Wild Free and Happy Sample 62

 [Note: This is a new section from the rough draft of Wild, Free, & Happy. It’s finally getting into the home stretch, maybe four more to go (or fewer).  These samples start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE (if you happen to have some free time). 

Electric Supply and Demand

There are two flavors of electricity.  Power plants generate alternating current (AC) electricity and feed it into the grid.  AC is impossible to store — use it or lose it.  But if AC is converted to direct current (DC) electricity, it can be stored in battery systems.  Then, when demand increases, the stored DC power can be converted to AC, and fed back into the grid. 

In a conventional power system, centralized plants generate the electricity and feed it into the grid for distribution — a hub and spoke design.  Throughout every day, demand for power rises and falls.  When demand rises, more power must quickly be fed to the grid.  To do this, secondary generators are kept running on standby, providing a “spinning reserve.”

Renewable energy systems are quite different.  There is no central production plant with a spinning reserve backup.  Generation is provided by a scattered network of solar panels and/or wind turbines.  They are installed at sites likely to generate the most power, and these are often not located close to existing grids and energy consumers.

In addition to the normal daily ups and downs of end-user demand, power generation cannot be carefully managed.  The challenge here is intermittency.  Solar panels do nothing at night, or when heavy clouds move in, or when their collectors are covered with snow, dust, bird droppings, etc.  Wind turbines take a nap when the breeze fades away, or when their blades are coated with ice.  The strength of sunbeams and breezes is variable, uncontrollable, and often unpredictable.

Mitch Rolling noted, “In Minnesota, wind farms produced electricity only 34.67 percent of the time in 2016.”  Vaclav Smil wrote, “The best offshore wind turbines produce electricity 45% of the time, and photovoltaic panels 25% in ideal locations — while Germany’s solar panels produce electricity only 12% of the time.”

Wind and solar systems don’t have a spinning reserve generator for backup.  So, to reliably respond to shifts in demand, surplus generation can be stored in batteries.  When demand increases, stored power can be released to the grid.

Imagine living on the 60^th floor of a skyscraper when the region’s renewable energy production has been hobbled by intermittency for days or weeks, and the batteries are drained.  No power, water, lights, elevators, etc.  This challenge will increase as the grid transitions from fossil energy to renewable.

Vaclav Smil noted that existing energy storage systems have far less capacity than needed to maintain reliable power delivery.  “It is still impossible to store electricity affordably in quantities sufficient to meet the demand of a medium-sized city (500,000) for only a week or two, or to supply a megacity (more than 10 million people) for just half a day.”

Opposition

As mentioned earlier, many fundamental components of industrial civilization can only be produced with the high temperatures made possible by fossil energy (steel, concrete, solar panels, wind turbines etc.).  Thus, current technology does not allow us to actually decarbonize the global economy, or even come close.

A number of U.S. counties and localities are creating rules to prohibit the construction of wind and/or solar installations.  In 2023, 411 U.S. counties had established some restrictions on renewable energy installations.  Rural folks don’t want their countrysides blemished with unsightly power towers and access roads.  Leave us alone!

In 2024, USA Today reported, “Local governments are banning new utility-scale wind and solar power faster than they’re building it.”  New wind turbine projects have been banned in 23 counties of North Carolina, in all 120 counties of Kentucky, in all 8 counties of Connecticut, in all 14 counties of Vermont, and in 91 of Tennessee’s 95 counties.

Poor nations can’t afford to make costly investments in renewable energy, and wealthy nations are not eager to generously provide them with enormous financial assistance.  Folks in wealthy nations aren’t interested in radically simplifying their lives.

There are 193 nations in the world.  At international meetings, they proudly announce their optimistic goals for transitioning to renewable energy within several decades.  Given that extended timeframe, it’s tempting to assume that technological miracles, yet to be invented, will somehow save the day.  Optimistic goals are easy to announce.  Fulfilling them is another story.

Vaclav Smil noted that China and India are still expanding coal extraction and coal-fired power generation plants.  In other regions, there is strong opposition to new rules that restrict the expansion of natural gas infrastructure.  Coal mining communities don’t want to shut down the mines.  The petroleum industry remains hard at work.

In Iowa, the term “climate change” can sound like an obscene demonic hoax.  Chris Gloninger, a TV weather forecaster, foolishly spoke those two words during a live broadcast.  Viewers exploded with rage.  He got death threats, quit his job, and moved out of the state. 

Overshoot

And now, dear reader, the plot of this word dance makes a sudden swerve into a dangerous lane.  The soundtrack gets speedy screechy loud and scary.  A vicious monster steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight.  The audience screams.  Alas, the actual planet smashing boogeyman is far more horrifying and powerful than climate change.  Its name is overshoot, and it cannot be easily swept away with clever gizmos, delusional optimism, or clueless indifference.

In an earlier chapter, I mentioned William Catton, the author of Overshoot.  He defined carrying capacity as “the maximum population of a given species which a particular habitat can support indefinitely.”  Overshoot is “the condition of having exceeded for the time being the permanent carrying capacity of the habitat.”  Today, humankind’s tremendous impacts on the entire planet far exceed the limits.  Way too many critters are living way too hard, we don’t understand what we’re doing, and we have no interest in stopping.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond wrote about the Viking colonization of Iceland, which is now “the most heavily damaged country in Europe.”  Since settlement in A.D. 870, most of the original trees and vegetation have been destroyed.  Half of its soil has been moved into the ocean.  Large areas that were green when the Vikings first landed are now “a lifeless brown desert without buildings, roads, or any current signs of people.”  The Vikings were low-tech amateurs, and climate was not a primary factor in this disaster.

Today, the rapidly growing mob of 8+ billion hungry horny primates is mindlessly beating the living crap out of the planet in countless ways.  It’s very important to understand that climate change is merely one component of overshoot, the huge whoop-ass monster we have conjured into existence. 

William Rees explained that the impacts of overshoot include climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, mass extinctions, deforestation, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation, falling sperm counts, pollution of everything, etc.  “Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot.  The global economy will inevitably contract, and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.” 

Seibert & Rees wrote, “Overshoot is a genuine existential threat.  Climate change alone is capable of making large patches of Earth irreversibly uninhabitable for humans in this century and ultimately jeopardizing global civilization.”

The safe and effective cure for overshoot is obvious, but the medicine is bitter.  “We argue that the only viable response to overshoot is a managed contraction of the human enterprise until we arrive within the safely stable territory defined by ecological limits.  This will entail many fewer people consuming far less energy and material resources than at present.”

Meanwhile, many talking heads are telling us exactly what we want to hear.  We can relax and comfortably continue working and shopping.  We just need to buy an electric car, become vegans, have one child or none, and enjoy a wonderful life.  The magic verb that speeds our pilgrimage to eco-utopia is “decarbonize.”  Clean green renewable energy will save the Earth.

William Rees disagrees.  The last thing we need to do is shift the mining industry into high gear, and produce 1.39 billion batteries for the world’s transport fleet.  We’ll also need a huge number of batteries to provide backup power for the electric grids around the world.  Producing huge numbers of solar panels and wind turbines will require even more mining, smelting, and manufacturing.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 61

 

[Note: This is a new section from the rough draft of Wild, Free, & Happy. It’s finally getting into the home stretch, maybe four more to go (or fewer).  These samples start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE (if you happen to have some free time).

Great Acceleration

Readers with gray hair are acutely aware that they have spent their entire lives in a hurricane of explosive change.  I was born in Michigan, and spent my first 18 years in West Bloomfield Township, a suburb of Detroit.  In 1950, it was home to 8,720 people.  In 2020, there were 65,888! 

When my grandparents were born in the late 1800s, there were 1.3 billion people on Earth.  When I was born in 1952, there were 2.6 billion humans.  Today, just during my lifetime, the mob has more than tripled, zooming past eight billion.  We continue growing like a voracious planet eating swarm.

In 2000, J. R. McNeill published Something New Under the Sun, a fascinating (and shocking) book on the environmental history of the twentieth century, when cultures blind drunk on gushers of cheap oil spurred a population explosion.  In his 2014 book, The Great Acceleration, McNeill narrowed his focus to the catastrophic changes that have occurred since 1945 — perhaps the most destructive era since the Chicxulub asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.

This explosion was propelled by a fossil fuel bonfire that enabled industrial civilization to sharply increase food production.  Look at this mind-blowing graph [Here].  The curve of energy consumption closely corresponds with the curve of population growth. 

William E. Rees, writing in 2023, noted a daunting factoid: “Half the fossil fuels ever consumed have been burned in just the past 30-35 years.”  (As much as 90% of it has been burned since the early 1940s). 

Fossil energy is not renewable, and the remaining reserves are shrinking every day.  Currently, this bonfire has propelled a turbulent joyride of titillating decadence.  Humankind has far exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity in countless ways.

Bill McGuire is a professor emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London.  He wrote Hothouse Earth, and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report.  McGuire warned that “there is now no chance of dodging a grim future of perilous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown.”  In today’s snowy regions, winters will be brief or go extinct, and summers will get toasty.  We’re gliding toward a world “that would be utterly alien to our grandparents.”

The other night was a full moon.  It stirred some powerful feelings.  Once upon a time, that same moon shined down on the woolly mammoths.  It made Neanderthals smile.  It glowed upon our ancient tree-dwelling ancestors, and on the age of dinosaurs.  It lit the night when there was no life on Earth.  The moon remembers so much.

Global Energy

It’s vital to comprehend the major limitations of renewable energy.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an organization that focuses on global energy consumption.  Their 524-page World Energy Outlook 2022 report revealed some daunting statistics.

First, a vocabulary lesson.  “Primary energy consumption” measures total energy demand.  “Final energy consumption” is a subset of primary — it’s just the amount of energy consumed by end users, such as households, industry, and agriculture.  It is the energy which reaches the final consumer’s door and excludes that which is used by the energy sector itself.

With regard to global final energy consumption, 80% of it is provided by fossil energy, and 20% is provided by electricity — and about 95% of this electricity is currently generated with nonrenewable fossil energy.  In addition to this, the GND plan also requires that the global fleet of cars, trucks, trains, etc., must be switched to “clean, green, carbon-free power.”  It can’t.

Vaclav Smil warned us.  “We are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.”

It’s absolutely impossible to radically decarbonize our current way of life because electricity can’t provide the power needed for many processes that are fundamental to life as we know it.  The concrete, steel, and other essential components of solar panels, wind turbines, hydro dams, and electric vehicles cannot be made with electricity.

Alice Friedemann discussed critical shortcomings of the renewable energy fantasy.  “All contraptions that produce electricity need high heat in their construction.  They all need cement made at 2600°F (1426°C).”  There is no known way to make cement with electricity.

Making steel for wind turbines requires 3100°F (1700°C).  “Solar panels require 2700° to 3600°F (1500° to 2000°C) of heat to transform silicon dioxide into metallurgical grade silicon.”  Nuke plants still on the drawing board, in theory, might be able to generate 1562°F (850°C), but this is not hot enough for making cement, steel, glass, and lots of other stuff.

Vaclav Smil agreed.  Sharply cutting back, or ending, the use of fossil energy, would blindside our party.  For example, he mentioned cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia.  He calls them “the four material pillars of modern civilization.”  The GND does not explain how the four could be produced solely with renewable electricity.  They also don’t explain how trucking, shipping, rail transport, and flying could largely be carbon-free in a decade or so, if ever.

Smil reminded us that the large-scale production of highly potent synthetic ammonia fertilizer led to a dramatic increase in agricultural yields.  More food could feed more mouths.  Of the eight billion people alive in 2022, he estimated that the existence of 40 to 50 percent of them was only made possible by the bigger harvests enabled by ammonia fertilizer, a product made from natural gas (fossil energy).

The steel industry is dependent on coking coal and natural gas, and its emissions contribute substantial amounts of greenhouse gases.  Smil wrote, “But steel is not the only major material responsible for a significant share of CO₂ emissions: cement is much less energy-intensive, but because its global output is nearly three times that of steel, its production is responsible for a very similar share of emitted carbon.”

Cement is made of limestone and clay.  Concrete is made of cement, water, sand, and rock.  Andrew Logan wrote, “After water, concrete is the most consumed material on Earth.”  Making high-performance concrete requires heating calcium carbonate, a process that releases CO₂.  Additional CO₂ is released by the kiln, which burns fossil fuel to generate a temperature of 2,700°F (1,482°C).  This intense heat cannot be generated by using electricity. 

Jonathan Watts noted that the four biggest causes of CO₂ emissions are coal, oil, gas, and concrete.  He called concrete “the most destructive material on Earth.”  Its global production has increased 25-fold since 1950. 

Smil’s bottom line: “With current technologies, and for the foreseeable future, you simply cannot make cement, steel, plastic, or ammonia absent fossil fuels.”  Fossil energy is essential for making potent fertilizer, manufacturing farm equipment, and operating the machines.  It enables the processing, packaging, refrigeration, and distribution of the nutrients that keep countless folks on life support. 

Nonrenewable Mining

Fossil energy is essential for manufacturing wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, pavement, power transmission grids, and on and on.  All of them are made of materials extracted from the Earth.  The mining, crushing, hauling, and smelting of mineral resources are extremely dependent on fossil powered technology.

Walter Youngquist mentioned an old geologist saying, “If it can’t be grown, it must be mined.”  The GND dream seems to assume that the planet’s reserves of strategic minerals are essentially limitless — a cookie jar that never empties, no matter how fast we eat them, century after century. 

The dream involves an extensive redesign, replacement, and expansion of most of the global infrastructure used for power generation, distribution, and consumption.  The dream envisions that every nation on Earth, from the richest to poorest, will eagerly cooperate to complete the transition within 20 or 30 years.  Seriously?

Frik Els was thrilled by the GND optimism.  He is the editor of Mining.com, a news source for the mining industry.  He praised the efforts of frontline GND proponents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg, calling them “mining’s unlikely heroines.”  Why?  Because the GND would be a multi-trillion-dollar godsend for mining and manufacturing corporations, and their lucky stockholders.

Vaclav Smil provided an illuminating example.  A typical lithium car battery weighs about 990 pounds (450 kg), and contains lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, graphite, steel, aluminum, and plastics.  To make just one battery, extracting those ingredients would require crushing and refining 40 tons of specific ores.  To access and fetch those 40 tons of ore-bearing rock, 225 tons of worthless rock would first have to be moved out of the way.  Folks, that’s one battery for one car! 

In 2021, Simon Michaux wrote a 1,000-page report for the Geological Survey of Finland, a government bureaucracy.  It documented the results of a study done to determine if it was possible to replace fossil energy with electricity generated by renewable methods, on a global scale. 

In 2019, the global transport fleet included about 1.41 billion cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles, of which 1.39 billion used Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) technology.  To shift the fleet to Electric Vehicle (EV) technology would require 1.39 billion batteries to store their electricity.  Also, the world’s gas stations would need to be replaced with charging stations that can deliver renewable energy. 

As mentioned, making batteries requires enormous amounts of mineral resources.  The Geological Survey of Finland wondered if there were adequate mineral resources on Earth to make 1.39 billion batteries for vehicles (282.6 million tons of batteries).  Their study concluded: “No, not even close.” 

Batteries typically have a working lifespan of only 5 to 15 years.  Michaux warns that current mining production, and existing mineral reserves, are insufficient to manufacture even the first generation of renewable technology.  “What are the theoretical options for running industrial systems on renewable energy?  The geologists can’t think of any.”

Christopher Ketchum noted that a full-scale U.S. transition to renewable energy technology would require a massive surge in the production of critical metals.  Estimates predict that this could increase demand for them by 700% to 4,000%.

Alice Friedemann noted the heavy impacts associated with renewable energy.  “Mining consumes 10% of world energy.  Wind, solar, and all other electrical generating machines rely on fossil-fueled mining, manufacturing, and transportation every step of their life cycle.”

Jon Hurdle wrote about recycling solar panels.  “Today, roughly 90 percent of panels in the U.S. that have lost their efficiency due to age, or that are defective, end up in landfills because that option costs a fraction of recycling them.” 

Seibert & Rees noted that renewable energy devices have limited lifespans.  Solar panels and wind turbines last an average of 15 to 30 years, DC inverters last 5 to 8 years, batteries last 5 to 15 years.  Unfortunately, the materials used to create the highly complex physical infrastructure for the entire system are not made of magic fairy dust.  Nor are the bodies, motors, and batteries of electric vehicles.  They have their roots in strip mines, smelters, chemical plants, toxic waste dumps, oil refineries, and on and on. 

Many tons of steel and concrete are needed to manufacture and install each wind turbine.  To make a solar panel, you need stuff like cobalt, gallium, germanium, indium, manganese, tellu­rium, titanium, and zinc.  To create the computer hardware needed to operate the grids, you need to fetch stuff like platinum, rhenium, selenium, gold, strontium, tantalum, gallium, germanium, beryllium, yttrium, and pure silicon.

Another essential component of modern living in a world of eight billion is extensive networks of well-maintained roads.  Walter Youngquist noted that in the U.S., there are more than 2 million miles of paved roads and highways.  About 94% of these miles are asphalt — a material that is 90% crushed rock, and 10% bitumen (a sticky black byproduct of petroleum refining).  “Asphalt is easy to put in place, and far less expensive in terms of energy expended and cost of materials than concrete.” 

In 2007, the American Concrete Pavement Association reported that about 500 million tons of asphalt are placed in the U.S. each year.  Doing this consumed 1.45 billion gallons of diesel fuel (5.488 billion liters).  Asphalt typically needs resurfacing every 8 to 10 years. 

Concrete can last 30 to 40 years before resurfacing, and it’s strong enough to better carry the weight of heavy loads.  About 60% of U.S. interstate highway system pavement is concrete.  Fossil energy is absolutely required for the production of asphalt and concrete.  This energy is nonrenewable, and so is our way of life.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 60

 [Note: This is a new section from the rough draft of Wild, Free, & Happy. It’s finally getting into the home stretch, maybe four more to go (or fewer).  These samples start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE (if you happen to have some free time).

Climate Confusion

Climate change is an idea that makes many people sweat and squirm.  Poorly informed folks say it’s a hoax spread by lunatics.  Religious folks might have faith that climate change is God’s will.  Other folks, who pay close attention to the news, perceive that climate trends have obviously swerved into spooky new patterns that potentially endanger the status quo for everyone everywhere. 

Folks who believe that climate change is real and important tend to be divided into two groups.  (1) Techno-optimists feel confident that the threat of climate change can and will be resolved via human brilliance.  (2) Techno-skeptics perceive that the danger is powerful, intensifying, overwhelming, and destined to destabilize life as we know it.

On the center stage of mainstream discussion, the spotlights are usually kept shining on the optimists.  They celebrate the miracles of new technology that will eliminate climate change, and steer us into the fast lane to utopia.  Everything is under control.  Our prosperous way of life is safe and sound.

Samuel Alexander added that the “techno-fix” approach is politically and socially palatable.  “It provides governments, businesses, and individuals with a means of responding to environmental problems (or appearing to) without actually confronting the underlying issues.”

Wackernagel & Rees neatly summed up the clumsy predicament: “The politically acceptable is ecologically disastrous while the ecologically necessary is politically impossible.”

Big Mama Nature is not amused.  She doesn’t care what we believe.  This is her circus, we are her monkeys, and Mama is pissed!  We’re monkeying around with extremely destructive games, while screeching and chattering.  Life is but a dream!

Secret Weapons

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, brilliantly convinced war weary Germans that they’d soon be saved by an amazing technological miracle.  The human mind has a spooky ability to develop a powerful blind faith in almost any idea, no matter how goofy.  Literally, nothing is unbelievable.

Albert Speer was in Hitler’s inner circle.  In March 1945, German defeat was inevitable.  In the final weeks, Hitler revealed his brilliant plan to the German people.  What seemed to be a rapidly approaching brutal defeat was actually a cunning trap!  He was luring the enemy armies into an ambush where they would soon be obliterated by a new and terribly powerful secret weapon!

Just days before the fall of Berlin, Speer made a visit to the western front.  While German cities were smoldering heaps of rubble, rural folks enjoyed a hopeful blind faith in the secret weapon nonsense, and were eagerly awaiting a glorious victory.  Speer was surprised that many top-level Nazis also believed this. 

Ghost Dance

By 1889, the once vast herds of bison on the U.S. plains had nearly been driven to extinction.  To the native people, this monstrous tragedy felt like the end of the world.  Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man, described the Ghost Dance movement, a desperate effort to conjure a powerful act of spiritual healing.

Dancing would roll up the all the crud of the white man’s world, like a dirty carpet.  This would uncover once again “the flowering prairie, unspoiled, with its herds of buffalo and antelope, its clouds of birds, belonging to everyone, enjoyed by all.”

The Ghost Dance movement spread from tribe to tribe.  Dancers were not allowed to have things from the white world: liquor, guns, knives, kettles, or metal ornaments.  They would dance for four days.  Whites feared an armed uprising, so they attacked the dancers.  During the Wounded Knee massacre, 153 Lakota people were exterminated.

Electric Car Dance

Today, drivers concerned about climate change are being persuaded to abandon their old-fashioned petroleum powered machines, and acquire one of the new and luxurious electric powered wheelchairs.  Marketing wizards assure us that the batteries in these wheelchairs will someday be charged with “clean green” electricity produced by solar panels, wind turbines, and other cool gizmos.  Currently, the primary source of energy used to generate electricity for charging stations is fossil fuel, often natural gas. 

The motorized wheelchair fad began a few years before my father was born in 1913.  Ford was an early leader.  In the previous 300,000 years, humans primarily got around on foot — a cheap, healthy, practical, and climate friendly mode of transportation. 

Newborn infants squirt out of the womb with two astonishing miracles at the ends of their legs.  These happy feet allow us to wander through forests, prairies, deserts, wetlands, and mountains.  They propel us while swimming and dancing, and they’re quite useful for kicking and stomping troublesome annoyances. 

Happy Thoughts

In the Peter Pan story, Tinker Bell is the fluttering fairy of magical thinking: “Just think a happy thought and you can fly!”  We’re so lucky to live in a golden age of happy news!  Scroll your phone.  Read the paper.  Turn on the radio or TV.  It’s not hard to find soothing climate change news.

The core message assures us that we have a plan, and we’re making significant advances on important goals.  Some issues are more challenging, and will take additional time.  Climate change is a complicated rascal, but we know what we’re doing.  Everything is under control.  It’s not too late.  Relax!

For example, Wikipedia’s 100% Renewable Energy page reported: “Recent studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport, and desalination well before 2050 is feasible… worldwide at low cost.”  Elsewhere, eco-warrior Bill McKibben wrote that “we have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels.”

On the other hand, many educators deliberately limit what they tell their students, to avoid souring their precious innocence (don’t scare the children!).  News organizations often limit coverage of unpleasant stories that could disturb their audience and/or advertisers.  Politicians who promise quick and easy solutions win more votes.

Rupert Read wrote, “Environmentalists are often accused of being doom-mongers… I think that almost all environmentalists incline in fact to a Polyanna-ish stance of undue optimism.”

Kevin Anderson noted that this undue optimism was the product of something like a conspiracy theory.  “Half of global emissions come from just ten percent of the population.  The top one percent are responsible for twice the amount of carbon as the bottom half of the world’s population.  The inequality in in who is causing emissions is obscene.”  “We’re heading for collapse of modern society, and the collapse of most of our emblematic ecosystems.”

At the same time, this elite one percent is primarily responsible for framing the global discussion on climate change.  They are especially interested in perpetual economic growth, boosting their personal wealth, and keeping business as usual in the fast lane for as long as possible, by any means necessary. 

Sharply reducing emissions would sharply disrupt business as usual.  So would doing nothing, disregarding climate impacts, partying like there’s no tomorrow, and letting nature clean up the bloody mess.

Green New Deal

Anyway, climate change sucks.  It’s largely caused by a mob of eight billion critters generating way too many carbon emissions.  A primary source of carbon-rich pollution is the combustion of staggering amounts of fossil fuel. 

Shazam!  The quick and easy solution is perfectly obvious!  We just abandon our naughty addiction to dirty energy, and replace it with clean green renewable energy.  Hooray!  State of the art technology will allow us to painlessly glide into a beautiful green utopia that requires no significant lifestyle sacrifices. 

In this great healing, solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric motors play starring roles.  The climate-saving magic word here is decarbonize.  In a number of nations, this crusade has gradually been growing since 2018 or so.  The main U.S. version of this movement is called the Green New Deal (GND).

The GND vision is to make radical, gargantuan, and super expensive changes around the entire world over the next 20 to 30 years.  Ideally, every nation would eagerly cooperate, and this would allow humankind to gradually reduce the brutality of the beatings that Big Mama Nature receives every day.  Then, miracles happen, and future generations maybe enjoy a smoother journey into the future.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, as noted earlier, ongoing CO₂ emissions are increasing, and they are accumulating in the atmosphere, where they will persist for thousands of years.  John Gowdy concluded, “The effects of fossil fuel burning are irreversible on a time scale relevant to humans.”  We’ve started something we cannot stop.

In 2021, Megan Seibert and William E. Rees released a free report that provided a vigorous critique of the GND’s shortcomings and fantasies.  It’s a competent intro, and it’s fairly easy to read — “GND proponents are appallingly tolerant of the inexplicable.”

Vaclav Smil is an energy theorist, the author of How the World Really Works, and 40 other books.  He’s a sharp critic of the GND’s pipe dream of a full-scale transition from fossil energy to clean green renewable energy.  He calls it science fiction.  “Heavy doses of wishful thinking are commingled with a few solid facts.”

Smil smirked at the GND’s juicy promises.  “Who could be against solutions that are both cheap and nearly instantly effective, that will create countless well-paying jobs, and ensure care-free futures for coming generations?”  Many others agree with Smil’s skepticism.

We talk about two categories of energy: nonrenewable (fossil), and renewable (wind, solar, etc.).  Nate Hagens clarified this subject.  Geese and oak trees are “renewable.”  Solar collectors and wind turbines are “rebuildable.”  They have a working lifespan of up to 20-30 years, at which point they must be periodically replaced, until the time when civilization rusts in peace.  Their components are not designed to be recycled in an affordable and eco-friendly way.  Many go to landfills.  Some are considered to be toxic waste.

William Rees explained how our dreams of “solving” global warming have deep roots in magical thinking.  Proposed “solutions” are compatible with perpetual economic growth and business as usual.  We can pretend to save the world while mindlessly enjoying our cool toys until the lights go out.  Yippee!

During its evolution, the GND mindset has been an intoxicating cornucopia of heartwarming utopian fantasies.  We’d have 100% renewable energy by 2030.  Decent jobs for everyone.  Free college education.  Single-payer healthcare.  Adequate housing.  Healthy affordable food.  Public transportation and high-speed rail.  Perpetual economic growth.  And so on.  (See Wikipedia’s Green New Deal section.)