Have you heard the news? GM and Ford are producing electric versions of their Hummer and F150 trucks! Hallelujah! The world will be saved from climate disaster!
What? Not saved?
As hard as it will be for many of us to hear, converting everything to electric is not going to turn climate change around. And putting in massive solar and wind farms is not going to turn the tide either. The growing need for energy across the world and the associated construction of new coal, oil and gas power plants will undoubtedly more than compensate for any gains we make with alternative energy sources and electric vehicle conversions.
Solar and wind energy can only be supplemental, as they are intermittent sources of energy. There is no solar energy at night and it is diminished in cloudy weather. The wind is also not constant. We won’t even mention the massive environmental effect of the mining of resources necessary to construct all of the electric motors and batteries.
Ironically, our best bet for dramatically reducing carbon-based energy is nuclear energy, whether based on current fission technology or hoped-for future fusion reactors. But sadly, we hastily abandoned much of our nuclear research and construction efforts in our panic over nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima. Rather than use those calamities (only one of which actually resulted in any deaths at all!) to refine and perfect nuclear energy, we made the short-sighted decision to flee from it.
What about reducing our energy usage? Let’s all promise to drive less, buy smaller vehicles instead of the ever more monstrous SUVs and trucks, and travel less. Let’s build really good public transportation so people will give up their individual vehicles. Let’s encourage local tourism and zoom business calls so people won’t have to use carbon-spewing jets. Let’s buy fewer things and live simply so that others may simply live!
Yeah, right. Aint gonna happen.
There will be no climate change epiphany, no sudden realization that we must all work together to solve this problem, no holding hands at the climate change summit and promising to radically change our way of life, no generous gestures by the wealthy nations to subsidize alternative energies in the developing world, no massive unified effort to seek a solution.
All our paltry efforts to nibble around the edges of the problem will have some effect, but not nearly enough. As the myriad impacts of climate change arise and proliferate, the resources and wealth we have available to attack the root of the problem will be siphoned off in a rearguard effort to stem the literal and figurative tide of disasters.
The longer-term future will be a brave new world of mitigating the more catastrophic effects and adapting to the new climate. How much political and economic instability, how much population displacement, how many military confrontations, how many deaths will occur is anyone’s guess.
After two years of COVID pandemic and now staring down the barrel of a climate change future, it is challenging to be an optimist. The drumbeat of entropy, that inevitable path towards disorder, seems to be more rapid and piercing than ever. Are we a doomed people?
But as 2022 dawns, I still have faith in the human race. We are a resilient species with an uncanny ability to persevere and survive. Against all odds, we have created a civilization that for all its faults has slowly but surely forged a remarkably peaceful and happy world. I will bet on us finding a path through this tangled web of climate change. It will not be easy, and there will be dark days ahead, but we shall overcome.
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