Books: Faith in a Changing Climate and Net Zero Redux
The Framework Has Changed
For more than a decade, climate change, resource depletion, and energy limits were framed as problems with solutions. With sufficient technology, investment, and political will, we were told that society could transition smoothly to a cleaner, more prosperous future. That story reached its high point in 2015 — and has been unraveling ever since.
False Hope
Starting in the 1970s, there was growing awareness that climate change, resource depletion and biosphere destruction were leading to an ‘Age of Limits’. That awareness reached a high point in 2015, with the global climate conference, COP21, held in Paris. In its aftermath, governments, corporations, and even churches around the world announced a wide range of ‘net zero’ initiatives with great enthusiasm and fanfare.
The year 2050 was often treated as a target for achieving these goals. By that year we would have zero greenhouse gas emissions (the word ‘net’ was used so as to take credit for technologies that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere).
The tone was relentlessly positive. Energy transitions were framed as investment opportunities. Climate discourse was increasingly presented as a matter of optimization, innovation, and continued economic growth. The future, we were told, would be both greener and more prosperous. Above all, there would be no need for sacrifice.
That period is ending.
Predicaments, Not Problems
Reality has intruded. As physical limits reassert themselves and promised transitions stall or reverse, climate and resource issues are returning: not as abstract risks or distant projections, but as lived experience. Rising costs, constrained energy systems, canceled projects, and political retrenchment are forcing a reckoning.
These developments point to a conclusion that is uncomfortable but unavoidable: there are no comprehensive solutions to the crises of the Age of Limits. These are not problems to be solved; they are predicaments to be lived through.
Problems invite engineering, optimization, and closure. Predicaments do not go away. They can be addressed, but not resolved. They demand adaptation, triage, and moral clarity rather than technical triumph. They force choices among unattractive options and require us to abandon narratives that promise material abundance without cost.
Here are some examples, all from late 2025.
The Ford motor company took a $19.5 billion write-down on its electric vehicle business. This was not a routine corporate setback. It is an indicator that the electrification of transportation, at scale and under real-world constraints, is far more difficult than was assumed.
Enthusiasm for nuclear power has returned. Yet, as Art Berman argues in his essay The Nuclear Golden Calf, this enthusiasm rests on assumptions that do not survive contact with capital costs, construction timelines, fuel supply chains, or political reality. Nuclear power will play a role in a future energy system, but it cannot preserve industrial civilization at its current scale. It is not a deus ex machina.
The United States government halted multiple major offshore wind projects, marking a clear departure from earlier renewable energy policies that emphasized rapid expansion of offshore wind capacity.
ExxonMobil halted a large hydrogen production project in Texas, citing cost overruns and weak demand. This was not ideological resistance; it was material reality in the form of thermodynamic, economic, and market constraints asserting itself.
Even within institutions traditionally associated with moral leadership, the language remains anchored in the assumption that solutions exist if only we commit to them strongly enough. The Episcopal Church, for example, continues to call for a complete transition away from fossil fuels and an expansion of renewable energy as if these were achievable endpoints rather than contested, energy-constrained processes. The moral impulse is understandable. The framing is not.
Books
At the time of COP21, I began writing two books: Net Zero by 2050 and Faith in a Changing Climate. The goal of the first book was to show how ‘green’ technologies might realistically help industry transition toward a new, greener type of economy. The goal of the second book was to explore how faith communities might provide realistic leadership in a new and rather scary world. (The word ‘realistic’ appeared frequently in both books.)
As it became apparent that the green movement was losing momentum, and that its promises were increasingly detached from physical and economic realities, I decided to put both projects on hold.
However, now that physical constraints are becoming ever more real, particularly with regard to the climate, I have decided to revive both manuscripts, with the intention of publishing them in 2026.
The original title of the first book, Net Zero by 2050, reflected the idea that rapid deployment of new technologies might allow voluntary achievement of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. This will not happen — at least, not voluntarily. Hence the new working title of the book is Net Zero Redux. (The word redux is used to describe an idea or concept that has been ‘brought back’.) This is not a revision that merely incorporates better data into the same framework. It is a rethinking of the framework itself. Net zero was never a destination; it was a story we told ourselves to avoid confronting limits.
Faith in a Changing Climate is written explicitly from the perspective of limits. It does not offer pathways to decarbonized abundance or promises of a new, green world of material abundance. Instead, it asks what leadership, responsibility, and faithfulness look like in a period of long-term decline. It argues that the central challenge we face is not technological but moral: how communities respond when growth can no longer be assumed, and when calls for sacrifice are no longer theoretical.
A Modern Golden Calf
The final image in this post is of Moses and the Golden Calf. In this story, the Hebrew people grew impatient, waiting for Moses to return. So, according to the story, the people created a golden calf to worship. When Moses returned, he destroyed the idol and punished the offenders.
Our Golden Calf has been a faith in ‘green’ technology ― a hope that we can have our environmental cake and eat it. This hope seems increasingly out of touch with reality.
