Einstein said the laws of thermodynamics would never be overturned. Today’s climate policies act as if they already have.
Posted originally on Substack.
Humanity did not enter the climate crisis because we lacked warnings. We entered it because we ignored the laws that govern everything from the birth of stars to the metabolism of cells. Politicians like to talk about “fighting climate change” as if it were a debate, a public-relations contest, or an engineering challenge that can be postponed until the next election cycle. But global warming is not waiting for quarterly earnings reports or political mood swings. It obeys laws—thermodynamic laws—that are as universal and unforgiving as gravity.
And there aren’t just three of them.
In 1922, Alfred J. Lotka extended classical thermodynamics into the realm of biology with what became known as the Maximum Power Principle: organisms that capture and use the most available energy from their environment will dominate. This was not a metaphor. It was physics applied to life. Three decades later, H.T. Odum—building on Lotka and Darwin—proposed a Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: systems that maximize useful power win the evolutionary race. Odum continued expanding this framework across his career: in 1996 he articulated a Fifth Law describing the universe as a hierarchy of self-organizing energy flows; and in 2001 a Sixth Law showing that material cycles are coupled to energy degradation, with each transformation step concentrating materials but reducing total flow.
These extensions do not replace the First or Second Law. They illuminate how life and civilization obey them. And Einstein, who rarely spoke in absolutes, made a striking concession: thermodynamics, he said, was the one branch of physics he believed would never be overturned.
Yet here we are—watching Western political leaders behave as though the Second Law is optional and the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth are negotiable.
The Fantasy of Decarbonized Oil
Consider the soaring rhetoric around “low-carbon” or “decarbonized” oil. The very phrase is a linguistic hallucination. Oil is carbon. We burn it. The emissions are released at the tailpipe, not the wellhead. No amount of marketing can change the chemistry.
But governments and industry continue selling the public the idea that carbon capture and storage (CCS) can turn a carbon-based fuel into a low-carbon commodity. The myth persists because it is politically convenient: it promises climate action without economic disruption, technological progress without systemic change, and decarbonization without the discomfort of transition.
The reality is far more prosaic.
Most CCS projects worldwide do not capture emissions from oil combustion—they process methane streams or are coupled to enhanced oil recovery, which itself increases fossil fuel production. More importantly, CCS has not been demonstrated at scale as a reliable climate solution. It is expensive, it is thermodynamically inefficient, and it depends heavily on government subsidies the public rarely sees or understands.
The Pathways Plus system trumpeted in Canada’s new memorandum of understanding is a case in point. Promoted as “the world’s largest carbon capture, utilization, and storage project,” it comes with a staggering $16.5-billion price tag for the shared CO₂ pipeline and storage network alone. That does not include the individual capture units each company must purchase and maintain.
And what does this massive investment buy us? A reduction of 10 to 20 percent of a barrel’s full life-cycle emissions—at best. At worst, the reductions cost so much per tonne that no genuine market for “decarbonized oil” exists outside government subsidy frameworks.
This is not climate policy. It is climate theatre. A stage production in which everyone pretends the outcome is governed by political ideology rather than physical law.
Thermodynamics Doesn’t Care About Subsidies
The physics is brutally simple. Fossil fuels are finite, contain carbon, and release carbon dioxide when burned. Capturing the carbon requires additional energy, which itself generates more heat. And even if CCS were free—which it isn’t—the global warming problem is not fundamentally an emissions problem.
It is a heat problem.
Excess heat is accumulating in the oceans at rates measured in hundreds of terawatts. This is where Lotka and Odum become not academic curiosities but essential guides. Their work shows that systems—whether ecological or industrial—organize to maximize power. As long as fossil fuels are abundant and profitable, fossil-fuel extraction systems will keep expanding and will continue adding heat to the climate system.
Trying to “decarbonize oil” is like trying to “degallop a horse.” The action is inseparable from the thing itself. You cannot square the thermodynamic circle by rebranding combustion as sustainability.
When Politics Ignores Physics
When public discourse becomes unmoored from physical reality, we get policies designed to satisfy slogans rather than solve problems. We get leaders who insist that oil can be low-carbon, that CCS will solve the climate problem, and that the laws of thermodynamics will politely wait for industry to adjust.
But the climate system does not negotiate. It accumulates heat according to the same principles that governed the early universe, the evolution of ecosystems, and the operation of every heat engine ever built. It is governed by energy gradients, not election cycles.
Einstein warned that thermodynamics was universally valid. Odum warned that systems seek maximum power. Lotka warned that life evolves according to energy flows. These were not environmentalists pleading for action. They were physicists describing the universe.
The tragedy is not that politicians fail to understand these laws. It is that they act as though they can be ignored without consequence.
There Oughta Be a Law—But There Already Is
Legislatures do not write the laws governing global warming. They are written into the structure of the universe. And they are being violated daily, not in the sense of crime, but in the sense of inevitability—every tonne of CO₂ traps heat because the physics requires it.
And yet we continue investing billions in fantasies of decarbonized oil, hoping that clever branding can replace real thermodynamic solutions.
There oughta be a law against global warming.
There are seven of them. The 7th Law of Thermodynamics combines the Maximum Power Principle and the Law of Supply and Demand. When a commodity like the excess heat of global warming is in excess, its price will fall. And until our policies align with all of these laws—until we treat heat, not ideology, as the central variable in climate strategy—we will continue to mistake technological ornamentation for systemic change.
Thermodynamics doesn’t care about our political preferences.
But it will determine our future.