Guy
McPherson
17
November, 2012
As
Derrick Jensen points
out,
this “culture as a whole and most of its members are insane.” I
continue to be surprised at the number of people who believe in
infinite growth on a finite planet. I continue to be amazed at the
number of people who believe a politician cares about them, and that
their favorite politician will act in their best interests. I
continue to be surprised at the number of people who actually believe
in the political process. I continue to be amazed at the number of
people who support civilization, knowing it is killing us all. I’m
even more surprised, though, at the number of people who claim
ignorance about the costs and consequences of industrial
civilization.
As
pointed out by French author and Nobelist in literature André Gide:
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since
no one was listening, everything must be said again.” So, here I
go, saying it again.
Apparently
I’m a very slow learner. It’s a bad, sad time. I hate this
culture.
It’s
worse than all of the above, though. There are a significant number
of people who believe we can continue the omnicide, and that doing so
is a good idea. Consider, for example, proponents of the Third
Industrial Revolution.
The
five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure are
listed below. After pasting a brief description directly from
Wikipedia (in italics), I dismantle each of the pillars.
1.
Shifting to Renewable Energy: Renewable forms of energy — solar,
wind, hydro, geothermal, ocean waves, and biomass — make up the
first of the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution. While
these energies still account for a small percentage of the global
energy mix, they are growing rapidly as governments mandate targets
and benchmarks for their widespread introduction into the market and
their falling costs make them increasingly competitive.
“Renewable”
sources of energy are derivatives of oil. Oil is the master material.
The availability and price of oil control every other “resource.”
I’ve pointed out the absurdity and hopelessness of switching the
extra-oil sources here, here, here, here, here,
and here (in
chronological order).
2.
Buildings as Power Plants: New technological breakthroughs make it
possible, for the first time, to design and construct buildings that
create all of their own energy from locally available renewable
energy sources, allowing us to reconceptualize the future of
buildings as “power plants”. The commercial and economic
implications are vast and far reaching for the real estate industry
and, for that matter, Europe and the world. In 25 years from now,
millions of buildings — homes, offices, shopping malls, industrial
and technology parks — will be constructed to serve as both “power
plants” and habitats. These buildings will collect and generate
energy locally from the sun, wind, garbage, agricultural and forestry
waste, ocean waves and tides, hydro and geothermal — enough energy
to provide for their own power needs as well as surplus energy that
can be shared.
First,
see my comment above regarding “renewable” energy sources. They
are a well-promoted myth. Second, consider if you will, the reality
of our collective situation 25 years from now. If human beings
persist on this planet — and that’s a significant if, based on
the various
paths by which we are vigorously pursuing human extinction —
then it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that includes an
industrial economy at the scale of the globe. We can have an
industrial economy or we can have a living planet, but we cannot have
both over another quarter century.
3.
Deploying Hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building
and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies. To
maximize renewable energy and to minimize cost it will be necessary
to develop storage methods that facilitate the conversion of
intermittent supplies of these energy sources into reliable assets.
Batteries, differentiated water pumping, and other media, can provide
limited storage capacity. There is, however, one storage medium that
is widely available and can be relatively efficient. Hydrogen is the
universal medium that “stores” all forms of renewable energy to
assure that a stable and reliable supply is available for power
generation and, equally important, for transport.
As
a carrier of energy — but definitely not a source — hydrogen is
neither stable nor reliable. The notion of stability is dismissed
with a single word: Hindenburg. The hype about hydrogen is extreme
and extremely ridiculous.
Transporting
hydrogen is prohibitively expensive and requires distillates of crude
oil. In addition, automakers will not make hydrogen fuel-cell cars
until the hydrogen infrastructure is in place, and the infrastructure
will not appear until there are a sufficient number of fuel-cell cars
on the road.
4.
Using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every
continent into an energy sharing intergrid that acts just like the
Internet. The reconfiguration of the world’s power grid, along the
lines of the internet, allowing businesses and homeowners to produce
their own energy and share it with each other, is just now being
tested by power companies in Europe. The new smart grids or
intergrids will revolutionize the way electricity is produced and
delivered. Millions of existing and new buildings — homes, offices,
factories—will be converted or built to serve as “positive power
plants” that can capture local renewable energy — solar, wind,
geothermal, biomass, hydro, and ocean waves — to create electricity
to power the buildings, while sharing the surplus power with others
across smart intergrids, just like we now produce our own information
and share it with each other across the Internet.
Never
mind the endless hopium associated with producing “renewable”
energy for more than seven billion people. Never mind the war-based
industrial economy of the world’s sole remaining superpower. If
we’re counting on technology currently under testing in Europe,
we’re also assuming Europe will exist as a political entity for a
long time. We’re also assuming Europeans will continue to play nice
with each other as well as people in other countries. The very idea
of surplus power is being revealed as a horrifically bad joke as the
Middle East and northern Africa come under daily attack from several
more-industrialized nations.
5.
Transitioning the transport fleet to electric, plug in and fuel cell
vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart continental
interactive power grid. The electricity we produce in our buildings
from renewable energy will also be used to power electric plug-in
cars or to create hydrogen to power fuel cell vehicles. The electric
plug in vehicles, in turn, will also serve as portable power plants
that can sell electricity back to the main grid.
Car
culture is a huge source of many of our worst problems. Cheering for
the never-ending continuation of car culture is a death sentence for
the living planet. In addition, as indicated above, transporting
hydrogen is unsafe, expensive, and dependent upon distillates of
crude oil. And then there’s that chicken-and-egg issue associated
with construction of infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel-cell
cars.
When
these five pillars come together, they make up an indivisible
technological platform — an emergent system whose properties and
functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In
other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic
paradigm that can transform the world.
When
these five pillars of sand come together, they make up an
undistinguished pile of dysfunctional hopium — a pile of sand whose
properties and functions are qualitatively and quantitatively
irrelevant to the industrial economy. In other words, the synergies
between the meaningless pillars create a new pile of false hope for
those who wish to continue destroying the living world. Fortunately,
the hopium
is running out.
Contrary
to conventional wisdom among civilized humans, we don’t need an
industrial economy to survive. In fact, all evidence indicates the
opposite is true, yet we keep cheering for this culture of death,
cheering for continued destruction of all we need for our survival.
Insanity has won, proving Ralph Waldo Emerson correct: “The end of
the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
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