“Renewable Energy Just Keeps Getting Cheaper And Cheaper” and other half-truths that keep us from solving the climate crisis and creating the world we want.
Spoiler alert: We have to get our democracy back, in order to solve the climate crisis. The “clean and renewable energy” advocates don’t have a plan for that—and they will fail, sadly.
A prominent climate change organization proclaims: “Renewable Energy Just Keeps Getting Cheaper And Cheaper.”
I have my doubts. Our economic/accounting system has NEVER counted the true cost of goods sold. For example the TRUE cost of a $5 cheeseburger might be $200, by one estimate.
Water pollution, air pollution, slave labor, CIA regime changes … these costs NEVER get counted in the true cost of the goods sold or the mountains of toxic waste we leave behind.
There is hope. There is a solution. But we need first to take a hard look at the physical world and our so-called “democracy.”
Wall Street has discovered “clean and renewable” products, or at least products that are marketed as such. So Wall Street is lining up to make money, from consumers and from the government: federal, state and local.
But not all climate change solutions are equally beneficial to society, and not all climate change solutions are equally profitable. What we see and hear about are the PROFITABLE solutions. So you have to wonder … is Wall Street trying to sell us something that is good for THEM or US?
NOT ALL “SOLUTIONS” ARE SOLUTIONS
You can’t make money peddling regenerative farming, walkable communities, mass transit or tree planting. And you can’t make money by making citizens’ lives easier via Medicare For All or a $15 minimum wage, or legal support for unions. And you can’t make money curbing Wall Street speculation or reducing the defense budget.
All of these policies would be GREAT for the climate. And they would be great for the actual wealth of our actual people, but it’s not what Wall Street pushes, and Wall Street runs the country, for now.
I repeat, all of these policies would be GREAT for the climate.
But we don’t hear about them much, do we? Not from the corporate media, and not from Inside Climate News, not in proportion to their societal value or benefit.
And so … when Jane Q. Public thinks about solving climate change, she thinks about solar panels and electric cars, because that’s what you see in all those slick commercial ads.
BUT DEVICES COME COMPLETE WITH SOCIETAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS
Solar panels, electric cars and windmills employ mining, manufacturing, fossil fuels and slave labor, in no small quantities.
The mining industry LOVES the Green New Deal, or at least the version that promotes lots of techno-fixes, whole new technologies and whole new industries, because that means lots of corporate welfare and lots of mining.
Note well: Mining uses ten percent of fossil fuels worldwide, and that figure will only increase, as we produce orders of magnitude more “clean and renewable” devices, factories, roads, charging stations, etc.
And who is leading this transformation? Well, you’ve got union buster extraordinaire, Elon Musk. Musk is also very likely a CIA collaborator who wants to deprive Bolivia of its democracy so he can get cheap lithium for his US government-subsidized lithium ion batteries. He is also one of the richest people in the world and seeks to accrue additional billions by sending rich people on luxury cruises into space.
THAT’S a sustainable business model! Zero-carbon, I’m sure.
And all this was supposed to be a way to REDUCE the use of FOSSIL FUELS.
But here’s the thing: If you’re going to reduce fossil fuels, there’s this thing called ACTUALLY reducing fossil fuels.
Here’s how you do that: You eliminate ENTIRE INDUSTRIES.
You reduce fossil fuels by eliminating industries that shouldn’t exist in the first place, industries that exist ONLY to serve the needs of the elites, not average people.
We can eliminate entire industries if we will resolve to NOT allow our entire lives to be driven along by the self interested few.
Note well: Everyone is self interested. But that’s exactly why we shouldn’t give a few people ENORMOUS amounts of power. Too much power in too few hands is the power to do serious damage.
By the way, the opulent few have notoriously high carbon lifestyles. So why are we subsidizing and promoting their notoriously high carbon lifestyles?
WHAT INDUSTRIES CAN GO?
Let’s pick a few industries that--collectively--represent half the economy. If we eliminate these industries, or greatly reduce them, then we can reduce our energy consumption by half.
If we reduce our energy consumption by half, we will be much closer to the the fantastical and unachievable goal of 100% Renewable Energy. An actual reduction by half will perform better than the fantasy we’ve concocted in relation to solar power and wind power, which will never actually reduce our fossil fuel consumption, unless we also reduce our TOTAL energy consumption.
Do I KNOW this? No. But the clean and renewable energy crowd doesn’t have credible numbers either. Prove me wrong. I will gladly admit I’m wrong. I just don’t think they have numbers. There’s Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson, but his numbers are deeply problematic.
IS 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY ACHIEVABLE?
100% Renewable Energy is a fantasy. I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy.
There are no clean and renewable wars. There are no clean and renewable empires. There is no clean and renewable automobile industry that continues to turn out 65 million new cars per year. Yeah nobody is calling for an end to these unnecessary industries.
So the client and renewable energy thing is only PR and lip service. It’s a cleverly crafted motto but not a serious proposal or an achievable goal.
But the inter-governmental panel on climate change is not telling us to reduce our fossil fuels by 100%. They are telling us to reduce our fossil fuels by half.
The client and renewable energy crowd is promoting solar panels and electric cars, which require fossil fuels to manufacture. So do power lines and smart grids. So does every manufacturing plant. And these people are calling for lots and lots of manufacturing for all their “clean and renewable” devices.
If these people had a vision for 100% renewable energy, they would call for energy REDUCTIONS, which would make 100% renewable energy more thinkable, if not achievable.
Also, there are no clean and renewable bombs. Where are the Clean and Renewable Energy advocates calling for an end to war or an end to sanctions, or an end to the constant harassment of those eight or ten counties of the world that do not want to assimilate within our empire. Such people don’t exist, not in Louisville anyway.
Nobody has a plan for 100% Renewable Energy. I’ve read several municipal clean and renewable energy plans (DesMoines, Minneapolis, Durham), and they remind me of Biden’s Climate Plan, a haphazard concatenation of pork barrel deals strung together with empty rhetoric.
It’s all a formula for profound disappointment. Government contractors are going to make off with the cash, having never solved the problem, or anything close.
For example, we should ask, when we add alternative energy sources (wind and solar), does that reduce our fossil fuel usage? Or does it just add to the total energy consumption?
Well, has this ever happened? Has any country ever reduced its fossil fuel usage when not in a recession?
I’ve seen evidence to indicate that adding alternative energy sources does not reduce fossil fuel usage to any significant degree. Ask me for details. Some may be familiar with the Jevons paradox, whereby increased efficiency of a system results in increased usage, not decreased usage.
And here we are, talking about cheap solar energy, as if we can add solar panels to McDonald’s drive thru, and call that clean and renewable.
So we’re being led down a garden path. And you know what happens when you get led down the garden path. You get seduced, to put it politely. If you WANT to get seduced, then fine. But we’re being prepared for a type of seduction that leaves disappointment and heartache in its wake.
HOW WILL WE ACTUALLY REDUCE FOSSIL FUEL USAGE?
I will assert that actual fossil fuel reductions require that we get rid of this macro-economic anarchy and replace it with an actual democracy, where the people get to vote on the economy and everything!!
Imagine that!!
Currently, we don’t get to vote on economic matters because we’ve been taught that when you interfere in the free market, you create economic inefficiency. And that’s sacrilege.
But the real efficiency is when you DON’T interfere in the market and you let industries destroy ecosystems and communities with impunity. THAT’S inefficiency. THAT’S squandering what is really valuable.
DEMOCRACY CAN SAVE THE CLIMATE, BUT ONLY IF WE ACTUALLY HAVE ACTUAL DEMOCRACY
We can only reduce fossil fuel consumption by having an actual DEMOCRACY and giving people the right to vote on that which affects them, like having actual veto power over that toxic plant that wants to move into your (poor) neighborhood. Actual democracy means the right to say NO. If you don’t have the right to say no, you don’t have an actual democracy.
As it is now, we don’t have democracy. We have an OWE, Oligarchy With Elections. (Ask me to cite my source. The people do NOT rule in America. The people do NOT get their way.)
Democracy is where PUBLIC POLICY reflects PUBLIC OPINION, where the people get what they want, like Medicare For All and a $15 minimum wage, which are favored by SUPERMAJORITIES, but which are NOT public policy.
We don’t have a democracy or anything close. What we have is politics-as-spectator-sport. You pick a team and cheer for your team. The team becomes part of a powerful narrative about who you are and how you fit into your society. But it’s political theater, not real power. So it’s not real politics. It’s an illusion of power. A powerful illusion.
Also, we cheer our favorite billionaires as a spectator sport. As if billionaires by their very existence do not undermine—and arguably destroy—our democratic institutions.
Our system continues to be BY the ruling elites and FOR the ruling elites.
Note well: This may sound like gratuitous iconoclasm. But we cannot solve a problem that we do not acknowledge. The first step to solving a problem is to courageously admit that you have a problem. In this case the problem is living in a society that is much LESS democratic than we are taught.
WE HAVE TO TRAIN OURSELVES TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IS POSSIBLE.
In America, we’re not taught to think about what’s possible. From birth, we’re fed pro-establishment doctrine about living in the land of the free. Meanwhile, our government kills thousands of people in other countries and denies these other countries the “independence” that we claim to cherish. Actually, in my lifetime, we’ve killed MILLIONS of people in the name of freedom. And my lifetime does even go back as far as the Korean war.
We spend $1.25 trillion per year on this process of killing people in the name of freedom. To be sure, there are honorable people involved, but let’s not let that blind us to the truth.
$1.25 trillion is $5,000 per American per year. That’s what we spend. If we had that money back we would be that much closer to solving climate change, not just talking about it.
“MANAGED” DEMOCRACY
In America, we are taught we have this big democracy, but it’s MANAGED democracy. It is managed by the people who have the money and the power to manage it. That’s the ruling elites. They manage us.
They manipulate us into war. They manipulate us into the most expensive healthcare system in the world, with some of the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world.
They manipulate us into environmental pollution in the name of economic growth. As if economic growth reaches most of us.
But it was a managed democracy from the beginning. George Washington became President in 1789. John Adams in 1797. Thomas Jefferson in 1801. You could vote for them if you were 1) white, 2) male and 3) landed. That was 6% of the population. 6% of the population could vote.
Some democracy! “Let freedom ring!”
But that’s not a democracy. That’s an oligarchy.
At the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin wanted us to have a unicameral (one house) legislature. But, in the view of most delegates, that would have been TOO RESPONSIVE to the will of the people, so we got a bicameral (two house) legislature. Thus, the government was insulated from the true will of the people.
As time went on, more people got the right to vote. But money became increasingly consequential. As Mark Hannah, a famous political operative from about 120 years ago, quipped, “You need three things to win an election. The first is money. The second is money. And I’ve forgotten the third.” It has always taken a lot of money to win elections. And now it takes more than ever.
Thus, the government has always been insulated from the true will of the people. How can we say we have a democracy if the government is insulated from the true will of the people?
It’s not so much one person one vote as one dollar one vote. That’s not democracy. It’s plutocracy. The rule of the rich. It’s the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
So as a result, we’ve never REALLY learned how to talk about what WE want.
So when it comes to reducing fossil fuels, we really don’t know what’s possible because we haven’t talked about it. The public conversation is tightly controlled by the corporate owned media.
WHAT TYPE OF ECONOMY DO WE REALLY WANT?
If we could talk about what type of economy we REALLY want, we might decide that we don’t want to pay for $4000 per capita for “defense” that does not defend us or $8000 per year on average for a car, or $10,000 per year per capita for a confiscatory health care system where Big Pharma can charge monopoly prices for drugs developed at public expense. We also spend too much money on education, on housing and on policing. (Ask me to cite my sources.)
And if we could save all that money, we might decide to work less instead of spending it on stuff we saw on TV, stuff we buy just to medicate the pain and loneliness.
HOW WOULD WE SPEND OUR TIME, IF WE COULD?
We might decide to spend more time with our families. We might decide to spend more time in our communities. We might decide to spend more time to pursuing our passions. Some of our passions would include the desire to make the world a better place.
Some of us would work in public service as part of a federally guaranteed jobs program (as described in “The Case For A Job Guarantee,” by Pavlina Tcherneva).
If we had a federally guaranteed jobs program, we would save money because such a program would make our lives so much more affordable and livable, as when we save money on air conditioning when we’re planting more trees, or when we save money on health costs by eating locally grown food from regenerative farms.
But we don’t talk about this, do we? Because the corporate media controls the conversation and they don’t want hardworking people to get any funny ideas, like the opportunity to work hard for ourselves and our communities, instead of working for the other people’s profit margins.
IF ... we had collective control of our destinies, we just might vote for a world that CONSUMES a lot less energy. Imagine that … a world that happily, cheerfully CONSUMES much less energy.
But to do that, we have to get our democracy back.