Activities and Working Life in the Coming Great Transition

Abstract

This chapter is about that coming process of transformation with focus on human activities and our working life. It is structured as follows: Section two contains some methodological remarks followed by a third section which summarizes “the state of the climate”. Section four provides a short analysis of the great acceleration, i.e. the rapid global growth process after WW2 and which basically has created the present climate crisis. In section five we analyze the conditions for the great transformation ahead. In section six we leave the general analysis in favor of the specific: we focus on the climate impact of the balance between activities within and outside the formal economy. Section seven is focused on productivity presently and in the post fossil society followed by a section (eight) on the role of coal. After a general discussion on the coming transformation of working life in the ninth section we focus on the role of AI in section ten followed by a competence-related approach in section eleven. Section twelve, which also concludes with the paper, discusses the necessary and probably most important issue in the path ahead towards a post fossil society: the transformation of our minds, i.e. the paradigm shifts in our understanding of the planetary conditions for human activity and work

Keywords:
AI power consumption, artisan small-scale mining, carbon budget, climate and working hours, coal and work, the Great Acceleration, planetary boundaries, productivity decline, working conditions