The incredible inertia of the status quo is already dampening recent efforts in renewable energy and EVs, as…

The incredible inertia of the status quo is already dampening recent efforts in renewable energy and EVs, as prominent examples. You can’t gradually change a status quo. It needs to be disrupted. Smashed. This is a key fact of social life. /1 https://t.co/x8FDdmnK9o https://t.co/o1Y0VyJISX

The status quo is really just existing status hierarchies. It’s not just wealth or power or ‘capitalism’ - all the favoured baddies. Underneath that it’s basic social behaviour. Those with status won’t surrender it. It has to be taken from them, usually by disaster. /2

Why I posted this as a diagram of social change. Not just to try to be funny. It’s literally, historically true. Remember Hans Rosling? /3 https://t.co/jTAHsnmunw

Hans’ passion was to try to show that so much was actually getting better in our lives, over time, globally. That’s also true. We live inside communication systems that favour hysteria as a way to generate attention. /4 https://t.co/sAzQNqQyfp

But the trends Rosling examined also owed most of their momentum to catastrophes of various forms. That includes something like the Industrial Revolution, which was also a catastrophe in terms of impact on existing hierarchies. It was called a ‘revolution’ for a reason. /5 https://t.co/2CLbj8WdFt

Existing landed England had to be smashed by industrialists, for change to happen. That’s what many of those period drams are about. The birth of new social classes, the ‘nouveau riche’. /6

We won’t plan our way out of climate change in ‘balanced’ steps. As with Covid, ‘balance’ is a word existing status hierarchies use to mean ‘let’s just keep doing what we’re doing’. We’re now reaching the limits of tolerance by existing status groups, for climate action. /7

They tolerated activity on the margins, while they could continue as normal. But now that normal is under threat. Just as it was with Covid action. They will brutally resist that threat. /8 https://t.co/wWaVkTQaX9

I continue to think only the Chinese are able to threaten our status quo enough to force a change. Through their massive investments in renewable energy. You can see Western governments madly trying to tariff that revolution away, right now. We won’t surrender our status. /end