However, I'm also very, very scared about what we've done to this planet and consequently what we're doing to its poor, mostly black inhabitants, none of whom have done anything to bring the eco-apocalypse down on our heads.
The problem is that the hard left has always seen industrialism as the solution to dragging the proletariat out of its suffering. Being green, to them, equates to being a smug, selfish and hypocritical bourgeois git. And you know, they're right - there are lots of Tory landowners taking long-haul flights to paradise islands, or weekend breaks, while telling the rest of us to recycle.
BUT - it's the poor who'll suffer first. Anyway, back to Ken MacLeod - here's his solution, expressed in his admiration for a techno-fix approach proposed by a learned professor. It's very appealing, and is also a fantasy of the climate change-denying right. The problem, of course, is that it's never this simple, consumption just is damaging, and the benefits won't extend to the poor.
For me, a highlight of a very engaging and informative weekend was a talk by Prof Colin McInnes, DSc FRAes FInstP FRSE FREng, titled 'Random Thoughts of a Techno-Utopist Running Dog'. The usual conception of sustainability, Prof McInnes argued, was a dangerous idea. Technological stagnation only means slower resource depletion. We need continuous technological progress to make new resources available. The idea that we should use less energy is outrageously inhumane and regressive. Most of humanity gets its energy from burning wood and dung. We need a vast increase in energy production. That means nuclear power, including new kinds of nuclear plant such as the Thorium Energy Amplifier. Nuclear waste is just inadequately burned nuclear fuel. We need to find ways of burning it all. Most reycling schemes are feel-good rather than do-good, condemning us to pre-industrial, manual rooting about in rubbish. We need plasma torches and mass spectrometers to really recover all the useful stuff in our waste. 'Humanity is the singularity. We are self-replicating smart matter.' To campaign against cheap flights to Prague while jetting across the world for eco-holidays in the Galapagos is naked class warfare. With synthetic genomics we can have carbon-neutral aviation even cheaper than today's travel.
2 comments:
As a fully signed-up (even if not practising) engineer, I get to read lots about how we can use science and technology to address global warming.
I do agree that technology has to play a key part in moving us to a low-carbon economy and it is essential that we continue to advance our scientific understanding to help us to achieve this. This can't be, however, at the expense of ever-increasing energy utilisation.
Technology provides one of the best ways to increase efficiency and hence reduce energy utilisation available to us, but we really do have to realise that we are going to have to cut back.
Finally, contrary to many engineers, I'm not in favour of opening the gates to nuclear. Fission is a highly inefficient means of producing energy and doesn't really look likely to change its ways in the near future. We need to back renewables and carbon capture technology and go hell-for-leather after those.
I could, as you know, go on a bit...maybe I'll just try to get round to doing my own posting about it at some point.
I never knew you were an engineer. You're so right though - using less energy is definitely the key.
Then we should move to solar, wave/tidal and offshore wind, with a role for onshore. Geothermal where possible too: Scandinavia and the Rift Valley countries.
My favourite energy sources:
Solar concentrators
The Sea Snake wave power generator
Geothermal
Micro-generation (e.g. the railway station floor which uses footfall, and the Danish railway station heated by crematorium exhaust)
Space-based solar, using microwave transmission.
I didn't know nuclear wasn't brilliantly efficient. What about the thorium ones? I gather that fusion power has been twenty years away for 60 years. Can't wait for cold fusion (ho ho ho).
Post a Comment