His approach is that of an engineer: let’s create a problem we can fix. This is a refreshingly different approach. Only instead of making it impersonal he writes his own life story.

But we have to answer the big question first: what is the temperature we want? In choosing the temperature he picks the most optimistic B1 from the scenario’s we have all seen by now. But his scenario is not so innocent. It might be optimistic but the projected consequence is a that we will loose 20% of our species. It sounds impartial and abstract. But it means wars, dramatic migration, etc.

Choosing this scenario means we can ‘only’ get 2TW out of fossil fuels. To get a sense of dimension that is the amount of energy consumed by the entire world in 1890. The world now consumes 15TW per year. So we need to get 13TW out of alternative energy sources. Examples are nuclear, wind, tidal, solar, etc. This will be a major scientific/industrial undertaking, but by no means impossible.

But as a human being, especially as a USA human being, the consumption pattern can be changed. He showed, very detailed, all the fields where he plans to change his life. What I find remarkable is that he did not once mention efforts like climate neutral energy consumption. His challenge is to stop consuming so much energy.

He had a number of very practical things of which the most important are

• be vegetarian (fish is less energy intensive than meat)
• stop flying
• stop driving

His last message is the ‘burden to be from the USA’. The charts he shows is that an average citizen of the USA consumes almost twice the amount of energy as the average European, which is second in this chart. But, as his calculations show, this average amount need be reduced to 10% of what it is now.