem crisis, the energy issue, and how money is woven into all of that have kept me busy in
different ways for many years. The field is broad and the specialisms deep. That is quite a challenge
for a systems thinker who wants to keep the overview and see the connections. There is all sorts of
scientific stuff that I more or less familiarised myself with, and a not inconsiderable amount of
reports, books, articles and posts that continue to be read and studied here. With gratitude, I
remember countless conversations and encounters: food for thought. And I took and still take
initiatives, in different places and under different roles. As a student and as a teacher, in familiar
environments as well as in more experimental settings – I love questions and feel attracted to fire
circles. The path I took in my research around these challenging issues was sometimes hard and
daunting, but it was also amazing, surprising, and inspiring. It brought me to conferences, made for
unexpected friendships, but also took me deep into the wild. It changed me. And it continues to do
so.

Listing the sources, encounters, and conversations from which the texts in this book grew is almost
impossible: I don’t have anything that does not come from someone else. I stand on the shoulders of
others and draw on the wisdom and experience of many – almost literally: advancing insight. Too
many names. They know who they are. And behind those people are others again, and behind them
still others – back into time. And as things go, it’s hard to do justice to where the insights and ideas
originally came from, or who sparked them, or from what conversation they emerged: I scribble
things down, and later can’t figure out where they came from. I pick up ideas that I then ruminate on
for months until they take on a life of their own and show up in my dreams. Apt, well-chosen words,
images or phrases that cross my path easily become part of my own vocabulary as a teacher. Just
because they speak so much for themselves. I like to consider anything that contributes to a better
future for all the children of this world – and they are not just human children – as our collective
wisdom. Certainly not my property. It was all a gift. This book is a way of giving something back. And
the selective bibliography that follows is just a sample.

I want to express my thanks. As a teacher and a student, I feel deep gratitude for my teachers and
students. Learning and unlearning is one of those ancient, sacred businesses. Let us never give it up.

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Arnolds, E. (2000). Weg van de natuur: Leidraad voor natuurbeleving en natuurbeschouwing. Van
Arkel.

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