Climate Change Denial
I stated in my first article that the Stupid Economy not only screws over the Working Class, but it destroys the environment. I want to clarify that this isn’t a specific attack on the current economy. The simple fact is that the entire purpose of any economy, even one that serves all people and not just a select elite, is to consume the environment and turn it into other tangible things that have value to humans. This is the basis of economic development. A dignified life is doing useful work and being rewarded for it.
This is the world we were all born into. We take consumerism as the way things should be. Most of us probably never give a thought to our ancient ancestors who were nomadic hunter-foragers. We’re proud of civilization, and rightly so. But this involves a degree of magical thinking, a faith that all is well and the way it should be, even if a person doesn’t participate in a formal religion.
With a title of Climate Change Denial, you may be expecting me to harangue ‘conservatives’ here for denying altogether that humans can cause the environment we live in to become uninhabitable. Of course, I do. It’s an embarrassment for a senator from Oklahoma to bring a snowball to the Senate floor during winter and declare it proof that Global Warming doesn’t exist. It’s an embarrassment for a senator from Wisconsin to declare that warmer temperatures there are a good thing, and who cares about anyone else. I hope that actually sensible consideration of Climate Change exists on the ‘right’, and some of the points I’ll bring up are discussed there, but I’m not aware of it.
The point of this article isn’t that only ‘conservatives’ are climate change deniers. There is denial on the ‘left’ too. If it bothers you that I insist on putting terms like conservative within scare quotes, the reason is these terms we use have been reduced to mere labels. Actual meaning of words doesn’t matter anymore. It matters to me though, and I don’t accept that a person is conservative if conservation of the environment itself isn’t foremost in their value system. And the idea that ‘right’ is ‘correct’ and ‘left’ is ‘sinister’ was coined by elites a long time ago. I don’t have a problem with elites who take responsibility for their society, the one they extract wealth from, but those seem rare these days.
Anyway, let’s get back to the subject of climate change denial on the ‘left’. We’re the people who actually accept that we generate carbon dioxide and methane, that they enter the atmosphere, and this causes an escalating “greenhouse effect” that raises global temperatures. It not only raises average temperature, but instability in climate that results in more frequent and powerful storms, more swings between temperature extremes. Melting ice raises sea levels, flooding coastal areas and encroaching on huge populations. We accept that human activity is grossly distorting the natural fluctuation of climate that the Earth has experienced over the past millions of years.
But even though we accept it, even though we want to fix it, we still don’t get what’s going on. We cling to magical thinking, that the way the world is, is meant to be. As we realize that we’re not fixing the problem, that carbon targets keep being missed, we hope more and more for some kind of miracle. The mantra that the next generation will be smarter, that the kids will save us, is a terrible cop-out. Climate change isn’t happening because we’re not smart enough. It becomes harder to solve with every passing generation, not easier.
This brings me to a documentary that really opened my eyes about climate change denial on the left, called Planet of the Humans. If you haven’t heard of it, I strongly recommend that you watch it. It’s available for free on YouTube, having survived an attempted purge by corporate forces allied with the Democrats. If you have heard of it, if you’ve heard of attempts to ‘debunk’ it, don’t be distracted. Sure, there are places where holes can be punched in it. But there are two primary themes in it that are spot-on: one, industrial processes pollute the environment and our ‘green’ energy revolution uses industrial processes. And two, the explosion of human population correlates directly with the increase in greenhouse gases.
You probably are aware of the “hockey stick” curve from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the previous eye-opening documentary about climate change. Even though climate change was known to have been happening since at least the 1950s, it was Gore who finally made climate activism mainstream. The hockey stick curve is a graph of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over time, shooting straight up in recent decades in an unprecedented fashion. Well, it turns out there’s another hockey stick curve, and that’s human population, following the same path.
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If you think I’m going to suggest that humans stop making babies, or something even worse, don’t go there. I’m not. But I personally believe that we should face facts. I see climate change as merely one consequence of exploding population. We’re victimizing ourselves with our own success at increasing lifespan. That’s not to say that everything is great for everyone. There’s plenty of suffering in the world already. Before we get back to the main subject, I’ll say that I think even if we had been as conscientious about climate as we could’ve been, for all of human history, I still believe we would’ve run into trouble eventually. It’s only happened faster than it could have.
Let’s return to the point about industrial processes. We must recognize, at the least, that there’s a carbon price to pay for the production of solar cells, the production of windmills, the production of batteries for electric cars. When each is implemented, it begins with a carbon debt that must be paid before any “carbon footprint” reduction can be achieved. Batteries in particular require voluminous mining of stone to acquire all the materials in them. None of these last forever, either. Solar cells have to be replaced every decade or so. I doubt that an electric car battery lasts longer. Maybe windmills do, a little. Every time you need a replacement, a carbon debt is incurred again.
If we keep replacing combustion engines with electric ones, so that all mining equipment is electric, the carbon debt is lessened. I saw a study about Finland, I believe it was, that has aggressively pursued electric cars and non-carbon-emitting energy sources. By their calculations, an electric car breaks even on carbon after at least four years. I’m not saying that making all cars electric and building solar cells and windmills is a bad idea. The point is that putting cells on your roof and getting an electric car doesn’t instantly save the world. It’s complicated, at best.
But there’s a primary subject I want to address, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it brought up in climate change discussion. Consider a young person somewhere participating in civil disobedience regarding fossil fuels. Let’s says someone super-glues themselves to an oil derrick. I commend that person for caring, and taking action. But I guarantee you that when that person gets home at the end of the day, they’re gonna be pissed off if they don’t have WiFi because the power is out. Does anybody ever suggest that we consume less energy?
As human population surges, and people all over the world strive to have things, to improve their standard of living, they consume more energy. The simple fact is that fossil fuels are one of the most efficient ways we’ve found to generate the energy our human civilization requires. I’m not promoting fossil fuels. I want an alternative. I’ll return shortly to that subject, but a fundamental part of denial about climate change on the left is we’re not taking ownership of our own part in the problem. We demand energy, and we’d be more motivated by lack of it than we are even by climate destruction. Some people want to become vegetarians and live in a cave, but I don’t.
Oil companies are certainly guilty of crimes, especially promoting denial that climate change is even happening. But it’s hypocritical to believe that they’re the only problem. They do at least provide energy. A prime delusion that the ‘left’ is operating under, is that we can just replace fossil fuels with solar and wind. It’s simply not true. We can replace some degree of fossil fuels with them, but never more than 20%. Today, I believe that 10% is about the best that’s been achieved with solar and wind combined.
One of the key scenes for me in Planet of the Humans is where Michael Bloomberg is holding a press conference on the opening of a new power plant. He declares that it’s clean power, from solar and wind and biomass. Bloomberg is exactly what’s wrong with the Democrats. His entire presentation was framed with the lie inherent in the order that he stated the sources of power: solar and wind first. The truth of that project was that it was something like 90% biomass. He starts with the two that are only about 5% each, because he wants you to believe that it’s clean. But it’s only about the profit to him, really. And there is an energy demand to meet.
Let’s address biomass. Maybe you’re thinking it’s only a little white lie that the project was 90% biomass, because that’s clean, right? Uh, no. Another major denial on the ‘left’ is there seems to be a conflation between ‘renewable’ and ‘clean’. Biomass is renewable, at least compared to oil or natural gas. It takes millions of years for coal to form, or other fossil fuels. And burning them pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What’s called biomass is almost all the burning of wood. What an advanced technology! Wood is more renewable than fossil fuels, but a tree doesn’t grow overnight. And how does anyone think that burning trees is clean? Biology on the Earth is carbon based. Trees are made of carbon. It’s not as dense as in fossil fuels, which is why they’re so efficient at making energy.
The simple truth I’m getting at is we keep insisting that we eliminate carbon from our energy sources. That’s definitely a great idea. But we’re failing to do that, not just because of greedy oil companies. The only technology I know of that could potentially replace fossil fuels, and relatively quickly, is nuclear fission. I don’t believe that nuclear fusion is anywhere on the horizon, if ever. We should at least fully understand the situation we’re in, and if nuclear plants are the best solution.
I realize this article is a bummer. I’ve heard the argument that we shouldn’t lose hope and do nothing about climate change. I don’t suggest that. But I prefer to know the truth. It would be nice if people could stop fighting with each other over trivial things. It would make it easier to make the best of what we have. And it would be nice to reverse the trend of the very wealthiest hoarding everything to themselves in a vain attempt to survive a cataclysm rather than delay it happening.
