Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXXI
Dream The Impossible Dream: ‘Renewables’ Will Save Humanity
The following Contemplation is my comment shared to a Degrowth Facebook group I am a member of.
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The post by LM shared the following:
I came to the conclusion that the vast majority of people are dangerous in their way of thinking. I hope we can pop their little bubbles that encapsulate them and release them from their matrix. How to react in the face of danger? This was a conversation in a post about the Shetland isles wind farm that is being built.
Ken Bee two of your examples of ‘clean Green’ renewables…
Solar-forged aluminium frame, tempered glass, EVA film, Silicon solar cell, encapsulant material, back sheets, junction box, wire.
Is the manufacturing and maintenance of this solar panel made from leaves and the energy used to make, transport and assemble it from the magical fairy dust?
Wind turbines-rotor, blades, gearbox, housing, braking system, yaw drive, yaw motor, generator, power cables, wire, let’s not forget the tower.
Is the manufacturing and maintenance of this wind turbine made from leaves and the energy used to make, transport and assemble it magic fairy dust?
Now scale that into the millions.
So there’s one part of my as you say fascinating conclusion that renewables are heavily reliant on fossil fuels and minerals.
Hydro, geothermal and nuclear
all have there issues too.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you.
The comments that ensued tended to challenge this perspective, usually with the idea of ‘not throwing the baby out with the bath water’ and better to pursue the ‘good’ as opposed to seeking the ‘perfect’.
My comment:
While the idea of ‘degrowing’ is certainly recognised within this group (far more than the ‘average’ person), there remains the belief by many (most? all?) that ‘renewables’ have their place because they are less disruptive to our ecological systems than fossil fuels and thus can help in transitioning human society to a sustainable existence. This belief system, while hopeful, tends to ignore much of the growing evidence that it is ‘the impossible dream’ because of both the physical and human sociocultural realities/constraints that exist on our planet.
Having broached such limitations to others for some time, I have come to the conclusion that people believe what they wish to believe, regardless of evidence/facts to the contrary. And when confronted by data that challenges ‘cherished’ beliefs they more often than not become more entrenched in their beliefs rather than reevaluate and possibly change them. This happens through no fault of the person or group, it’s just the way human cognition works.
Add on top of this that the dominant, story-telling apes amongst us stand to profit significantly from the narratives that non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) are ‘green/clean’ in virtually every way (or will be any moment now, just keep investing in our research), and we have a perfect storm of people wanting to do right by their awareness of at least one symptom of our predicament of ecological overshoot (usually just carbon emissions) but guided towards a ‘solution’ that does little to nothing except perhaps reduce their cognitive dissonance; in fact, our pursuit of NRREHTs may actually be exacerbating our overshoot.
Yes, our extraction and burning of fossil fuels to power our modern technologies are horrible — to say little about having contributed significantly to our predicament of ecological overshoot — but so too is the mining and processing of materials to construct NRREHTs. It’s not a case of seeking the perfect while throwing out the good; it’s a case of recognising the so-called ‘good’ is not actually very ‘good’; it has been marketed as such by the profiteers in society. We are being sold a bill of goods that, as effective propaganda does, convinces us of a particular storyline — and then ignore or debase challenges to it.
As recognised by many, THE most effective thing we should be doing is reducing significantly our energetic requirements/dependencies, especially with respect to non-essential ones. But this is not happening despite decades of attempted ‘solutions’ by way of NRREHTs. We are continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels, and simply adding to our energy use by way of non-fossil fuel energy production. This narrative ignores, for the most part, the significant fossil fuel inputs that are necessary for the production of these ‘alternatives’ (and in perpetuity), and the ecological destruction being wrought by the necessary material extraction and processing. The usual refrain is that ‘they’re better than fossil fuels’.
This belief contributes to the magical thinking around NRREHTs and the notion that we can for the most part sustain our energetic conveniences, not abandon them, through a power transition. If growth cannot be halted amongst a host of other important social shifts (-economic, -political, -cultural), and it hasn’t thus far, then any efforts to ‘right the ship’ are dead in the water; in fact, one can make a good argument that our predicament has become worse as we encounter diminishing returns on our investments in complexity and strive to sustain our living arrangements.
Ecological overshoot appears to have arrived and no amount of bargaining with it is likely to change that. We can choose to reduce significantly our drawdown of finite resources, and thereby reduce the ecological destruction we are contributing to, or not. This will not and cannot happen, however, through any kind of concerted efforts to scale up NRREHTs in an attempt to replace fossil fuel use. Better, as some have stated, to decrease our energy use in toto and relocalise as much of our needs as possible. And this is by no means a ‘perfect’ solution as I believe we are past any kind of tipping point where a solution is possible. Ecological overshoot is a predicament and the best that people might ‘hope’ for is some form of mitigation on a local level since we are into the thick of it globally.
A quick note to any regular readers that my Contemplations are likely to decrease precipitously over the next few months as the weather here north of Toronto turns and I return to my food gardens. The past few days, for example, has allowed me to begin reorganising my greenhouses, get some pea seeds in the finally unfrozen beds, cover some seed potatoes with soil in one of my greenhouses, build a new raised bed, trim most of the fruit trees, burn some brush (the ash being added to my compost), etc., etc..
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.