Page 3

Visit the global The Problem: Civilization » Human Supremacy » Page 3 archives for posts from all DGR sites.

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists

By Andrew Gilligan / The Telegraph

The finding, which threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time” for wind farms on peat soils.

Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.

But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.

British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.

Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.

Continue reading →

Mining the World to Death

Leave a reply

By Robert Jensen / We Are All Apocalyptic Now

The following is an excerpt from We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out , in print at Amazon.com and on Kindle (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).

Progressive analyses of inequality and injustice focus on the illegitimate hierarchies in patriarchy, white supremacy, the imperial nation-state system, and capitalism. The final hierarchal system—and in some ways the most dangerous—is the industrial model of human development, the latest and most intense version of an unsustainable extractive economy.

The bounty that makes contemporary mass consumption possible did not, of course, drop out of the sky. It was ripped out of the ground and drawn from the water in a fashion that has left the continent ravaged, a dismemberment of nature that is an unavoidable consequence of a worldview that glorifies domination.

“From [Europeans’] first arrival we have behaved as though nature must be either subdued or ignored,” writes the scientist and philosopher Wes Jackson, one of the leading thinkers in the sustainable agriculture movement. As Jackson points out, our economy has always been extractive, even before the industrial revolution dramatically accelerated the assault in the 19th century and the petrochemical revolution began poisoning the world more intensively in the 20th. We mined the forests, soil, and aquifers, just as we eventually mined minerals and fossil fuels, leaving ecosystems ragged and in ruin, perhaps beyond recovery in any human timeframe. All that was done by people who believed in their right to dominate.

One way to understand that domination is the context of the two major revolutions in human history—the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

Continue reading →

Sustainability is destroying the Earth

150 Replies

By Kim / Stories of Creative Ecology

Don’t talk to me about sustainability. You want to question my lifestyle, my impact, my ecological footprint? There is a monster standing over us, with a footprint so large it can trample a whole planet underfoot, without noticing or caring. This monster is Industrial Civilization. I refuse to sustain the monster. If the Earth is to live, the monster must die. This is a declaration of war.

What is it we are trying to sustain? A living planet, or industrial civilization? Because we can’t have both.

Somewhere along the way the environmental movement – based on a desire to protect the Earth, was largely eaten by the sustainability movement – based on a desire to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. When did this happen, and why? And how is it possible that no-one noticed? This is a fundamental shift in values, to go from compassion for all living beings and the land, to a selfish wish to feel good about our inherently destructive way of life.

The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.

Sustainability advocates tell us that reducing our impact, causing less harm to the Earth, is a good thing to do, and we should feel good about our actions. I disagree. Less harm is not good. Less harm is still a lot of harm. For as long as any harm is caused, by anyone, there can be no sustainability. Feeling good about small acts doesn’t help anyone.

Only one-quarter of all consumption is by individuals. The rest is taken up by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. Even if every one of us made every effort to reduce our ecological footprint, it would make little difference to overall consumption.

If the lifestyle actions advocated really do have the effect of keeping our culture around for longer than it would otherwise, then it will cause more harm to the natural world than if no such action had been taken. For the longer a destructive culture is sustained, the more destruction it causes. The title of this article isn’t just attention-grabbing and controversial, it is quite literally what’s going on.

When we frame the sustainability debate around the premise that individual lifestyle choices are the solution, then the enemy becomes other individuals who make different lifestyle choices, and those who don’t have the privilege of choice. Meanwhile the true enemy — the oppressive structures of civilization — are free to continue their destructive and murderous practices without question. This is hardly an effective way to create a meaningful social movement. Divide and be conquered.

Sustainability is po Continue reading →

Fossil Fuel Addiction Could Trigger Runaway Global Warming

Leave a reply

By Nafeez Ahmed / The Guardian

Without full decarbonisation by 2030, our global emissions pathway guarantees a new era of catastrophic climate change.

The world is currently on course to exploit all its remaining fossil fuel resources, a prospect that would produce a “different, practically uninhabitable planet” by triggering a “low-end runaway greenhouse effect.” This is the conclusion of a new scientific paper by Prof James Hansen, the former head of NASA‘s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world’s best known climate scientist.

The paper due to be published later this month by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A) focuses less on modelling than on empirical data about correlations between temperature, sea level and CO2 going back up to 66 million years.

Given that efforts to exploit available fossil fuels continue to accelerate, the paper’s principal finding – that “conceivable levels of human-made climate forcing could yield the low-end runaway greenhouse effect” based on inducing “out-of-control amplifying feedbacks such as ice sheet disintegration and melting of methane hydrates” – is deeply worrying.

The paper projects that global average temperatures under such a scenario could eventually reach as high as between 16C and 25C over a number of centuries. Such temperatures “would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world”, “diminish the stratospheric ozone layer”, and “make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans.”

Hansen and his co-authors find that:

“Estimates of the carbon content of all fossil fuel reservoirs including unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands, tar shale, and various gas reservoirs that can be tapped with developing technology imply that CO2 conceivably could reach a level as high as 16 times the 1950 atmospheric amount.”

They calculate that there is “more than enough available fossil fuels” to generate emissions capable of unleashing “amplifying feedbacks” that could trigger a “runaway” greenhouse effect “sustained for centuries.” Even if just a third of potentially available fossil fuel resources were exploited, calculations suggest, this scenario would still be guaranteed, meaning decisions we make this century will determine the fate of generations to come.

‘We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual,’ said James Hansen in 2009.

“Governments are allowing and encouraging fossil fuel companies to go after every conceivable fuel”, said Hansen, “which is an obtuse policy that ignores the implications for young people, future generations and nature. We could make substantial parts of the Earth uninhabitable.”

The conclusions of Hansen’s latest paper are stark:

“Most remaining fossil fuel carbon is in coal and unconventional oil and gas. Thus, it seems, humanity stands at a fork in the road. As conventional oil and gas are depleted, will we move to carbon-free energy and efficiency – or to unconventional fossil fuels and coal?

… It seems implausible that humanity will not alter its energy course as consequences of burning all fossil fuels become clearer. Yet strong evidence about the dangers of human-made climate change have so far had little effect. Whether governments continue to be so foolhardy as to allow or encourage development of all fossil fuels may determine the fate of humanity.”

The new paper by James Hansen is just the latest confirming that we are on the verge of crossing a tipping point into catastrophic climate change. Other recent scientific studies show that the current global emissions trajectory could within three years guarantee a 2C rise in global temperatures, in turn triggering irreversible and dangerous amplifying feedbacks.

According to a scientific paper given at the Geological Society of London last month, climate records from Siberian caves show that temperatures of just 1.5C generate “a tipping point for continuous permafrost to start thawing”, according to lead author Prof Anton Vaks from Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences. Conventional climate models suggest that 1.5C is just 10-30 years away.

Permafrost thawing releases sub-ice undersea methane into the atmosphere – a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent that carbon dioxide. In June, NASA’s new five-year programme to study the Arctic carbon cycle, Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), declared:

“If just one percent of the permafrost carbon released over a short time period is methane, it will have the same greenhouse impact as the 99 percent that is released as carbon dioxide.”

Another paper suggests that conventional climate modeling is too conservative due to not accounting for complex risks and feedbacks within and between ecosystems. The paper published in Nature last Wednesday finds that models used to justify the 2C target as a ‘safe’ limit focus only on temperature rise and fail to account for impacts on the wider climate system such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, and loss of carbon from soils. It concludes that the 2C target is insufficient to avoid dangerous climate change

The problem is that our current global emissions trajectory already commits us to a 2C rise anyway. Papers published by the Royal Society in 2011 showed that emissions pledges would still put the world on track for warming anywhere between 2.5C and 5C – and that a failure to deliver these pledges could see global temperatures rise by 7C by 2100. Amongst them, a Met Office study concluded that strong amplifying feedbacks – such as the oceans’ reduced ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide leading to further warming – could see us reach 4C as early as 2060.

But as Hansen explained in a recent interview:

“Four degrees of warming would be enough to melt all the ice… you would have a tremendously chaotic situation as you moved away from our current climate towards another one. That’s a different planet. You wouldn’t recognise it… We are on the verge of creating climate chaos if we don’t begin to reduce emissions rapidly.”

After the last round of climate talks in Doha, a report by Climate Action Tracker concluded that the world is currently on path to see warming of 3C by 2040, triggering the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic permafrost.

This was corroborated last month by the International Energy Agency(IEA), which found that even with current climate policies in place, we are locked into a rise of between 2C and 5.3C. Two years ago, the IEA concluded that we had five years left to implement urgent energy reforms after which we would no longer be able to avoid dangerous climate change. We are now three years away from that point-of-no-return.

To make matters worse, the IEA’s analysis is based on conventional models which do not fully account for amplifying feedbacks such as methane releases from permafrost thawing. The IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, like its predecessors, will specifically exclude the permafrost carbon feedback from its projections.

The implication is that policymakers are riding blind – we do not really know how close we are to a tipping point into catastrophe.

There is a solution. According to Hansen, we need to focus on a maximum target of 1C. “The goal of keeping warming close to 1C is to keep climate close to the Holocene range, thus avoiding any major amplifying feedbacks,” he said.

“The 1C goal requires rapid phase out of fossil fuel emissions, which would require a rising carbon fee. To continue to burn every fuel that can be found is the opposite approach – they are day and night.”

Such a rapid fossil fuel phaseout was proposed to the Parliamentary Environment Audit Committee early last year in the form of complete decarbonisation of power by 2030. Unfortunately, the UK bill to that effect was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons last month.

There is still hope – the bill is currently up for consideration by the House of Lords. If the bill eventually passes, Britain might still play a leading role in heralding the energy revolution that could help save the planet, while saving the nation up to £100 billion.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

– – – – – – – – – –

Originally posted by The Guardian here.

More than 2 million people killed by air pollution each year

Leave a reply

Institute of Physics

Over two million deaths occur each year as a direct result of human-caused outdoor air pollution, a new study has found.

In addition, while it has been suggested that a changing climate can exacerbate the effects of air pollution and increase death rates, the study shows that this has a minimal effect and only accounts for a small proportion of current deaths related to air pollution.

The study, which has been published today, 12 July, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, estimates that around 470,000 people die each year because of human-caused increases in ozone.

It also estimates that around 2.1 million deaths are caused each year by human-caused increases in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – tiny particles suspended in the air that can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing cancer and other respiratory disease.

Co-author of the study, Jason West, from the University of North Carolina, said: “Our estimates make outdoor air pollution among the most important environmental risk factors for health. Many of these deaths are estimated to occur in East Asia and South Asia, where population is high and air pollution is severe.”

According to the study, the number of these deaths that can be attributed to changes in the climate since the industrial era is, however, relatively small. It estimates that a changing climate results in 1500 deaths due to ozone and 2200 deaths related to PM2.5 each year.

Climate change affects air pollution in many ways, possibly leading to local increases or decreases in air pollution. For instance, temperature and humidity can change the reaction rates which determine the formation or lifetime of a pollutant, and rainfall can determine the time that pollutants can accumulate.

Higher temperatures can also increase the emissions of organic compounds from trees, which can then react in the atmosphere to form ozone and particulate matter.

“Very few studies have attempted to estimate the effects of past climate change on air quality and health. We found that the effects of past climate change are likely to be a very small component of the overall effect of air pollution,” continued West.

In their study, the researchers used an ensemble of climate models to simulate the concentrations of ozone and PM2.5 in the years 2000 and 1850. A total of 14 models simulated levels of ozone and six models simulated levels of PM2.5.

Previous epidemiological studies were then used to assess how the specific concentrations of air pollution from the climate models related to current global mortality rates.

The researchers’ results were comparable to previous studies that have analysed air pollution and mortality; however, there was some variation depending on which climate model was used.

West added, “We have also found that there is significant uncertainty based on the spread among different atmospheric models. This would caution against using a single model in the future, as some studies have done”.

From Friday 12 July, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034005/article.

– – – – – – – – – –

Originally posted by Institute of Physics here.

75% of the World’s Mining Companies are Based in Canada

Leave a reply

By Dave Dean / VICE

While working on a piece I wrote last month about a Canadian gold mine being shut down by protesters in Kyrgyzstan, I came across a statistic that I thought must have been a mistake. With all of the noise and criticism both domestically and internationally of Alberta’s Tar Sands, it seemed to me shockingly underreported that 75% of the world’s mining companies are headquartered in Canada.

All over the world, companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and run out of lawyer’s offices on Bay Street or skyscrapers in downtown Vancouver (whose real financiers may live in Australia or Nevada) are handling the mining game at home, throughout parts of Asia, South America and surprisingly, even with all the talk of China’s investment in Africa, it turns out that it’s Canada, not China, who is quietly dominating and exploiting African mining. All told, almost 1,300 mining companies based out of Canada are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in over 100 countries around the world.

So the question is, why? What makes Canada such an attractive option for the ‘extractive sector’? Canadians don’t own all of these mining companies—but these organizations do plop their headquarters down here—what is it about this country that makes it such an industry haven?

I asked Jamie Kneen, research coordinator with Ottawa based MiningWatch Canada, a non-profit organization that describes itself as “a direct response to industry and government failures to protect the public and the environment from destructive mining practices and to deliver on their sustainability rhetoric.” Just why it is that Canada is the go-to place for mining companies to set up shop?

“There’s two sides to it,” he said. “One is that there is a concentration of expertise in mining finance and mining law, it does have a historical basis” He is of course referring to the various Canadian gold rushes, the nickel deposits in Sudbury, coal in Cape Breton, etc. “The other side is that Canada provides very favourable conditions. The listing requirements for the TSX are pretty lax, the disclosure requirements are pretty lax, you don’t have to have Canadian directories or Canadian shareholders to be a Canadian company… and the Canadian government doesn’t ask too many questions about whether you’re paying your taxes in other jurisdictions (i.e. foreign countries where the mines are operating).”

I was getting the impression that companies just pay taxes on their offices here and are sent on their merry way overseas to do whatever they want. I asked Jamie if there is any Canadian government oversight that’s keeping an eye on how these companies are operating—insofar as their relationships with the local populations, how they’re treating their employees, or the mine’s surrounding environments—and he responded: “In a word, no. There are really only two Canadian laws that apply internationally to mining practices, and one is against having sex with children. The other is against bribery and corruption. The RCMP has told us that there’s absolutely no way that they can control that at all. They’ve had a lot of resources thrown their way to try and make Canada look better as far as bribery and corruption activity abroad, but there’s way more than they can keep tabs on. It’s just kind of, cross your fingers and hope that they act responsibly.”

While the RCMP reportedly has trouble policing our overseas mining interests—and how could they not have trouble, when you think about it—there still have been some successful mining-bribery busts. Just this January, Griffiths Energy, based out of Calgary got booked offering a $2 million dollar bribe to the government of Chad on a resource deal. Try again, Griffiths.

While a Google search of something like “Canadian Mining Abuses” will turn up a plethora of stories that point to a systemic problem of conquistador and Avatar-esque narratives, here are a few examples from different regions that illustrate just how brutally these mining companies are acting while representing Canada overseas.

Barrick Gold Corporation is a name that comes up on a number of issues. Based out of the TD Canada Trust Tower at 161 Bay Street in Toronto, their gold mine in Papua New Guinea has been the site of fatal shootings as well as of hundreds of rapes, gang rapes, and beatings of indigenous women by the mine’s security forces. Barrick has acknowledged the problem by offering victims some compensation—on the agreement they sign away their rights to ever legally sue. I wasn’t able to find any evidence of Canadian government investigation or intervention in the matter.

In the Congo in 2005, Anvil Mining Ltd, based out of Quebec, allegedly provided logistical support and transportation to the Congolese militaryas it made its way to the port city of Kilwa where it massacred hundreds of people. A Canadian organization representing survivors of the massacre, the Canadian Association Against Impunity—whose mandate is to hold mining companies in Africa accountable for their actions—had their class-action suit thrown out by the Supreme Court of Canada, saying the complaint should be heard in the Congo (whose military the mine supported). This, again, reinforces my understanding that our mining companies can act with impunity overseas, without the threat of any legal repercussions in Canada.

Calgary based TVI Pacific has employed its own paramilitary force in a remote region of the Philippines to intimidate and remove the indigenous population from their ancestral lands so they can mine for gold. In one documented incident, members of TVI’s security force—all of which are employees of Canadian companies—entered the house of a local man, beat him with a hammer, smashed a small-scale piece of mining equipment that he owned – likely his only livelihood – then, just for good measure, slapped his pregnant wife, and shot at the feet of their teenage daughter.

A protest in Vancouver over our mining operations in Tibet. via Flickr.

The recklessness of Vancouver-based China Gold International left 83 Tibetan miners after a landslide in March—a natural disaster that many believe was caused by the environmental disruption that the mining industry has caused in the area. Apparently more than 5,000 Chinese troops were sent in to “serve as rescue efforts” but a Tibetan monk from the area, who lives in Canada, believes they were actually there to curb protests by the locals.

In Central and South America, Canada’s reputation is being dragged through the dirt to the point where in some countries, it’s apparently better for travelers to say they’re American than Canadian, and it’s not hard to see why. Vancouver-based Pacific Rim is suing the government of El Salvador, a country with a GDP of $23 Billion (Canada’s is $1.7 trillion) for $315 million dollars because they didn’t let them follow through with a mine that threatened to pollute the Lempa River—a watershed that accounts for 60% of the country’s clean water.

As if that’s not enough, a region of Guatemala was militarized last month—and the right to protest or form meetings has been suspended by the president—following clashes between local protesters who are concerned for their drinking water and employees of Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources inc.

While most companies probably do operate ethically and to the best of their ability—while maintaining healthy and sustainable relationships with local cultures and their environments—unfortunately these few stories really are the tip of the iceberg as far as Canada’s mining reputation that is beginning to be noticed as the worst in the world.

The basic Canadian government line on mining abroad, according to Jamie Kneen, is that “we expect Canadian companies to respect the law of whatever country they’re operating in and the fact is they may or may not. And that’s subject to whatever the law is in that country and their ability to enforce it.”

Despite the recent history of environmental abuses by our mining industry worldwide, we are still doing our best to keep up appearances with our global partners. Just a couple of months ago, Minister of International Cooperation (Everyone’s favourite Ex-Toronto Police Chief and former Chief of the Ontario Provincial Police) Julian Fantino was in Cape Town promoting Canada’s “responsible resource development in Africa.” Clearly, though, we are not as responsible as we should be.

Canada has a longstanding history of getting involved in foreign conflict under the banner of human rights—and we certainly enjoy maintaining the veneer of our role on the world stage as one of the good guys. But why aren’t we holding our mining companies to those same standards that we hold other guilty nations to? After learning about what’s happening with Canada’s extractive sector, it’s impossible to distinguish Canadian foreign policy from Canadian mining policy—and our hypocrisy is glaring.
Follow Dave on Twitter: @ddner

– – – – – – – – – –

Originally posted by VICE here.

BREAKDOWN: The Time Lag of Irreversible Change

Leave a reply

By Joshua Headley / Deep Green Resistance New York

If you’ve been a sentient being for the last few months, you’ve probably been watching some of the most curious weather events happening throughout the world.

Of particular concern for many scientists has been the Arctic sea ices melt, which dropped to its lowest level on record last summer. In the first few months of this year, large cracks were witnessed in the sea ice, indicating a great possibility that it has entered a death spiral and will disappear completely in the summer months within the next two years.

The rapid melt (and eventual disappearance) of the ice is having drastic affects on the jet stream in the northern hemisphere, creating powerful storms and extreme weather events, largely outside the comprehension of many scientists.

Jeff Masters, meteorology director at the private service Weather Underground states: “I’ve been doing meteorology for 30 years and the jet stream the last three yeas has done stuff I’ve never seen. […] The fact that the jet stream is unusual could be an indicator of something. I’m not saying we know what it is.”

Continue reading →

BREAKDOWN: Industrial Agriculture

Leave a reply

By Joshua Headley / Deep Green Resistance New York

In no other industry today is it more obvious to see the culmination of affects of social, political, economic, and ecological instability than in the global production of food. As a defining characteristic of civilization itself, it is no wonder why scientists today are closely monitoring the industrial agricultural system and its ability (or lack thereof) to meet the demands of an expanding global population.

Amidst soil degradation, resource depletion, rising global temperatures, severe climate disruptions such as floods and droughts, ocean acidification, rapidly decreasing biodiversity, and the threat of irreversible climatic change, food production is perhaps more vulnerable today than ever in our history. Currently, as many as 2 billion people are estimated to be living in hunger – but that number is set to dramatically escalate, creating a reality in which massive starvation, on an inconceivable scale, is inevitable.

With these converging crises, we can readily see within agriculture and food production that our global industrial civilization is experiencing a decline in complexity that it cannot adequately remediate, thus increasing our vulnerability to collapse. Industrial agriculture has reached the point of declining marginal returns – there may be years of fluctuation in global food production but we are unlikely to ever reach peak levels again in the foreseeable future.

While often articulated that technological innovation could present near-term solutions, advocates of this thought tend to forget almost completely the various contributing factors to declining returns that cannot be resolved in such a manner. There is also much evidence, within agriculture’s own history, that a given technology that has the potential to increase yields and production (such as the advent of the plow or discovery of oil) tends to, over time, actually reduce that potential and significantly escalate the problem.

Continue reading →

Time is Short: Militant Mining Resistance

Leave a reply

By Alex Rose / Deep Green Resistance Redwood Coast

Mining is one of the most viscerally destructive and horrific ways in which the dominant culture—industrial civilization—enacts its violence on the living world. As entirely and unequivocally destructive as this society is, few other industrial activities are as horrifically confronting as mining. Whole landscapes are cleared of life as communities—most often indigenous or poor—are forced from their homes. Mountains level to piles of barren rubble which leach countless poisons, scouring life from whole watersheds. Pits of unimaginable size are carved from the bones of the earth, leaving moonscapes in their wake.

Besides the immediate damage to the land at the site of operations, the destruction extends through the uses its products are put to. In this way, mining is crucial to the continued function of industrial civilization, supplying many of the raw materials that form the material fabric of industrial society. Steel, aluminum, copper, coal, tar sands bitumen, cement; the materials extracted through mining are central components of industrial civilization in an immediate and physical way. They are the building blocks of this society.

Fortunately, as is the way of things, where there is atrocity and brutalization, there is resistance. There has been a lot of militant anti-mining action happening recently; in the last few months alone there have been several inspiring incidents of people taking direct militant action against mining projects and infrastructure.

Continue reading →

BREAKDOWN: The Efficiency of Green Energy

Leave a reply

By Joshua Headley / Deep Green Resistance New York

There are, at present, many myths about green energy and its efficiency to address the demands and needs of our burgeoning industrial civilization, the least of which is that a switch to “renewable” energy will significantly reduce our dependency on, and consumption of, fossil fuels.

The opposite is true. If we study the actual productive processes required for current “renewable” energies (solar, wind, biofuel, etc.) we see that fossil fuels and their infrastructure are not only crucial but are also wholly fundamental to their development. To continue to use the words “renewable” and “clean” to describe such energy processes does a great disservice for generating the type of informed and rational decision-making required at our current junction.

To take one example – the production of turbines and the allocation of land necessary for the development, processing, distribution and storage of “renewable” wind energy. From the mining of rare metals, to the production of the turbines, to the transportation of various parts (weighing thousands of tons) to a central location, all the way up to the continued maintenance of the structure after its completion – wind energy requires industrial infrastructure (i.e. fossil fuels) in every step of the process.

If the conception of wind energy only involves the pristine image of wind turbines spinning, ever so wonderfully, along a beautiful coast or grassland, it’s not too hard to understand why so many of us hold green energy so highly as an alternative to fossil fuels. Noticeably absent in this conception, though, are the images of everything it took to get to that endpoint (which aren’t beautiful images to see at all and is largely the reason why wind energy isn’t marketed that way).

Because of the rapid growth and expansion of industrial civilization in the last two centuries, we are long past the days of easy accessible resources. If you take a look at the type of mining operations and drilling operations currently sustaining our way of life you will readily see degradation and devastation on unconscionable scales. This is our reality and these processes will not change no matter what our ends are – these processes are the degree with which “basic” extraction of all of the fundamental metals, minerals, and resources we are familiar with currently take place.

In much the same way that the absurdities of tar sands extraction, mountaintop removal, and hydraulic fracturing are plainly obvious, so too are the continued mining operations and refining processes of copper, silver, aluminum, zinc, etc. (all essential to the development of solar panels and wind turbines).

Continue reading →