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http://transition-times.com/colorado/

WHICH WAY OUT?

The report which follows here…by our longtime friend and colleague Richard Heinberg, an associate member of IFG and senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, is the first to use the newly emerging techniques of “life cycle technology assessment,” and in particular “net energy” analyses, for in-depth comparisons among all presently dominant and newly touted “alternative” energy schemes. These include all the major renewable systems currently being advocated. For the first time we are able to fully realize the degree to which our future societal options are far more limited than we thought.

With fossil fuels fast disappearing, and their continuing supplies becoming ever more problematic and expensive, hopes have turned to renewable sources that we ask to save “our way of life” at more or less its current level. Alas, as we will see, the “net energy” gain from all alternative systems—that is, the amount of energy produced, compared with the amount of energy I as well as money and materials) that must be invested in building and operating them—is far too small to begin to sustain industrial society at its present levels. This is very grim news, and demands vast, rapid adjustments by all parties, from governments to industries and even environmental organizations, that thus far are not clearly in the offing. There are, however, viable pathways forward, most importantly and urgently the need for a wide-ranging push for conservation; it is only a question of realism, flexibility, dedication, and more than a little humility. Our beloved “way of life” must be reconsidered and more viable alternatives supported.

THE WRONG TREE

We observe daily the tragic, futile official processes that continue to unfold among national governments, as well as global political and financial institutions, as they give lip service to mitigating climate change and the multiple advancing related global environmental catastrophes. Those crises include not only climate disruption, and looming global fossil fuels shortages, but other profound depletions of key resources—fresh water, arable soils, ocean life, wood, crucial minerals, biodiversity, and breathable air, etc. All these crises are results of the same sets of values and operating systems, and all are nearing points of extreme urgency.

Even our once great hopes that world governments would rally to achieve positive collective outcomes in some arenas; for example, at the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen, as well as other venues, are proving sadly fatuous. But certain things are ever-more clear: Global institutions, national governments, and even many environmental and social activists are barking up the wrong tree. Individually and as groups, they have not faced the full gravity and meaning of the global energy (and resource) conundrums. They continue to operate in most ways out of the same set of assumptions that we’ve all had for the past century—that fundamental systemic changes will not be required; that our complex of problems can be cured by human innovation, ingenuity, and technical efficiency, together with a few smart changes in our choices of energy systems.

Most of all, the prevailing institutions continue to believe in the primacy and efficacy of economic growth as the key indicator of systemic well-being, even in light of ever-diminishing resources. It will not be necessary, according to the dogma, to come to grips with the reality that ever-expanding economic growth is actually an absurdity in a finite system, preposterous on its face, and will soon be over even if activists do nothing to oppose it. Neither does the mainstream recognize that economic systems, notably capitalism, that require such endless growth for their own viability may themselves be doomed in the not very long run. In fact, they are already showing clear signs of collapse. As to any need for substantial changes in personal lifestyles, or to control and limit material consumption habits? Quite the opposite is being pushed—increased car sales, expanded “housing starts,” and increased industrial production remain the focused goals of our economy, even under Mr. Obama, and are still celebrated when/if they occur, without thought of environmental consequences. No alterations in conceptual frameworks are encouraged to appreciate the now highly visible limits of nature, which is both root source of all planetary benefits, and inevitable toxic sink for our excessive habits.

In this optimistic though self-deluding dominant vision, there is also dedicated avoidance of the need for any meaningful redistribution of the planet’s increasingly scarce remaining natural resources toward more equitable arrangements among nations and peoples—to at least slightly mitigate centuries of colonial and corporate plunder of the Third World. And on the similarly ignored question of the continued viability of a small planet that may soon need to support 8-10 billion people? Some actually say it’s a good thing. We should think of these billions as new consumers who may help enliven economic growth, so goes that argument. But only if we find a few more planets nearby, perhaps in a parallel universe somewhere, bursting with oil, gas, water, minerals, wood, rich agricultural lands, and a virginal atmosphere.

The scale of denial is breathtaking. For as Heinberg’s analysis makes depressingly clear, there will be NO combination of alternative energy solutions that might enable the long term continuation of economic growth, or of industrial societies in their present form and scale. Ultimately the solutions we desperately seek will not come from ever-greater technical genius and innovation. Far better and potentially more successful pathways can only come from a sharp turn to goals, values, and practices that emphasize conservation of material and energy resources, localization of most economic frameworks, and gradual population reduction to stay within the carrying capacities of the planet.

THE PARTY’S OVER

The central purpose of all our False Solutions documents, including this one, is to assert that this whole set of assumptions upon which our institutions have hung their collective hats, is tragically inaccurate, and only serves to delay, at a crucial moment, a major reckoning that must be understood immediately.

We are emphatically not against innovations and efficiencies where they can be helpful. But we are against the grand delusion that they can solve all problems, and we are against the tendency to ignore overarching inherent systemic limits that apply to energy supply, material supply, and the Earth itself. For example, the grandest techno-utopian predictions at large today, such as “clean coal,” via carbon sequestration, and “clean nuclear,” via a new “safe 4th generation of reactor design,” have already been revealed as little more than the wild fantasies of energy industries, as they peddle talking points to politicians to whom, on other days, they also supply with campaign cash. There is no persuasive evidence that clean coal, still in the realm of science fiction, will ever be achieved. Most likely it will occupy the same pantheon of technological fantasy as nuclear fusion, not to say human teleportation. In any case, the entire argument for clean coal, however absurd, still ignores what happens to the places from where it comes. Visit Appalachia sometime—now virtually desertified from mountain top removal, and its rivers poisoned to get at that soon-to-be “clean” coal. Clean nuclear offers similar anomalies—no currently contemplated solution for waste disposal is anywhere near practical—even if uranium supplies were not running out nearly as quickly as oil. To speak of nuclear as “clean” or “safe” is a clear sign of panic while, vampire-like, it’s permitted to again rise from its grave.

Okay, we know that some technological “progress” is useful, especially among renewable energy alternatives. Systemic transformations toward a highly touted new complex mix of “renewable” energy systems such as wind, solar, hydro, biomass, wave and several others, will certainly be positive, and together they could make meaningful contributions, free of many of the negative environmental impacts that fossil fuels have brought.

But, as this report exquisitely explains, as beneficial as those shifts may be, they will inevitably fall far short. They will never reach the scale or capacity to substitute for a fossil fuel system that, because of its (temporary) abundance and cheapness, has addicted industrial nations to a 20th century production and consumption spree that landed us, and the whole world, into this dire situation. As Richard Heinberg has so eloquently said before, and used as the title of one of his very important books, “the party’s over.”........