I was heartbroken when the brexit referendum result came in and I still think that it is insane to leave the EU, but that is now (apparently) inevitable and we'll just have to put up with it.
There are a couple of things that I think are worth saying about the whole debacle that are not the usual "we're going to be poorer", "we're condoning racism" type of things. In the grand scheme of history I suspect that brexit will be seen as a bizarre sideshow to the slow-motion, multi-vehicle car crash that is currently unfolding in Europe and the wider world.
Climate change is rapidly altering large tracts of farmland in Africa, the middle East and Europe. The effects of this are I suspect going to be very dramatic in the near future, probably including famine and/or crop failures in large areas leading to physical and economic hardship on a relentlessly increasing scale. This is likely to lead to the abandonment of already marginal farmland and migration of large numbers of people. People will move Northward in increasing numbers by crossing the Mediterranean Sea and placing further pressure on Southern European states such as Greece, Italy and Spain which will also be suffering from changes to their climates. I find it difficult to imagine the effect that this will have on the EU, but I suspect that at some point it will result in dilution or abandonment of the free-movement of people and further tightening of borders. There may also come a time when the richer Northern states decide that they are better off without the poorer Southern states. This is likely to prove very difficult for the continued coherence of the EU as it currently stands. I have no idea of what the implications of this will be for the U.K. or Wales.
Populist and increasingly right-wing governments are also popping up in increasing numbers and are unashamed or actively proud of destroying international, collaborative endeavours whether they be arms treaties, emissions targets or trading agreements. This does genuinely seem to be a global phenomenon with multiple European states, the U.K., the U.S., India, Australia, Russia and various other states wandering down this path. Quite where this ends is difficult to imagine, but it is not a large leap of the imagination to see wars and isolationism. Brexit seems to be a symptom of this affliction and also provides fuel to the fires of other similar isolationist projects in Europe and around the world, but is I suspect pretty much irrelevant for the vast majority of people beyond the U.K.'s shores.
Tuesday 31 December 2019
Rebellion, extinction, energy and making a difference (or not)
I have a lot of time for the ideas behind the XR movement (I am basically a bit of a lefty, eco-nut), but I also have some significant problems with the organisation and its likely effectiveness. Because I am good at lists:
Whilst 1) and 2) are arguably minor problems that it might be possible to ignore or get around in one way or another, for me 3) is a showstopper.
We really need to take as much action as possible now, and I suspect that XR is not currently having a practical or significant effect on CO2 or CH4 emissions reduction. I understand that XR sees political reform as fundamental to setting up a cleaner, greener, fairer world, and I agree that this would be a fantastic thing to achieve. I just don't see it happening anywhere near fast enough, and I also don't think it will necessarily immediately lead to reductions in CO2, CH4 and other forms of climate-changing pollution.
It might be worth looking back at what has actually helped to reduce the growth in CO2 emissions in recent years. Anyone that has been watching the changes in the UK electricity grid (see https://gridwatch.co.uk/ for live data) will have noticed that wind power has become a major contributor and to a lesser extent solar PV has also helped to push up the renewable energy share. There is another crucial low carbon contributor to UK electricity generation that provides a consistent and reliable supply: nuclear. In my opinion we at least need to maintain the nuclear generation capacity that we have if we want to keep the lights on whilst switching from fossil-fuels to renewables. Attaining a position where we have a near-zero-carbon grid with some significant "always-available" power sources is orders of magnitude easier than with only intermittent sources such as wind and solar: look up the research papers that have studied this problem, they are really interesting (eg. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=100%25+renewable+grid&btnG=).
My take on this (with a few rough figures): the contribution of wind power and solar PV is fairly quickly increasing, and will continue to do so for a while as it seems to be a good way for rich people to make more money. Nuclear currently provides around 20% of our power (a bit more if you include the significant amount that we import from France which has mainly nuclear power generation). Once the wind/solar PV component increases by another factor of 2 or so the benefit in reduced CO2 emissions will start to decrease unless we start to install large amounts of energy storage: probably battery storage initially. This is already happening and I expect that it will continue to, although it's not clear to me where this will end up: massive centralised battery/super-capacitor storage, or distributed in-home/factory storage, or liquified air storage, or something I don't know about. I guess some sort of mixture will come about... it's going to be interesting to see.
It's worth remembering that the wind and solar capacity that has thus far been installed has been commissioned and paid for within our current (albeit very broken) political and economic framework, and if we are to limit the looming climate catastrophe then I don't think that we have time to change "the system" before taking action. We need to continue to push the broken, capitalist, plutocratic jalopy along the road towards the recycling centre. All of the really boring, play-along strategies like signing up for so-called green energy suppliers, buying expensive electric vehicles, insulating our houses and installing expensive heat-pump heating systems are the best weapons that those of us that can afford it have available to us. We have no real choices that will make a bigger difference on a reasonable timescale.
Those expensive electric vehicles will form the basis of a secondhand market that will allow less well-off people to move away from petrol/diesel; increasing the volume of heat-pump sales will help to make the industry more competitive and hopefully wake the government up to the potential greenwash that they can garner from backing such technologies. Much as it irks me to say it, it seems to me that offering political and economic capital is the most effective whip that we have for forcing government action on climate change.
- Personally I really struggle with demonstrations as a mode of engagement. I understand that they are very effective at raising awareness of issues and getting media attention, and for that I am very grateful to the people that go out and demonstrate. It's just that personally I don't really feel able to walk around shouting into the void or the face of a policeman.
- Actions that seriously impact on people's lives can in the short term play an awareness-raising role and garner support from a small segment of the population, but also rapidly attract negative publicity and backlash from the mainstream, yet-to-engage populus.
- A rebellion that will be effective at rapidly stopping CO2 and methane (CH4) emissions (my current top priorities) will have to be far more dramatic than stopping some traffic in London and holding people's assemblies. I genuinely think that anything short of a full-on coup that removes all politicians and replaces them with a dictatorship of scientists and engineers is not going to make a faster and more effective change than the current rather pathetic progress. I suspect that this is not what most XR foot-soldiers would consider to be a positive outcome either.
Whilst 1) and 2) are arguably minor problems that it might be possible to ignore or get around in one way or another, for me 3) is a showstopper.
We really need to take as much action as possible now, and I suspect that XR is not currently having a practical or significant effect on CO2 or CH4 emissions reduction. I understand that XR sees political reform as fundamental to setting up a cleaner, greener, fairer world, and I agree that this would be a fantastic thing to achieve. I just don't see it happening anywhere near fast enough, and I also don't think it will necessarily immediately lead to reductions in CO2, CH4 and other forms of climate-changing pollution.
It might be worth looking back at what has actually helped to reduce the growth in CO2 emissions in recent years. Anyone that has been watching the changes in the UK electricity grid (see https://gridwatch.co.uk/ for live data) will have noticed that wind power has become a major contributor and to a lesser extent solar PV has also helped to push up the renewable energy share. There is another crucial low carbon contributor to UK electricity generation that provides a consistent and reliable supply: nuclear. In my opinion we at least need to maintain the nuclear generation capacity that we have if we want to keep the lights on whilst switching from fossil-fuels to renewables. Attaining a position where we have a near-zero-carbon grid with some significant "always-available" power sources is orders of magnitude easier than with only intermittent sources such as wind and solar: look up the research papers that have studied this problem, they are really interesting (eg. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=100%25+renewable+grid&btnG=).
My take on this (with a few rough figures): the contribution of wind power and solar PV is fairly quickly increasing, and will continue to do so for a while as it seems to be a good way for rich people to make more money. Nuclear currently provides around 20% of our power (a bit more if you include the significant amount that we import from France which has mainly nuclear power generation). Once the wind/solar PV component increases by another factor of 2 or so the benefit in reduced CO2 emissions will start to decrease unless we start to install large amounts of energy storage: probably battery storage initially. This is already happening and I expect that it will continue to, although it's not clear to me where this will end up: massive centralised battery/super-capacitor storage, or distributed in-home/factory storage, or liquified air storage, or something I don't know about. I guess some sort of mixture will come about... it's going to be interesting to see.
It's worth remembering that the wind and solar capacity that has thus far been installed has been commissioned and paid for within our current (albeit very broken) political and economic framework, and if we are to limit the looming climate catastrophe then I don't think that we have time to change "the system" before taking action. We need to continue to push the broken, capitalist, plutocratic jalopy along the road towards the recycling centre. All of the really boring, play-along strategies like signing up for so-called green energy suppliers, buying expensive electric vehicles, insulating our houses and installing expensive heat-pump heating systems are the best weapons that those of us that can afford it have available to us. We have no real choices that will make a bigger difference on a reasonable timescale.
Those expensive electric vehicles will form the basis of a secondhand market that will allow less well-off people to move away from petrol/diesel; increasing the volume of heat-pump sales will help to make the industry more competitive and hopefully wake the government up to the potential greenwash that they can garner from backing such technologies. Much as it irks me to say it, it seems to me that offering political and economic capital is the most effective whip that we have for forcing government action on climate change.
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