Child labor. Rare metals are needed. Poor battery technology. Baseload power requirements that renewables can’t meet. End-of-life recycling. Effects on pollinators. Dependence on China. The arguments against wind and solar go on and on. To which I can only say… Really?
The planet is burning up. Millions already suffer from climate change, and millions — even billions more — will do so as well. We have an obvious solution to emissions that will make people’s lives better. And all you have to say is, “Nyet”?
Consider the Arguments
Renewable energy is produced without direct emissions. In today’s world, emissions are required to build these systems because we have to burn fossil fuels while mining the materials, manufacturing the parts, and assembling them. That’s obvious. It is also obvious that as electric vehicles and tools become ubiquitous and we use renewable electricity to operate them, these indirect emissions will be reduced. But we have to get from here to there.
The use of child labor to build solar cells is an abomination. So is the use of child labor to make shoes, bricks, fireworks, and carpets, which are some of the most common industries where child labor is used. The problem is child labor, not the product.
There are obvious technical limitations to solar and wind energy because we need energy 24/7, but the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. We certainly must develop ways to store the energy that is generated with renewables to achieve an excellent long-term solution. But those methods of storage are being developed. (See: Graphene and Batteries and Debunking the Arguments Against Solar and Beyond Renewables — The Battery that Could Power Everything.) The deployment of solar and wind projects today pushes the technology along and creates incentives to develop it further tomorrow.
End-of-life recycling is always an issue with any development, be it automobiles, buildings, iPhones, computers, or forks and spoons. Yet we do not stop producing or buying such items because we haven’t solved that problem.
Wildlife, particularly birds and pollinators, are affected by wind turbines and solar arrays respectively. One study in Canada, however, showed that while wind turbines will eventually kill about 233,000 birds a year, windows in Canada kill about 25 million birds per year. No one is up in arms about windows.
Worse, climate change itself will lead to the extinction of 2/3 of all species of North American birds. Read that carefully. Not just 2/3 of the birds, but 2/3 of the species that will never be heard from again. That is, 100% of the birds of 2/3 of all species will die due to climate change. Wind turbines will kill some birds, but they won’t make species go extinct; in fact, they can help reverse climate change and preserve all bird species.
All of these objections are real issues, and all of them need to be addressed. But they are raised as objections to renewable projects, with the result of delaying or killing the projects. That leads me to one big outstanding question…
What is the real issue?
These objections are usually followed with advocacy for a related but low-impact issue — for example, degrowth, veganism, or economic justice. It’s not that these are not important issues, they are. But they are not realistic solutions for climate change. Hence, we take our eye off the ball, and well-meaning folks who advocate these issues as climate change solutions draw attention away from the actual solutions that will work. In essence, advocates of these other issues are hijacking the climate debate for their own purposes, thereby creating the biggest threat to real climate action — the diversion of energy and attention to the wrong thing.
Here’s the reality: If we do not solve climate change, none of these other issues are going to matter. The planet will become uninhabitable. Desperate people will migrate in an attempt to survive. Global population will shrink in the most horrific way. Many species will go extinct. Children will labor to save their lives in all-new ways, making today’s child labor issues look tame. No one will care about end-of-life recycling because we won’t outlive the technology.
Sometimes these objections are followed by absolute silence — no proposal, no ideas. There is no alternative agenda, just a desire to stop progress for whatever reason. Sometimes it is NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) concerns. Sometimes it is climate denial. Sometimes it is nothing more than smug righteousness. In these cases, we are dealing with opponents to solutions, not alternative solutions or priorities. Every movement has opponents, and climate is no exception. The mistake we may make, however, is to assume that the silence indicates a friendly position. Such an assumption leads us to divert attention again, which we cannot afford to do.
Let’s get focused
Greenhouse gases (GHG), especially carbon, are the problem. We need to stop emitting them, and the technology to do that is at hand. It is in wind and solar. If we do not deploy that technology and continue to use fossil fuels, the catastrophe will continue to unfold. Earth will see a growth in uninhabitable areas. Desperate people will migrate, while non-desperate people will try to keep them away. It doesn’t have to be this way.
So long as the climate movement continues to let itself fracture into these competing priorities, we undermine ourselves. Our energy goes off in disparate directions, and it is harder and harder to accomplish what we must. We don’t have time to persuade everyone to change their lifestyles. We don’t have time for every aspect of the green energy industry to be perfect and pure. We don’t have time to waste on low-impact solutions like veganism, which most people won’t adhere to anyway.
We need to put our time and energy into the only viable path: electrify everything and power it with renewable energy. It is the least disruptive path and it can be adopted by everyone. Let’s stay on focus and fix this.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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