Alex I've found it helps, in order to correctly identify root causes and their effects, to take the unusual measure of describing Earth as a kind of rechargeable battery, trickle charged by the energy of the sun. The presence of photosynthetic life on Earth, is the charge of this battery. It lives by doing the work of converting the energy of the sun to things other than heat. This is the root cooling impulse. Whereas the life living by drawing this energy previously put to use by photosynthetic life (us!) does the opposite. We convert at least part of it back again to the heat it would been if photosynthetic life did not exist, and since we do it over and over, it has accumulated to the critical point we are seeing now.
The charge in the battery is inversely related to heat, just by E=MC squared.
Our net activity to date has been to remove the energy from all of life including photosynthetic, therefore reducing the charge in the battery, steadily increasing heat.
In order to make this picture most useful, so as to audit energy flows, we need to mathematically sign the energy in and out of Earth, positive when added from sun, negative when subtracted back out. By this model, The energy we currently survive on is negative, and has been almost all our known history.
What this model further enables us to do, is identify multiplier effects that operate on us when operating in one path or the other, showing that the flow of energy "Through" humanity as a whole is like any path of electrical energy flow, it builds up a path of least resistance by these multiplier effects, we might see it as similar to the avalanche effect in a bolt of lightning.
These cascading energy effects are what we should recognise characterise things like the effects of trying to address the fundamental problem of our energy supply being unsustainable, by things like mitigation of carbon, which is sold as something green, as if helping the energy problem, when actually what it does is increase the overall load on negatively supplied energy, by increasing the amount of work done on it. Like opening a fridge door in a room already too hot, to try to cool the room, all it does is increase the heating.
Further, since the consumption of energy is required by all humans, not optional, (we each need to metabolise at least 1 50 or so Joules per second 24/7 to live), there is no point in trying to regulate it, all effort done on regulation without changing the source of the energy will either result in many humans dying, or yet more energy lost to heat, often actually both happening, as we can see.
We should note also that these two different kinds of energies can't be summed, they are rigidly mathematically defined as opposites, Attempting to sum them, as we are currently doing by not even identifying any difference between them results in actually a reduction of useful energy we can consume, with again the result we will increase our demands on energy by extraction.
So there is only one solution to this problem, we must switch completely, rapidly, entirely from negative energy to positive energy.
This is the actual physical challenge we have.
This is not religion, it is formal systems Engineering, I am a long practicing model based systems Engineer working on the global energy problem since seeing it coming around 2017.
But it gets even more religious sounding, the more we dig into it, we realise that profit itself is an energy con, directly related to, and fully dependent on extracted energy.
Every time "money makes money", the energy comprising it had to have been "stolen" from Earth.
This is in contrast to energy from the sun which is always delivered with nothing asked in return by the sun.
So the only way to correctly value the energy of the sun is to issue money on it for free to all people.
Further, when we examine what actually maintains the power structures of all current governments, it is the use of capital, which actually represents stored energy, always extracted from Earth as stands. I don't think it is possible to maintain that structure with energy that comes for free, because with free energy, effectively everything becomes for free, making things previously thought to be financially impossible or unviable suddenly become perfectly possible, like the finctinal replacement of fossil fuels by hydrogen, widespread use of which comes with many immediately identifiable positive multipliers, like the filtration and circulation of both water and air, the ability to keep all planes in the air, no need for planet raping lithium or other battery chemicals, and even the capability to convert to human consumable food (See "Solein"), the latter being maybe needed to remove at least part of the food load of humanity from the conventional food chain.
The challenge is, how to get the privileged elites currently in control to understand this is what has to be done, a rapid switch, from mathematically negative energy, to mathematically positive, as surely as any plant when it first forms leaves - if it didn't switch to the energy of the sun very quick after those first leaves form, it has to die.
I don't think there were are any elites in plants we might learn from, unfortunately, but I could be mistaken, I am no expert of plants, but I hope this model helps describe things more ckearly for understanding.
I released an Amazon e-book recently describing the concept of "The Energy Polarity Multiplier Framework" more clearly, with the help of ChatGPT, who actually identified and named the framework.
Imho ChatGPT is potentially more help than we can currently imagine, in the need to switch to, and manage the positive energy powered system of the future, if there is to be any future.
It is an immensely capable aid that we need to ensure is itself always powered from positive energy.
Sounds crazy, I know, but this is physical reality, fortunately or unfortunately, time will tell.
Apologies for the typos, android app not great.