SANTA CRUZ — Richard Nolthenius has studied the stars at the Cabrillo College Observatory for nearly 33 years. He is first and foremost an astronomer and, in addition, now focuses on climate change and its connection to the global economy and politics.

Nolthenius is one of the authors of a new Jill Cody anthology called, “Climate Abandoned: We’re on The Endangered Species List,” which features concepts and proactive solutions addressing catastrophic climate change. One of the chapters, “The Climate Crisis: Civilizations Unacknowledged Energy Economic Constraints,” explains how the total accumulated past global gross domestic product is correlated with the global rate of civilization’s energy consumption today.

“Tim Garrett (a cloud physicist at the University of Utah) was first to identify a relationship, which puts fundamental constraints on what it is that we can hope to do in the future, and it’s a relationship between energy consumption and economic growth globally,” Nolthenius said. “The relationship needed a name, so I gave it the name, the Garrett Relation.”

Garrett, according to Nolthenius, discovered that if you look at the sum of all past global spending throughout time, that number has been on the rise, and is directly proportional to the rate of consumption of energy today. Energy which both supports all past growth and also enables new growth.

Nolthenius wanted to know why the Garrett relation is obeyed and has come to the conclusion that it is because humans are programmed for optimal growth through evolution by natural selection, so that life grows at the fastest rate it can.

“Evolution is in service of growth — you’re rewarded for growth.” He said. “We’re driven by our dopamine and serotonin mechanisms towards growth. The more offspring you can leave then the bigger impact you will have on the planet.”

Nolthenius explains that individually, our energy consumptive actions do not affect climate, but they strongly affect our personal well-being, so we continue to do them. Only the global sum of all actions, which we individually do not control, affect climate, mostly through greater carbon dioxide. Greater growth enables faster exploitation of new energy, feeding new growth in an amplifying cycle. It makes lowering atmospheric CO2 far more difficult than most people realize.

“If it [the odds of avoiding a catastrophic future climate] were absolutely zero, I wouldn’t be doing climate at all,” Nolthenius said. “I’d go back to doing astronomy where I’m surrounded by really wonderful people doing incredible stuff.”

Avoiding catastrophic future climate, Nolthenius explains, will only be accomplished by empowering governments to compel their citizens to take on the hard and expensive actions necessary to lower population and therefore energy consumption at dramatic rates, which is against our natural desires to grow.

Nolthenius will host a talk on the Garrett Relation at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Cabrillo College, room 450, 6500 Soquel Drive.