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Mostly because they don't know
When I give talks I am frequently asked a variation of the following question: how do we stop consumption and development to protect the planet?
My answer always draws blank faces. Stopping growth is not the solution to addressing climate change, I tell concerned environmentalists and anxious climate activists. We do need to decarbonise and move to cleaner technologies, but fighting development won’t save the planet, and nor has it been shown to reduce emissions. //
We have also repeatedly been told that we are the problem, and therefore the solution is for there to be fewer of us. But all of this is wrong.
It may seem unbelievable that continuing on our current trajectory will solve anything, but the evidence shows that environmental progress is being made in many areas and that growth is the only thing that is working in terms of lowering emissions and improving air quality.
If we want to save the planet, we need to understand what works.
We know how to reduce resource consumption without reducing growth
It’s true that for the past 200 years, economic activity has led to an increase in carbon emissions. More recently, however, since the 1980s and largely thanks to the use of nuclear energy, many countries have been able to reduce emissions while continuing to increase GDP. Investment in renewables has also driven this growth further. In 2016, 70 countries experienced a growth in GDP while also experiencing a run of at least five years in which emissions decreased.
Using historical data, researchers have calculated that nuclear energy has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. They find that:
“On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000–7.04 million deaths and 80–240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.” //
As countries become richer, they become more environmentally friendly. Air quality improves, water use becomes more efficient, and fewer natural resources are required. This is true across developed countries, where the population has increased but resource consumption has fallen, including timber, water, metal, minerals, and energy. //
Although cars still carry an environmental cost, not having them would also have had a significant impact on the planet. The Horse Association of America calculated that 54 million acres of US farmland was spared by the automobile in the 1930s, as the land was not needed for meadows for grazing horses. The US population has nearly tripled since then, yet hundreds of millions of acres of forests were saved from being cut down to make room to feed horses and to store waste horse manure.
Cars are not an isolated example – consider your Smartphone. Again, the innovation of phone designs has significantly reduced material use. In the recent past, a single person would have owned a GPS device, a calculator, a camera, a landline telephone, an alarm clock, and so on. Now, you only need one device instead of all of these items. Yes, phones still require resources, but the amount required is significantly less than when multiple items are no longer needed to do the same job. Resource use often becomes significantly reduced as the technology becomes more efficient. //
Building more clean energy is also key to cleaner air, tackling emissions, and reducing resource consumption. When it is built in Britain, the nuclear power plant Sizewell C will produce 3.2 GWh of electricity. Compare this with the 2.6 GWh produced by the Drax power station by burning 27 million trees every year. The alternative to building Sizewell C would be burning 33 million trees a year. That’s more than one tree per second.
Drax, which is classed as ‘renewable’ but shouldn’t be, is the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Burning wood creates 18% more CO2 than burning coal. Instead of relying on polluting fuels that may be classified as green, we need to build nuclear power plants, which allow us all to breathe a little easier.
As a result of Germany’s nuclear power phase-out, they are now burning coal again, and a study found that the air pollution resulting from the nuclear phase-out is now killing an extra 1,100 people a year. Japan also shut down their nuclear power plants (although they recently reversed this decision), and a study found that if both countries had reduced fossil fuel power output instead of nuclear energy, they could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017. //
Traditional environmentalism was founded based on the myth of overpopulation. In 1798, the English economist Thomas Malthus predicted that (so-called) ‘overpopulation’ would lead to famine as there would be too many mouths to feed.
He was wrong. There was no population ‘bomb’, no famine due to increased numbers of people. Instead, life improved for many millions of people, thanks to the innovation and development that they initiated. This largely relates to agriculture and the productivity of land, where labour and capital have increased more than proportionately to the increased number of humans. Thanks to agricultural improvements and technological advances, which required the input of many people and the use of many hands, we have experienced an outcome of more food rather than less. Thanks to the mechanisation of The Green Revolution, we have seen greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production, improved food supplies, and increased economic development in underdeveloped nations. Sadly, many environmentalists are still in denial about this and see such food security as a bad thing. //
There is an argument to be made that increased population has led to more environmental progress, through greater human capital. In November 2022, the world’s population hit 8 billion. Across history, exceptional people have led us to technological and cultural masterpieces. The past 200 years have shown exponential growth in technical development and innovation. In 1823 there were just over 1 billion people in the world. We now have 8 billion people from whom pioneering new science, art, medicine, and other technologies are emerging daily. A bigger pool of human capital is therefore not inherently a bad thing, but may yield immense benefits – so long as many of these people are also freed from the chains of poverty so that they can live fulfilling lives and contribute to global progress.
I cannot make this argument more clearly than the late statistician Hans Rosling, who gave a talk on the reduction of extreme poverty, where he also goes into the difference that owning a washing machine made for his (financially poor) family:
“My mother explained the magic with this machine the very very first day. She said, ‘now Hans, we have loaded the laundry, the machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library. Because this is the magic. You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines. Children’s books.’ And mother got time to read for me. She loved this. I got the ABCs, this is why I started my career as Professor, when mother had time to read for me. And she also got books for herself, she managed to study English and learn that as a foreign language… We really loved this machine. And what we said, my mother and me, ‘thank you industrialisation. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station, and thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books’!”
Imagine a world with fewer people like Hans Rosling in it. It would be a much poorer world without such invaluable contributions to human knowledge and progress. We would all be impacted by this loss. //
Let’s give people a break. For too long we have been sold the myth that we should be concerned about so-called ‘overpopulation’, but this has been proven to be nonsensical fearmongering. Instead, population decline is occurring in almost every country in the world, and it is already having negative impacts on ageing populations and the future generations who have to support them. Not only do ageing populations impose costs on society as we struggle to pay for healthcare and pensions, but in some countries like Japan there simply aren’t enough younger people to physically support older generations, which poses serious problems for the country. //
But it’s telling that underpopulation has not led to a moral panic the way that false ideas of population growth have done so for many years. Arguably, underpopulation will have a far greater and more negative impact than the old worry of having more mouths to feed. For example, China, whose economy has long benefited from the sheer number of people in its workforce, is forecast to lose almost half of this population by 2100, plunging from more than 1.4 billion to 771 million inhabitants. Many of our goods come from China – including solar panels. The Chinese One Child Policy, which was so concerned with ‘overpopulation’, has proven to be short-sighted and damaging in ways that Chinese leaders did not foresee. Unfortunately, Germany, South Korea and Russia are not far behind on the underpopulation trajectory, and Europe's population as a whole will begin to decline as early as this decade.
Population growth was never really the problem. Lack of foresight, and forming policy based on myths over data, have been the real problems for the planet. //
Evidence shows that we are capable of solving the world’s problems. The fool’s trick is to make out that predicting an apocalyptic future is somehow smarter than pointing out optimistic scenarios; when in reality, being pessimistic is simply the easier and lazier option thanks to human negativity bias. Yet many factors, some of which I have covered here, show that in many areas we are on a positive trajectory.
We are capable of decoupling growth from emissions. We are capable of improving air quality, which makes us healthier and makes our children taller, less violent, and smarter. We are capable of tackling climate change as well as eradicating poverty. We are capable of hitting net zero targets – as I wrote in a recent article, we may even be on track to keep under 1.5°C of warming. No one is going to shout any of this from the rooftops; it is not headline-grabbing news. But humans are capable of solving immense problems, including problems we have created, and we have been doing so for many years now. To place all our bets on failure does humankind a disservice; but also, no one has ever fixed a problem by fixating only on the problem. Let’s fight to implement evidence-based solutions instead so that we can build the cleaner, healthier world that we are all so keen to live in.
Both wind and solar power are voracious land hogs. Wind or solar can need 90 to 100 times more acreage than a natural gas plant to generate the same amount of electricity. And let’s not forget the large swaths of land that will have to be appropriated, and in heavily forested areas clear cut, to build transmission lines that connect solar and wind farms to distribution lines. //
You can't get around the energy density problem; you just can't. Physics is a harsh mistress. And the amount of land - habitat, if you want to put a point on it - required is considerable. //
Eco-activists fuss and scold over the cutting of trees to clear land for housing, commercial development, and raw materials, but apparently it’s just fine to remove trees if they’re replaced by solar panels. //
What we need more of isn't windmills, solar panels, or batteries. We need more nuclear power plants. We need more small modular reactors. We need a decentralized grid powered by splitting atoms. Do you want clean energy? This is clean energy. //
Throughout our history, every major technological advance in power – from animal to machine, from wood to coal to oil to gas – has had one key characteristic in common, and that is increased energy density. Nuclear power represents just such an increase over generating electricity with coal or gas. Solar and wind power run in just the opposite direction, which is why they don’t scale up, and were we to try, as we see here, the cost in land would be massive.
A 2022 paper by Kelly Senecal of Convergent Science and other scientists compares greenhouse gas emissions from plug-in, battery-powered electric vehicles with emissions from hybrid vehicles, which combine internal combustion engines with small battery packs.
The conclusion: Pure plug-in battery-powered vehicles can create more emissions than hybrids and even more than some traditional internal combustion engine vehicles—whose fuel delivery, air delivery, and ignition systems have improved over the past 20 years, increasing overall vehicle gas mileage.
Here’s why. //
Research shows that electricity for battery-powered vehicles is coming from coal and natural gas rather than renewables. //
Seventy percent of the world’s electric batteries are produced in China, and 83% of China’s energy comes from fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The longer the range of the battery, the more carbon is used in the production process. Senecal has calculated that carbon emissions to produce a battery for a Nissan Leaf were equivalent to driving a gasoline-powered BMW 320d for 24,000 miles. For a larger Tesla Model S battery, carbon emissions used in production are equivalent to driving the BMW 320d for 60,000 miles. //
Those concerned about greenhouse gas emissions may also be worried about the negative effects on the environment of mining for battery components. Such mining, which itself creates emissions, disrupts the land in low-income countries, such as cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where abuses of mine workers and significant pollution from mining have been documented by Amnesty International.
Lithium is another crucial component of batteries, and China, Chile, Argentina, and Australia are home to potentially damaging lithium mines, according to the Institute for Energy Research.
Never forget that Ebenezer Scrooge was inspired by Thomas Malthus //
In other words, the underlying reason for the electricity emergency is the lack of natural gas, nuclear, and coal, which can provide reliable electricity in all weather conditions, unlike solar panels and wind turbines.
It’s true that solar panels and wind turbines can still operate in cold weather. There is often still sunlight and wind when it is cold. Snow can be brushed off of solar panels, and it is possible to de-ice frozen wind turbines.
But the sun often doesn’t shine during the hours people most need electricity and wind is not reliable enough to provide electricity during the winter. Right now, PJM is generating very little electricity from wind and has had to resort to burning oil, which is dirtier and less efficient than coal, and far worse than natural gas or nuclear.
Our Vision
Humanity already has the technology to implement a global energy revolution. We can now usher in a post-scarcity era while solving the most intractable problems that threaten life on Earth.
Our Mission
The Science Council for Global Initiatives, Inc. (SCGI) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to informing the public and policymakers about technologies and strategies that can lead to an energy-rich world. SCGI provides a forum for many of the world's prominent scientists, authors and activists to collaborate and share their knowledge regarding solutions to the world's energy, resource and environmental problems.
Never let a crisis go to waste. This may be one of the least original thoughts ever. It's been attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, Saul Alinsky, and Rahm Emanuel among others. As Emanuel explained, a crisis ``is an opportunity to do things you could not do before". Trite but true.
The Federal bureaucracy, specifically the NRC and the EPA, present an insurmountable hurdle to the promise of cheap, reliable, pollution-free, nearly CO2 free nuclear power. They are incapable of change. Congressional prodding with pieties such as the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act is slow walked by the NRC and then turned into even more onerous regulation. The ADVANCE Act if passed will have the same fate. Congress suborned by well endowed, wind/solar lobbies is not about to do anything that would make a real difference.
But this will change. Under the present deranged policy of promoting intermittent sources and discouraging dispatchable sources, it is only a matter of time before the nation suffers a string of debilitating brown outs and black outs. Congress will suddenly wake up to the fact that those lobbyists may have oodles of money, but they represent maybe 5% of Americans. The other 95% will be pissed.
The political beasts will be desperate to do something to keep feeding at the public trough. We must be in position to tell them what.
These projects had been cited as proof that….Bidenomics was working. Who could have guessed that high inflation and surging interest rates were not conducive to the completion of vast wind farms? //
The Denmark-based energy firm said its board of directors voted to ax its high-profile Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 twin projects in response to changing macroeconomic factors, including high inflation, supply chain bottlenecks and rising interest rates. //
Close The Fed | November 3, 2023 at 9:37 am
How the left copes with the cognitive dissonance of despising oil because of oil spills that injure animals yet push windmills that slice and dice birds and kill whales, and solar panels that fry birds, baffles me. //
George S | November 3, 2023 at 10:40 am
What governments dont understand about economics (well they do, but they pretend for the sake of votes from voter ignorance):
If government decrees that each homeowner shall hire two people to dig a hole in their yard in the morning and two people to fill in that hole in the afternoon it creates four full time jobs.
But what’s the catch? The homeowners don’t want holes dug in their yards so they are being forced to pay for services they don’t want. An economy can only grow — and be sustained — if there is a mutual exchange of wealth, where both parties benefit.
Where is the exchange of wealth in building wind farms? That’s why they fail.
But there are four reasons that most Americans prefer to buy cars with internal combustion engines: cost, convenience, climate, and China. //
the Biden administration’s push for EVs is to supposedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in order to produce supplies of batteries for EVs and other components, China is increasing its construction of coal-fired power plants. America has 225 coal-fired power plants (which the Biden administration is trying to put out of business), and China has 1,118 (half of all the coal-fired plants in the world). //
Biden says that EVs will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that regulations on tailpipe and power plant emissions reduce global warming. But this is a fantasy. Emissions will not be reduced until the biggest producers of so-called greenhouse gases—China, India, and Russia—reduce their emissions, which they show no signs of doing.
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