(PLEASE) STOP LYING TO EACH OTHER
Every sector of our economy is rooted in lies, including the sanctity of our high energy civilization.
I intend for this to be a hopeful message, but first the bad news.
I’ve been a climate reporter for four years, and I have concluded that solar power and wind power fail on their own terms.
They bring their own type of ecological devastation. They do not decarbonize. And they do not reduce fossil fuel usage. Insofar as they produce useful energy they do so at the expense of real change.
They are a distraction from real change, because the only real change will be when we reduce total energy consumption from all sources. The source of energy is immaterial. The amount of energy makes all the difference.
The United States currently consumes 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy annually. As long as that amount stays the same or goes up, we are not serious about decarbonization or about preserving the natural world.
The abundance of cheap energy makes industrial civilization possible. The abundance of cheap energy makes it possible to build cars and roads. The abundance of cheap energy makes it possible for one country to maintain a worldwide corporate and military empire. The abundance of cheap energy makes it possible to catch salmon in Scotland, ship it to Vietnam for canning, then ship it back to supermarkets in Scotland. (This from Simon Michaux. See me for details.)
As long as we have this high energy economy and continued economic growth, we will continue to run roughshod over the natural world, and we will continue to burn fossil fuels in ever increasing quantities. The only REAL solutions lie in the direction of greatly reduced energy usage.
This does NOT have to mean a diminished quality of life.
In fact, I think it will mean an enhanced quality of life. I can’t prove that. But I look around me and I see cheap energy as a tool for enslavement and domination of the many by the few.
How many people spend hard earned money on hobbies like gardening, bird watching, fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, horseback riding, hobby farms and homesteading? They are escaping.
They are seeking out something because it feels like home. They are escaping from a lifestyle that, for all its benefits, makes most people unhappy. Most people don’t like their jobs. We, the most “intelligent” species, have worked ourselves into a situation where we have to do something we don’t like very much for most of our waking hours.
Pre-industrial civilizations tended to live close to the Earth. They didn’t work that much. Scarcity was shared, and abundance was shared. It was not perfect. But we have been trained to think they had it bad and we have it good. For a different perspective—and a lot of good information—I recommend the book “Civilized to Death” by Christopher Ryan.
We are told that everything we see around us is “progress” and that we should be grateful. We are sold endlessly on the benefits of modern civilization. But we are blind to the costs, because we get too much of our “information” from the Guard Dogs of the Status Quo.
But is this what we would choose if we had the choice?
We are taught that this high energy lifestyle is both desirable and inevitable. I think it is going to collapse because we’re going to run out of cheap energy. If so, the non-human world will breathe a sigh of relief.
That’s one scenario.
The other scenario is that we don’t run out of cheap fossil fuel and that we continue to destroy our natural heritage with an ever expanding lattice of roads, buildings, vehicles and power lines that we don’t need and wouldn’t want if we had a real choice in the matter.
It’s not an uplifting exercise to describe the course that we are on. But the least we can do is to STOP LYING TO EACH OTHER.
And the way to do that is to stop believing the lies we are told by institutions that get paid to churn out false and misleading narratives.
This includes media, political parties and governments. We need some of each, but we need to distinguish the truth tellers from the liars. Currently, most of them are paid to perpetuate lies. Lying is a state of mind. Some of them are lying. Some of them are going with the flow. Some of them are protecting their own careers. Some of them have come to believe their own PR. But they are perpetuating false narratives. They are perpetuating lies.
One of those false narratives is about how renewable energy is the way to progress. But it’s not renewable. And it’s not progress.
Never in my life did I ever think I’d be onboard with a Climate Change Expert. Everything I’ve ever criticized you’ve proven to be true. You’re a breath of fresh air. I can get onboard in supporting climate change through your analysis. I’m very impressed! Thanks Hart!!