Editor’s note: Lierre Keith, co founder of DGR, is going to be in London for two events. On April 1, she’s going to be a part of a Women’s Rights Conference along with a number of other feminists. On April 2, she is going to give a talk on Bright Green Lies, followed by a screening of the documentary and Q&A.
What is to be Done? Women’s Rights Conference
A hybrid conference (up to 150 of us in real life and lots more online) in London on Saturday 1st April 2023,9am-5pmnear Old St tube or Barbican tube. Women’s Declaration International invites you to a day of speeches, workshops, networking, internet livestream link to global sisters and hopefully fun. If you would like to attend, help plan, organize, volunteer on the day, run sessions, etc, please email info@womensdeclaration.com or fill in this form https://forms.gle/bFLntzbBzrm4zd6M8
We will livestream the whole thing, so you can participate online too.You can use the normal FQT attendee login so if you are registered for FQT you are registered and need to do nothing further. If not go to womensdeclaration.com and register for Feminist Question Time and you will get a Zoom link the week before.
With four rooms, a garden and a coffee area, the speakers/workshop leaders include: Sheila Jeffreys, Lierre Keith , Zuleyka Valentin Arroyo, Kaïla Atarou Manfah, Christina Ellingsen, Julia Long, Amparo Domingo, Kate Coleman, Stephanie Davies-Arai, Amber Alt, Paula Boulton, Maureen O’Hara, Marian Rutigliano, Lynne Harne, Emma Thomas, Sally Wainwright, Louise Somerville, Jan Williams, Kelly Frost, Kate Graham, Alison Jenner, Lynn Alderson, Shannon from HearSheHearShe, Jo Brew and many more!
The theme is What is to be done, so talks and workshops will focus on what we should do next.
After the day, we have booked a quiet room at a pub where we can sit and chat, plus go downstairs to buy food and drink.
In order for WDI to break even (& hopefully increase our war chest), we need all of us to support the event both financially (by buying tickets, and donating funds) and also through volunteer activities (in preparation, day of, and cleanup).
You can buy tickets for the in person event here. Register for the online event here.
From Living Planet to Necrosphere: In the Time of Patriarchy’s Endgame
Lierre Keith – writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist will be in London Sunday, April 2nd for this highly anticipated talk. This will be followed by a screening of Bright Green Lies and a Q and A with the people behind it.
More and more environmentalists are starting to question whether not just fossil fuels, but also so-called ‘green energy’, could pose a potentially serious threat to our environment and to what remains of our already threatened species and biodiversity.
With praise from world-renowned author and campaigner Vandana Shiva (anti-GMO activist and President of Navdanya International), Jeff Gibbs (director of Planet of the Humans, available to watch here for free) and Chris Hedges (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour), Bright Green Lies and its accompanying documentary film dig further into this issue, exploring whether our dependence on fossil fuels can really be replaced with a new form of industry that calls itself green.
Join us for the event with our expert panel:
Lierre Keith – writer, radical feminist, and food activist
Julia Barnes – Bright Green Liesfilmmaker and award-winning documentary maker
Derrick Jensen (author of the Bright Green Lies book, activist and named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World”)
This illuminating film “dismantles the illusion of ‘green’ technology in breathtaking, comprehensive detail, revealing a fantasy that must perish if there is to be any hope of preserving what remains of life on Earth. From solar panels to wind turbines, from LED light bulbs to electric cars, no green fantasy escapes Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert’s revealing peek behind the green curtain. Bright Green Lies is a must-read for all who cherish life on Earth.”
—Jeff Gibbs, writer, director, and producer of the film Planet of the Humans
Copies of the film on DVD will be available for purchase, alongside copies of the book which Lierre may sign for you.
Note: This is an in-person event. Please register on this Eventbrite link.
Editor’s Note: DGR does not support solar and wind “alternatives”. They are not alternatives to the energy and ecological crisis, but rather a part of it.. They do not “replace” natural gas and fossil fuels, not only because the so called renewable energy are not as potent an energy source as fossil fuel, but also because they rely on fossil fuel for basic operation. They contribute to the abuse, exploitation and plunder of nature. There are mountains of resources to support this. More dangerously, they lead us to false solutions, putting our much needed revolutionary energies into projects which only contribute to the problem. We are firmly opposed to these technologies.
The value of this article lies in exposing how these “green” technologies are being introduced in reality. Despite the bright green lies in this article, it is important to gain understanding on how these technologies are wrecking havoc across the globe. The beauty of nature is defended strongly in this article. The “violent mechanization of [the] daily view of the natural world” is acknowledged to be a deep concern, indeed it is “extremely disturbing”. In the spirit of solidarity and internationalism, we call for coalitions to ask important questions on these “green” and “alternative” technologies, and to continue the ecological resistance to protect the wild.
My Greek friends in the large island of Euboea and Boeotia (Central Greece) are telling me — and the world — that a “hurricane” of solar and wind technologies are wrecking their lives and the countryside.
I am all for solar and wind alternatives to the Earth-warming fossil fuels. The faster they replace dangerous petroleum, natural gas, and coal, the better. The world is in real danger from anthropogenic climate chaos. Climate nemesis is hanging over the planet like the sword of Damokles.
Nevertheless, Greece has been abusing solar and wind energy. Instead of placing solar panels on the roofs of houses and buildings, the local Greek municipal governments and the Ministry of the Environment are licensing private companies to install solar panel arrays on archaeological sites, wetlands, valleys, and mountains.
The situation with wind turbines, some of which are gigantic and 200 meters tall, is worse. Private companies flatten mountain tops, clear cut forests, dig up valleys and mountain sides for the construction of large cement foundations for their monster wind turbines. They act like the ruthless coal companies in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Euboea
In Central Euboea, there’s an exquisite wetland named Kolobrextis. This wetland supports a number of threatened and endangered species. It is close to an archaeological site. And yet both the archaeological service and the Ministry of the Environment permitted the installation of numerous solar panels in the region of Kolobrextis. Local citizens appealed these illegal decisions, but without success.
They said:
“We consider the wetland our natural inheritance, which cannot be sacrificed on the altar of the interests and profits of a corrupt and unethical market.”
On July 17, 2022, Evi Sarantea, an artist and environmentalist from Euboea, sent the following letter to her friends:
“[Government authorities licensing windfarms] intend to destroy the last dense fir forest left in Central Evia [Euboea]… They already destroyed Southern Evia. They authorized the placement of more than 800 wind turbines in an extensive archaeological site. Some of those wind turbines were about 185 meters tall. And this happened after Northern Evia was incinerated last year. Don’t let this HUBRIS win. ALL the Municipalities and 150 agencies of the island [of Euboea] are 100 percent opposed to the installation of these monsters – with a life span of only 20 years. They will irreversibly and tragically destroy the ecosystem and the formation of the soil which is several tens of millions of years old.”
Boeotia
Boeotia is a prosperous region with rich mythology and history. Its poleis (city-states) Orchomenos and Thebes date from the Bronze Age. Thebes gave Greece god Dionysos and the superhero Herakles and the great lyric poet Pindar.
In July 2022, however, citizens in Central Greece spoke about widespread vandalism and ecological and cultural destruction of mountains sacred in Bronze Age Greece and classical times: Parnassos, Helicon, Cithaeron, and Parnetha.
Hesiod, born in Ascra, a village of Boeotia and second poet only to Homer, was inspired to write his epics on the birth of the gods and rural life by the Muses, goddesses of learning. The inspiration took place on Mt. Helicon.
Sowing wind turbines
And now, in 2022, more than three thousand years after Hesiod, the Greek government serving its debt masters in the European Union and the United States, especially Germany, is blowing up sacred nature in order to dig the giant wind towers from Germany very deeply into fertile land and mountains.
This fast-paced degrading of archaeological sites, and destruction of the natural world in Greece (mountains, forests, wetlands, and land) is socking the Greek people. They don’t know or suspect the reasons behind the vandalism. The government is promising cheap energy prices for their cooperation. But the prices of energy keep increasing.
The citizens are accusing their government of corruption. It allows profiteers and an immoral and unchecked market to undermine and destroy the natural world. This new ugly mechanical and shining solar icons will be throwing people in doubt about climate change and the means of fighting it. They will remember petroleum and coal with nostalgia and pleasure. In essence, this unchecked and nature-deforming energy development will be giving a bad name to solar and wind energy.
The citizens of Boeotia mentioned “the permitting of 38 large wind and solar parks consisting of hundreds of wind turbines and thousands of solar panels.”
Spoiling beauty – and much more
This prospect of the violent mechanization of their daily view of the natural world is extremely disturbing. The citizens of Boeotia complain that,
“Probably all the mountains and forests of Boeotia are slated for attacks from the energy industry. This would transform the natural world beyond recognition. Beekeeping would be abandoned; cattle raising outside of animal farms would also come to an end; cultivating the land for food, tourism, and relaxation in the countryside will be undermined, and eventually abandoned. Trees, bushes, wild animals, and birds are in immediate danger. Wind turbines on the top of mountains will decimate eagles, falcons, and other birds of prey, already under stress of extinction.”
This unnecessary tragedy adds considerably to the unhappiness and debt misery of the Greeks. They are bound to see the finger of Germany behind this onslaught on their few surviving pleasures: walking to the woods in the mountains and forests and valleys; seeing the rare birds of wetlands; and paying their respects to the quiet and beauty spread above the ruins in archaeological sites.
Stop this madness
My advice to the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would be to break with the humiliations of the debt. Stop paying the illegal and odious debt. Return to the drachma. And reindustrialize your country. Stop using the German wind behemoths. Build your own wind-electricity generating machines to fit the country’s ecological and climate needs. Indeed, design and build all technologies at home.
Greece used to worship the Sun god Helios and Aiolos, the god of the winds. Yes, Greece needs to stop using fossil fuels, but it also needs to use solar panels only on the rooftops of houses and buildings. And should there be a need for windfarms, always plan and act in the context of ecology, biodiversity, and culture. If the windfarms cannot be used without harm, forget about them. Don’t use them in Greece.
Evaggelos Vallianatos is a historian and environmental strategist, who worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years. He is the author of seven books, including the latest book, The Antikythera Mechanism.
Ship of Stars
they abducted the stars
got masses of people
to believe in separate Gods
this went on and on
for millennia
till masses of people
forgot that the star-beings
are pulsating with lights
how the stars literally
guide us, birds at night,
us in our dreams, astral travel
forgetting the star-beings,
masses of people
became mis-guided
embroiled in dis-asters
dis- and ster-
“away from the stars”
if i could find a statistic
that shows dis-asters have increased
in modern times as the masses became less
aware of, conscious of, less guided by the stars
i would footnote that
so instead
you’ll have to step outside or
look out a window or
find the lights within
and then you’ll remember
who star-beings are
and
what star-beings do
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a verbiage experiencer, in other words, he’s into etymology, writes about his experiences and to encourage people to learn from direct experiences, not just head knowledge; you know, actions and feelings speak louder than words. He’s also a publisher and enjoys gardening, talking, listening, looking… His recent book is Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out. Find out more at his website: www.allbook-books.com
Editor’s note: As the climate catastrophe worsens, chaos and contradiction reigns. Grassroots people’s resistance to the fossil fuel industry is growing, but so is government repression, and investment in coal, oil, and gas continues to grow (last year, more than 83% of global energy was supplied by fossil fuels). Meanwhile, governments are censoring the true depths of the crisis and a rush of big-businesses are seeking to capitalize on global warming, seeing a massive “shock doctrine” opportunity for profiting off the crisis.
This excerpt uses Naomi Klein’s concept of the “Shock Doctrine” to analyze how big business has co-opted the environmental movement into a de-facto lobbying arm for the so-called “green” technology industry, and in the process has turned away from the fundamental values of the environmentalism.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the values of the environmental movement have degraded so much in the last 30 years.
Now more than ever, people are immersed in technology instead of the real world. As one report states, “The average young American now spends practically every minute—except for time in school—using a smart- phone, computer, television or electronic device.” A recent poll in Britain found that the average 18-to-25-year-old rated an internet connection as more important than daylight.
We’ve come a long way from the naturalists we were born to be; from inhabiting a living world flush with kin to serving a society in thrall to machines.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many people believe in nonsensical technological solutions. Technology does it for them and the real world doesn’t.
And so, the absurd becomes normal. We hear that green technology will stop global warming. We hear that cutting down forests and burning them is good for the planet. We hear that damming rivers is good for the planet. We hear that destroying the desert to put in solar panels is good for the planet. We hear that industrial recycling will save the world. We hear that commodifying nature is somehow significantly different than business as usual. We hear that we can invest our way to sustainable capitalism. We hear that capitalism can be sustainable.
A global growth rate of 3 percent, which is considered the mini- mum for capitalism to function, means the world economy doubles every 24 years. This is, of course, madness. If we can’t even name capitalism as a problem, how are we to have any chance of saving the planet?
There’s no doubt that global warming is apocalyptic. I (Max) have stood on thawing permafrost above the Arctic Circle and seen entire forests collapsing as soils lose integrity under their roots. This culture is changing the composition of the planet’s climate. But this is not the only crisis the world is facing, and to pretend otherwise ignores the true roots of the problem.
The Sierra Club has a campaign called “Ready for 100.” The campaign’s goal is to “convince 50 college campuses, a dozen key cities and half a dozen key states to go 100 percent renewable.’” The executive director of the Sierra Club, Michael Brune, explains,
“There are a few reasons why Ready for 100 is working—why it’s such a powerful idea. People have agency, for one. People who are outraged, alarmed, depressed, filled with despair about climate change—they want to make a difference in ways they can see, so they’re turning to their backyards. Turning to their city, their state, their university. And, it’s exciting—it’s a way to address this not just through dread, but with something that sparks your imagination.”
There are a lot of problems with that statement. First, is Ready for 100 really “working,” like Brune says? That depends on the unspoken part of that statement: working to achieve what? He may mean that the campaign is working to mobilize a larger main- stream climate movement. He may mean that Ready for 100 is working in the sense that more “renewable” infrastructure is being built, in great measure because more subsidies are being given to the industry.
If he means Ready for 100 is working to reduce the burning of coal, oil, and gas—which is, in fact, what he means—he’s dead wrong, as “fossil fuels continue to absolutely dominate global energy consumption.”
There’s more about Brune’s quote that’s bothersome. He’s explicitly turning people’s “outrage, alarm, depression, and despair” into means that serve the ends of capital; through causing people to use these very real feelings to lobby for specific sectors of the industrial economy.
If a plan won’t work, it doesn’t matter if people have “agency.” The ongoing destruction of the planet, and the continued dominance of coal, oil, and gas, seems to be less important than diverting people’s rage—which, if left unchecked, might actually explode into something that would stop capitalism and industrialism from murdering the planet—into corporate-friendly ends.
Led by 350.org, the Fossil Free campaign aims to remove financial support for the coal, oil, and gas industries by pressuring institutions such as churches, cities, and universities to divest. It’s modeled on the three-pronged boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) resistance to South African apartheid (a model used today against Israel). The Fossil Free campaign has thus far pressured 800 institutions and 58,000 individuals to divest $6 trillion. Some of these are partial divestments, such as withdrawing from tar sands but continuing to fund fracking.
Still, sounds great, right? Anyone fighting to stop coal, oil, and gas is doing a very good thing.
But given how little time we have, and how badly we’re losing the fight for the planet, we have to ask if divestment is an effective strategy.
The answer, unfortunately, is not really. Jay Taber of Intercontinental Cry points out that “All this divestment does is make once publicly held shares available on Wall Street, which allows trading houses like Goldman Sachs to further consolidate their control of the industry. BDS, when applied against apartheid states by other states and international institutions, includes cut- ting off access to finance, as well as penalties for crimes against humanity.” He states quite bluntly that divestment acts to “redirect activism away from effective work.”
Bill Gates—not usually someone we’d listen to—seems to agree. “If you think divestment alone is a solution,” Gates writes, “I worry you’re taking whatever desire people have to solve this problem and kind of using up their idealism and energy on something that won’t emit less carbon—because only a few people in society are the owners of the equity of coal or oil companies.”
If it occurs on a wide enough scale, divestment makes previously held stocks, bonds, and other investment products available for purchase. This glut drops prices, making it easier for less ethical investors to buy. This not only consolidates the industry, but it also makes fossil fuel stocks more profitable for those who snatch them up. As journalist Christian Parenti writes, “So how will dumping Exxon stock hurt its income, that is, its bottom line? It might, in fact, improve the company’s price to earnings ratio thus making the stock more attractive to immoral buyers. Or it could allow the firm to more easily buy back stock (which it has been doing at a massive scale for the last five years) and thus retain more of its earnings for use to develop more oil fields.”
It’s unlikely any divestment campaigner believes divestment alone will stop global warming. The Fossil Free website recognizes this, writing: “The campaign began in an effort to stigmatize the Fossil Fuel industry—the financial impact was secondary to the socio-political impact.” But as the amount of money being divested continues to grow, reinvestment is becoming a more central part of the fossil fuel divestment campaign. The website continues: “We have a responsibility and an opportunity to ask ourselves how moving the money itself … can help us usher forth our vision.”
Great! So, they’re suggesting these organizations take their money out of oil industry stocks, and use that money to set aside land as wilderness, for wild nature, right?
Well, no. They want the money to be used to fund “renewable energy.” And they’ve slipped a premise past us: the idea that divestment and reinvestment can work to create a better world. It’s an extraordinary claim, and not supported by evidence. As Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project writes, “Can the very markets that have led us to the brink of the abyss now provide our parachute? … Under this system, those with the money have all the power. Then why are we trying to reform this system? Why are we not transforming it?”
Activist Keith Brunner writes, “Yes, the fossil fuel corporations are the big bad wolf, but just as problematic is the system of investment and returns which necessitates a growth economy (it’s called capitalism).” His conclusion: “We aren’t going to invest our way to a livable planet.”
Is it better to fight for “achievable, realistic” goals through reform, or address the fundamental issues at their root? Usually, we’re in favor of both. If we wait for the great and glorious revolution and don’t do any reform work (which we could also call defensive work), by the time the revolution comes, the world will have been consumed by this culture. And if we only do defensive work and don’t address the causes of the problems, this culture will consume the world until there’s nothing left.
But it’s pretty clear that the real goal of the bright greens isn’t defending the planet: Everyone from Lester Brown to Kumi Naidoo has been explicit about this. The real goal is to get money into so-called green technology. A recent article notes, “Climate solutions need cold, hard cash … about a trillion a year.”
One of Naomi Klein’s biggest contributions to discourse is her articulation of the “shock doctrine,” which she defines as “how America’s ‘free market’ policies have come to dominate the world—through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.” In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Klein explains—brilliantly—how the same principles used to disorient and extract concessions from victims of torture can be leveraged to extract political concessions from entire nations in the wake of major disasters. She gives many examples, including the wave of austerity and privatization in Chile following the Pinochet coup in 1973, the massive expansion of industrialism and silencing of dissidents following the Tienanmen Square massacre in China in 1989, and the dismantling of low-income housing and replacement of public education with for-profit schools in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The shock doctrine also perfectly describes the entire bright green movement: Because of a terrible and very real disaster (in this case, climate change), you need to hand over huge subsidies to a sector of the industrial economy, and you need to let us destroy far more of the natural world, from Baotou to the Mojave Desert to the bottom of the ocean. If you don’t give us lots of money and let us destroy far more of the natural world, you will lose the luxuries that are evidently more important to you than life on the planet.
Once you start looking for this trend, it’s really clear. There’s a 2016 article in Renewable Energy World magazine about the Desert Renewable Energy and Conservation Plan. The plan allows major solar energy harvesting facilities to be built in some areas of the California desert, but not other areas. Shannon Eddy, head of the Large-Scale Solar Association, considers protecting parts of the desert “a blow.” She says, “The world is on fire—CO2 levels just breached the 400-ppm threshold. We need to do everything we can right now to reduce emissions by getting renewable projects online.”
Everything including destroying the desert. This is reminiscent of a phrase from the Vietnam War era, which originated in 1968 with AP correspondent Peter Arnett: “‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a United States major said today.”
We also invite readers to get involved in people’s movements against greenwashing and for degrowth, resistance to industrial civilization, humane population reduction, and for the land. You can learn more about an active struggle over these issues at Protect Thacker Pass.
Editor’s note: Under the current system, Economies of Scale create Jevons Paradox. “This is crucial: Increased energy efficiency not only doesn’t generally reduce demand, but instead increases it. This is called the “rebound effect,” and we see it all the time.” – Bright Green Lies p. 213 Our power over nature is only an illusion. Nature has no mercy.
By Richard Heinberg
Climate change is often incorrectly described as an isolated pollution issue. In this flawed framing, humanity has simply made a mistake in its choice of energy sources; the solution entails switching sources and building enough carbon-sucking machines to clear the atmosphere of polluting CO2. Only the political power of the fossil fuel companies prevents us from adopting this solution and ending our existential environmental crisis.
But techno-fixes (that is, technological solutions that circumvent the need for personal or cultural change) aren’t working so far, and likely won’t work in the future. That’s because fossil fuels will be difficult to replace, and energy usage is central to our collective economic power.
In other words, power is the key to solving climate change—but not necessarily in the way that many pundits claim. Solutions will not come just from defeating fossil fuel interests and empowering green entrepreneurs; real climate progress will require the willingness of large swathes of the populace, especially in wealthy countries, to forgo forms of power they currently enjoy: comfort and convenience, the ability to travel far and fast, and the option to easily obtain a wide range of consumer products whose manufacture entails large inputs of energy and natural resources.
This is not a feel-good message, but the longer we postpone grappling with power in this larger sense, the less successful we’re likely to be in coming to terms with the climate threat.
Why can there be no climate techno-fix? There are two routes to this conclusion. The first one meanders through the history of humans on Earth, revealing how each new technological or social innovation empowered some people over others, while often imposing a long-term environmental cost. The adoption of agriculture was a milestone on this path: it enabled more people to subsist in any given area, and it led to cities, kings, and slavery; further, in many places, plowing tended to deplete or ruin topsoil, and city-dwellers cut down nearby forests, leading to eventual societal collapse.
But the real show-stopper came much more recently. The adoption of fossil fuels gave humans the biggest jolt of empowerment ever: in just the last two centuries, our global population has grown eight-fold, and so has per capita energy consumption. Our modern way of life—with cars, planes, supermarkets, tractors, trucks, electricity grids, and internet shopping—is the result.
Climate change is the shadow of this recent cavalcade of industriousness, since it results from the burning of fossil fuels, the main enablers of modern civilization. Nevertheless, rapidly increasing population and consumption levels are inherently unsustainable and are bringing about catastrophic environmental impacts on their own, even if we disregard the effects of carbon emissions. The accelerating depletion of resources, increasing loads of chemical pollution, and the hastening loss of wild nature are trends leading us toward ecological collapse, with economic and social collapse no doubt trailing close behind. Ditching fossil fuels will turn these trends around only if we also deal with the issues of population and consumption.
That’s the big picture. However, the quest for a climate techno-fix also fails on its own terms—that is, as a painless means of averting climate change while maintaining our current industrial economy and way of life. The rest of this essay deals with this second trail of evidence and logic, which requires a more detailed presentation. So: buckle up. Here we go.
Why Solar Panels Won’t Save Consumerism
Most energy analysts regard solar and wind as the best candidates to substitute for fossil fuels in electrical power generation (since nuclear is too expensive and too risky, and would require too much time for build-out; and hydro is capacity constrained). But these “renewables” are not without challenges. While sunlight and wind are themselves renewable, the technologies we use to capture them aren’t: they’re constructed of non-renewable materials like steel, silicon, concrete, and rare earth minerals, all of which require energy for mining, transport, and transformation. These materials are also depleting, and many will be difficult or impossible to recycle.
Sunlight and wind are intermittent: we cannot control when the sun will shine or the wind will blow. Therefore, to ensure constant availability of power, these sources require some combination of four strategies:
Energy storage (e.g., with batteries) is useful to balance out day-to-day intermittency, but nearly useless when it comes to seasonal intermittency; also, storing energy costs energy and money.
Source redundancy (building far more generation capacity than will actually be needed on “good” days, and then connecting far-flung solar and wind farms by way of massive super-grids), is a better solution for seasonal intermittency, but requires substantial infrastructure investment.
Excess electricity generated at times of peak production can be used to make synthetic fuels (such as hydrogen, ammonia, or methanol), perhaps using carbon captured from the atmosphere, as a way of storing energy; however, making large amounts of such fuels will again require substantial infrastructure investment, and the process is inherently inefficient.
Demand management (using electricity when it’s available, and curtailing usage when it isn’t) is the cheapest way of dealing with intermittency, but it often implies behavioral change or economic sacrifice.
Today the world uses only about 20 percent of its final energy in the form of electricity. The other 80 percent of energy is used in the forms of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. A transition away from fossil fuels will entail the electrification of much of that other 80 percent of energy usage, which includes most transportation and key industrial processes. However, many uses of energy, such as aviation and the making of cement for concrete, will be difficult or especially costly to electrify. In principle, the electrification conundrum could be overcome by powering aviation and high-heat industrial processes with synfuels. However, doing this at scale would require a massive infrastructure of pipelines, storage tanks, carbon capture devices, and chemical synthesis plants that would essentially replicate much of our current natural gas and oil supply system.
Machine-based carbon removal and sequestration methods work in the laboratory, but would need staggering levels of investment in order to be deployed at a meaningful scale, and it’s unclear who would pay for them. These methods also use a lot of energy, and, when full lifecycle emissions are calculated, it appears that more emissions are often generated than are captured.[1] The best carbon capture-and-sequestration responses appear instead to consist of various methods of ecosystem restoration and soil regeneration. These strategies would also reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions. But they would require a near-complete rethinking of food systems and land management.
Not long ago I collaborated with a colleague, David Fridley, of the Energy Analysis Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to look closely at what a full transition to a solar-wind economy would mean (our efforts resulted in the book Our Renewable Future).[2] We concluded that it will constitute an enormous job, requiring tens of trillions of dollars in investment. In fact, the task may be next to impossible—if we attempt to keep the overall level of societal energy use the same, or expand it to fuel further economic growth.[3] David and I concluded:
We citizens of industrialized nations will have to change our consumption patterns. We will have to use less overall and adapt our use of energy to times and processes that take advantage of intermittent abundance. Mobility will suffer, so we will have to localize aspects of production and consumption. And we may ultimately forgo some things altogether. If some new processes (e.g., solar or hydrogen-sourced chemical plants) are too expensive, they simply won’t happen. Our growth-based, globalized, consumption-oriented economy will require significant overhaul.[4]
The essence of the problem with a climate techno-fix is this: nearly everything we need to do to solve global warming (including building new low-emissions electrical generation capacity, and electrifying energy usage) requires energy and money. But society is already using all the energy and money it can muster in order to do the things that society wants and needs to do (extract resources, manufacture products, transport people and materials, provide health care and education, and so on). If we take energy and money away from those activities in order to fund a rapid energy transition on an unprecedented scale, then the economy will contract, people will be thrown out of work, and many folks will be miserable. On the other hand, if we keep doing all those things at the current scale while also rapidly building a massive alternative infrastructure of solar panels, wind turbines, battery banks, super grids, electric cars and trucks, electrified industrial equipment, and synthetic fuel factories, the result will be a big pulse of energy usage that will significantly increase carbon emissions over the short term (10 to 20 years), since the great majority of the energy currently available for the project must be derived from fossil fuels.
It takes energy to make solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, and new generations of industrial equipment of all kinds. For a car with an internal combustion engine (ICE), 10 percent of lifetime energy usage occurs in the manufacturing stage. For an electric car, roughly 40 percent of energy usage occurs in manufacturing, and emissions during this stage are 15 percent greater than for an ICE car (over the entire lifetime of the e-car, emissions are about half those of the gasoline guzzler). With solar panels and wind turbines, energy inputs and carbon emissions are similarly front-loaded to the manufacturing phase; energy output and emissions reduction (from offsetting other electricity generation) come later. Replacing a very high percentage of our industrial infrastructure and equipment quickly would therefore entail a historically large burst of energy usage and carbon emissions. By undertaking a rapid energy transition, while also maintaining or even expanding current levels of energy usage for the “normal” purpose of economic growth, we would be defeating our goal of reducing emissions now—even though we would be working toward the goal of reducing emissions later.
Many folks nurture the happy illusion that we can do it all—continue to grow the economy while also funding the energy transition—by assuming that the problem is only money (if we find a way to pay for it, then the transition can be undertaken with no sacrifice). This illusion can be maintained only by refusing to acknowledge the stubborn fact that all activity, including building alternative energy generators and carbon capture machinery, requires energy.
The only way out of the dilemma arising from the energy and emissions cost of the transition is to reduce substantially the amount of energy we are using for “normal” economic purposes—for resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, heating, cooling, and industrial processes—both so that we can use that energy for the transition (building solar panels and electric vehicles), and so that we won’t have to build as much new infrastructure. Increased energy efficiency can help reduce energy usage without giving up energy services, but many machines (LED lights, electric motors) and industrial processes are already highly efficient, and further large efficiency gains in those areas are unlikely. We would achieve an efficiency boost by substituting direct electricity generators (solar and wind) for inherently inefficient heat-to-electricity generators (natural gas and coal power plants); but we would also be introducing new inefficiencies into the system via battery-based electricity storage and hydrogen or synfuels production. In the end, the conclusion is inescapable: actual reductions in energy services would be required in order to transition away from fossil fuels without creating a significant short-term burst of emissions. Some energy and climate analysts other than David Fridley and myself—such as Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester—have reached this same conclusion independently.[5]
Energy is inextricably related to power. Thus, if society voluntarily reduces its energy usage by a significant amount in order to minimize climate impacts, large numbers of people will likely experience this as giving up power in some form—whether physical, social, or economic.
It can’t be emphasized too much: energy is essential to all economic activity. An economy can grow continuously only by employing more energy (unless energy efficiency can be increased substantially, and further gains in efficiency can continue to be realized in each succeeding year—a near-impossibility over the long run, since investments in making processes more efficient typically see diminishing returns over time). World leaders demand more economic growth in order to fend off unemployment and other social ills. Thus, in effect, everyone is counting on having more energy in the future, not less.
A few well-meaning analysts and pundits try to avoid the climate-energy-economy dilemma by creating scenarios in which renewable energy saves the day simply by becoming dramatically cheaper than energy from fossil fuels; or by ignoring the real costs of dealing with energy intermittency in solar and wind power generation. Some argue that we have to fight climate change by becoming even more powerful than we already are—by geoengineering the atmosphere and oceans and thus taking full control of the planet, thereby acting like gods.[6] And some business and political leaders simply deny that climate change is a problem; therefore, no action is required. I would argue that all of these people are deluding themselves and others.
Do the Right Thing—Even if It’s Hard
Problems ignored usually don’t go away. And not all problems can be solved without sacrifice. If minimizing climate change really does require substantially reducing world energy usage, then policy makers should be discussing how to do this fairly and with as little negative impact as possible. The longer we delay that discussion, the fewer palatable options will be left.
The stakes could hardly be higher. If emissions continue, the result will be the failure of ecosystems, massive impacts on economies, widespread human misery and migration, and unpredictable disruptions to political systems. The return of famine as a familiar feature of human existence is a very real likelihood.[7]
It’s easy to see why people would wish to avoid giving up social, political, economic, and physical power to the degree that’s necessary in order to deal with climate change. Fighting entrenched power is a contentious activity, often a dangerous one. People with power don’t like threats to it, and they often fight back.
That’s why environmentalists like to choose their battles. The fossil fuel industry is wealthy and formidable, but at least it’s an enemy that’s easy to identify, and a lot of people already feel critical of the oil and gas companies for a variety of reasons (gasoline is too expensive, oil pipelines cause pollution, and so on).
But not all roadblocks to climate solutions are attributable to the oil companies. The rest of us are also implicated, though to greatly varying degrees depending on where we live and how much we consume. Our whole modern consumerist way of life, the essence of our economic system, is at fault. Unless we’re willing to give up some of our power over nature—our power to extract and transform resources and deliver the goods that we have come to rely on—then we’re destined to careen from one disaster to the next until our worst fears are realized.
It’s understandable why most environmentalists frame global warming the way they do. It makes solutions seem easier to achieve. But if we’re just soothing ourselves while failing to actually stave off disaster, or even to understand our problems properly, what’s the point?
The only real long-range solution to climate change centers on reining in human physical, social, and economic power dramatically, but in ways that preserve human dignity, autonomy, and solidarity. That’s more daunting than any techno-fix. But this route has the singular advantage that, if we follow it intelligently and persistently, we will address a gamut of social and environmental problems at once. In the end, it’s the only path to a better, safer future.
[2] Richard Heinberg and David Fridley, Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for 100 Percent Clean Energy. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2016. Full text available at www.ourrenewablefuture.org. Accessed September 2, 2020.
[3] Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. For example, Tim Morgan (former head of research at Tullett Prebon) argues that it is surplus energy—the energy left over once energy required for energy-producing activities—that has driven economic expansion, and that a transition to renewables will necessarily result in declining surplus energy (see Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics website https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ Accessed September 2, 2020.) In a recent paper, Carey King of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, shows the inadequacy of current growth-based economic modeling of the renewable energy transition and proposes a new model that incorporates data-derived relationships between energy use, resource extraction, and economic growth. His conclusion is that the renewable energy transition will entail trade-offs with consumption, population, and wages; these trade-offs will depend on the path taken (whether high or low rate of investment). Carey King, “An Integrated Biophysical and Economic Modeling Framework for Long-Term Sustainability Analysis: The HARMONY Model.” Ecological Economics, Vol. 169, March 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106464 Accessed September 2, 2020.
[4] Heinberg and Fridley, Our Renewable Future, p. 140
Global Extraction Film Festival
9-12 September 2021
The Global Extraction Film Festival (GEFF), launched last year by Esther Figueroa (Vagabond Media) and Emiel Martens (Caribbean Creativity), has announced the selection of over 150 films for GEFF2021. The festival, which will be available online for free from September 9-12, aims to bring attention to the destructive impacts of extractive industries and to highlight communities across the world who are bravely defending against annihilation while creating livable futures.
GEFF2021 will feature 4 programs with over 150 documentaries and urgent shorts from over 40 countries, with a wide range of compelling topics that everyone needs to think about. Where, how and by whom is the food we eat, water we drink, clothes we wear, materials in our technology, the energy that powers our lives produced and transported? What are we to do with the billions of tons of waste we create daily? What is our relationship to other species and all life on the planet? Extraction has caused the anthropocene; the climate crisis is real and cannot be wished away or solved by magical technologies based on extraction.
PROGRAM ONE: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES Our General Selection film program, Global Perspectives, offers 26 feature documentaries and urgent shorts that focus on interrelated issues affecting the world, such as the climate <crisis, water, food, energy, mining, overtourism, colonial legacies. Selected films include Bright Green Lies,whichexposes the extraction dependent and ecologically destructive reality of “green” technological solutions; Grit, which tells the story of Dian, who at 6 years old, along with 60,000 displaced people, suffered from an industrial accident in Indonesia, and later becomes a political activist fighting for justice; Gather and Final Straw, Food, Earth, Happiness, whichpresent ancient alternatives to industrial agriculture; Sustenanceand The Superfood Chain,whichexplore the food we eat, where it comes from and the consequences of global food chains; and Eating up Easter and Crowded Out: The Story of Overtourism, which demonstrate that tourism is a highly extractive industry.
PROGRAM TWO: FOCUS ON THE AMERICAS This special Focus on the Americas is our most extensive and prominent GEFF2021 film program offering over 100 feature documentaries and urgent shorts from 30 countries in the Americas, from Argentina in the South to Canada in the North and across the Caribbean islands. The Americas are central to the creation of the modern world. This is because the ecocidal and genocidal pillaging and settlement of the Americas by European Imperial powers led to the wealth of Europe (and later North America), and to the extraction intensive industrial revolution that accelerated the anthropocene and caused the climate emergency in which we are now living. Understanding extraction in the Americas is requisite for understanding the global political economy. Understanding the Americas is also essential to realizing there are Indigenous alternatives to planetary destruction, that communities throughout the Americas have been resisting erasure for centuries, and continue to protect and defend that which is necessary to all life.
PROGRAM THREE: HUMAN-ANIMAL STUDIES over 10 feature documentaries and urgent shorts about the relationship between humans and animals, and the impact of the extractive industries on animals. Humans are animals who dominate the planet and decide which other animals have value, are our food, our friends, our enemies, are pests, can be sacrificed, made extinct. For example, selected feature Artifishal – The Fight to Save Wild Salmon, shows the devastating impact of dams and farmed salmon on wild salmon populations., while The Last Male on Earth tells a tale of extinction.
PROGRAM FOUR: PRESENTED BY PATAGONIA This special selection offers 8 feature documentaries and urgent shorts produced by Patagonia Films about people fighting for environmental and food justice, to protect last wild places and species, to find community based solutions. For example, DamNation – The Problem with Hydropower chronicles the United States of America’s nationally promoted narrative of man’s domination of nature, then decades later, the realization that humans are completely dependent on nature, that large-scale dams are one of our very worst inventions and should be removed. Two other selected Patagonia films, Public Trust – The Fight for America’s Public Lands andLawqa – Que el Parque Vuelva a Ser Parque show how public lands and national parks in the USA and Chile have been handed over to extractive industries, removing the people, plants and animals who used to be there, and polluting and degrading the environment.
GEFF2021 EVENTS Along with these four Film Programs, there will be panel discussions about extractive industries and their impacts on specific places and peoples, as well as Q&A with filmmakers. These events are hosted by GEFF’s partners including Deep Green Resistance, London Mining Network, Asia-Pacific Ecological Network, Red Thread, Freedom Imaginaries.
Note: DGR is organizing two events for GEFF2021. The first is a discussion on Bright Green Lies with Director Julia Barnes at 4 PM (Pacific Time) September 11. You can find the Facebook page here. The second is a discussion with director on how films can be used for resistance at 5 AM (Pacific Time) September 11. You can contact DGR Asia Pacific to join the event.
![[Event] Lierre Keith in London: What is to be Done and From Living Planet to Necrosphere](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2023/03/Lierre_Keith.jpg)
