Is breaking the law necessary in the wake of the climate crisis? (2)
Technological-Saviorism. Now many responses will be (to some greater or lesser degree) that innovations in technology can solve the climate crisis and we can carry on business as usual. This opinion is especially important to analyse as it is held by the majority of political institutions; from the Glasgow conference it seems that techno-saviourism was reasoned to excuse the continual exploitation of the environment. Now, some degree of technology is absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of humanity, however, not saviorism; not business-as-usual married with decoupling. This opinion is also held by many leading climate experts; Sir David King said a reduction in emissions alone would not be enough to avoid catastrophic ecological and agricultural destruction and that radical greenhouse gas removal and geo-engineering techniques would also be required. The key aspect which is often ignored by technological saviorists is that of coaction; the marriage of technological strategies and social remodelling.
I shall look at two of the most glorified technological strategies at present: carbon capture storage (CCS) and nuclear. A reaffirming pattern emerges when studying the effectiveness of CCS; that of poor governance and failed promises. One of the largest CCS’s is in Australia which has only captured 30% of its carbon target; this is also only from the processing emissions. When taking into account its percentage of capture after the resources were burned it captured 1.8%. This is the same globally; Canadian and US CCS projects have massively missed their targets. They are expensive and riddled with failures, whilst excusing and encouraging the extraction of fossil fuels. Also, funding is redirected to CCS schemes from genuine agencies that subsidise climate solutions (like ARENA Australia Renewable Energy Agency). If we want to go further down this route Carbon Capture Use also flushes out natural resources, like oil, which are otherwise unattainable, so therefore in many cases these strategies actually increase CO2 emissions. You see the pattern — greenwashing. I accept technological saviorism could be a solution, those techno-conglomerates could stumble upon the Messiah’s of technology. However, this is far from certain, also should we trust these companies to save humanity? Do we want them to determine our survival? I personally do not. We should fight this crisis using the most effective strategy to protect the most amount of people and that does not appear to be a reliance on a techno-holy grail, moulded by the unaccountable conglomerates that provoked this emergency. A serious degree of social mobilisation should be implemented, where our habits of consumption and growth are transformed; where we ensure the survival of the planet through social changes complimented with technological strategies. Not the other way round. This opinion, that we should not rely on technology, is also held by Professor Michael Norton, co-author of the study and environment programme director at the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) said, “technology will not come to the rescue and reverse greenhouse gas emissions.”
If we did leave it up to the conglomerates to tackle this crisis, let’s explore the altruistic qualities they hold. Shell has spent millions covering up the warnings from climate scientists, bribing politicians, and paying soldiers to kill Nigerian activists — Shell paid $15.5 million in 2009 to settle a lawsuit over the deaths of Ogoni activists in the 1990s. Leaving our fate up to the hands of unbridled conglomerates seems slightly irresponsible. In addition, the position of technological saviorism appears to have caused a real dent in genuine climate action. Researchers Duncan McLaren and Nils Markusson from the Lancaster Environment Centre say that: “For forty years, climate action has been delayed by technological promises. Contemporary promises are equally dangerous. Such promises have raised expectations and enabled a continued politics of prevarication and inadequate action. Such promises can feed systemic ‘moral corruption’, in which current elites are enabled to pursue self-serving pathways”. It appears that not only is this viewpoint most likely ill-informed, it is also harmful in that it incites inactivity causing the crisis to escalate.
Nuclear power is often proclaimed a saviour, however it also appears to be riddled with issues. Marvin Waterstone accurately sums up the evolution of the energy source, “virtually every [evolving] aspect of nuclear power whether it’s for military or so-called peaceful civilian uses, has been an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.” First off, nuclear energy is incredibly expensive, far more than anticipated; UK’s Hinkley Point C reactor could cost £25bn by the time it’s finished (initially estimated to cost £18.1bn). They are also far less efficient than expected — reactors are complicated things, Finland’s new reactor is 11 years behind schedule, Hinkley C was supposed to be running by 2017 (now due to be operational by 2025 at the earliest). Nuclear power is also responsible for serious human and environmental disasters, to name only a few: Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island. However a quick look at the timeline of nuclear projects show that these aren’t rarities, there have been 33 disasters recorded and thousands of incidents (and near misses). Another surprise was the issue of decommissioning the plants, many were built expected to last 50 years however, this has lowered to 20–40 years. This is because the intrusive nature of radiation destabilises the infrastructure creating cracks and leaks. The process of decommissioning also costs from 10–15% of its initial cost. The biggest problem is that of nuclear waste, initially it was thought that the material could be continually reprocessed however, President Carter discontinued this policy due to the threat that this easily accessible reprocessed waste could pose (weapons-grade plutonium). So now we don’t know what to do with all this radioactive waste hanging around. It is one the most dangerous materials on Earth, due to its high radioactivity which is ecologically ruinous, whilst remaining toxic for tens of thousands of years. Now, one may hold the argument that technological innovation could mediate these problems, and that may be true. But, would it be in time to prevent a spiralling climatic collapse? In my opinion, the same conclusion applies; we require mass social change, complimented with technological strategies — not a blinkered, ill-fated reliance on techno-saviorism.
Let’s explore the effectiveness of renewables and if they offer credibility to techno-saviorism. Tony Seba (co-founder of RethinkX) claims that the effective use of technologies can eliminate 90% of emissions by 2035. He has been predicting that as the cost of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries come down, they will undercut the viability of carbon based energy. He suggests that this will happen in the next ten years, his prediction about electric cars 8 years ago was fairly accurate so it’s fair to say he may be right in his prognosis. However, this may not be grail that the business elite profess. First, the global share of fossil fuel energy still remains at 80–85% (the same as the 1970s) and renewable schemes are sidelined by nuclear power projects. And whilst massive wind farms and solar fields are being built, these have not changed the business models of Shell, BP and other energy giants. They are happy to invest into transition fuels like natural gas, which they say “are here to stay until at least 2050.” More pertinently, installing all this solar and wind infrastructure will require massive amounts of land, destroying habitats and farmland. This can be seen by the serious side-effects of biomass production, from the sugar cane in Brazil or the palm oil in Malaysia causing massive environmental and social degradation, to such an extent it has been labelled “greenwashing.”
Thirdly, as the French scientist Olivier Vidal pointed out, shifting to renewables will replace one finite resource with another (being metals and minerals). 310m tonnes of aluminium 3,200m tonnes of steel, 40m tonnes of copper required to build the latest wind and solar facilities. A worldwide transition to renewables would increase global production of minerals to 5–18% annually. On a smaller scale (a plan actually proposed by the UK government) is changing UK cars to electric, based on the latest battery technology: the UK would need to import three quarters of the world’s lithium production, as much cobalt as is consumed annually by European industry, nearly the entire global production of neodymium, and at least half of the world’s copper production. This all seems fairly impractical not to mention causing environmental desolation. Furthermore, to reiterate: the climate emergency is here and gradual energy transitions without serious social change could amount to ecological devastation. Often the individuals that do push for the faith in technology, appear to be those who have fairly big stakes in business: Tony Seba, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. Whilst the perspective from the bulk of climate scientists is that of technological caution; that blinded business as usual, married with technological dependency should be highly cautioned and could be seriously dangerous. A slight disparity between the business elite and scientific community.
Julian Allwood professor of engineering and the environment at the University of Cambridge claims, “Technology will not solve the problem because it cannot be scaled sufficiently in time.” He breaks down the statistical incoherence of relying on technology; we currently have 4kWh/day of electricity per person (averaged over the world), this is growing at 0.1Wh/day annually. The COP26 plans require 32kWh/day. We currently have 6kg of CCS per person per year, growing at 0.1kg/year annually, but the COP26 plans require 3,600kg. Allwood’s overall conclusion is that, “in the 28 years we have left to reach net zero emissions, there is no possibility that our supplies of electricity, CCS and biomass will scale to anywhere near the levels required by the plans discussed at COP26.” Again, a similar pattern emerges; our current level of consumption is not fit to remain and blissful dependence on technology appears to be incredibly dangerous. He also notes the predetermined failure of COP26 as it was predicated on techno-saviorism due to our governing institutions’ blinkered faith in technology. Another factor displaying their unaccountability, and perhaps discrediting their suitability in governing us.
So whilst technology could, in theory, come to the rescue, it appears incredibly unlikely. Therefore, we should make efforts to pressure our government to change energy habits through social transition rather than technological dependency. As our governing bodies are failing to do this, we must pressure them in the most effective way possible to ensure our society transitions away from consumption and gross environmental exploitation.
As to geo-engineering, these strategies are seriously flawed. The most popular amongst them, is the insertion of a global thermostat (by releasing aerosols into the atmosphere). Essentially, we would directly intervene in the heat flows from the sun to the Earth’s atmosphere, with a vague understanding of its side-effects. Our understanding of the meteorological system, is far from precise: from 1970–98 the warming trend in atmospheric temperature was 1.7°C per century, compared to just 0.4°C from 1998 and 2012. This contradicted all climatic predictions, whilst still not being understood by contemporary meteorologists. At the very least, this identifies our ignorance when it comes to climate and weather systems, suggesting we may not want to inject millions of tonnes of sulphur gas into the atmosphere. The Royal Society claims that the use of geo-engineering should be highly cautioned. I shall not delve further but I recommend ‘Can Science Fix Climate Change? A Case Against Climate Engineering’ by Mike Hulme, who illustrates the massive unpredictability and dangerous implications of imposing a global thermostat.
It appears that the climate breakdown will require systemic changes in our society, as the foundations of growth and consumption must be dismantled. This lays the ground to build a different society, one which doesn’t reward rampant inequality. The idea of systematic change is daunting undoubtedly but one way to deal with this is to be part of it and help shape the process.
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