If you have followed my Captain Obvious blogs over the last few years, you are well aware of my warnings about carbon capture and other sustainability mirages, which are often put forward as solutions to our planet’s energy problems. One more just bit the dust, and it wasn’t due to Trump’s presidency … it was due to the reality of things:
Climeworks’ capture fails to cover its own emissions – Heimildin
The story keeps repeating itself, and if you haven’t watched Planet of the Humans, you are uninformed and are being lulled into a delusional hope that technologies like EVs, solar, wind, and even nuclear are going to save the day. These are not bad ideas, but they are insufficient to sustain our future world.
We must cut consumption of not only energy but also stop raping the planet of non-renewable natural resources. The pace of this carnage is completely out of control today, and the first victim will be our oceans and the fish they produce. Rampant overfishing is collapsing fish stocks. It seems we do not learn anything from history.
But, unlike in the whaling industry, a new natural resource (the discovery of oil) will not save the day. We keep searching for something shiny and new to compensate for our guilt and shame. Recycling makes us feel better about consumption … but it doesn’t work. EVs make us think we are doing our part, but mining the rare-earth materials for their batteries makes them the blood diamonds of the energy business.
By analogy, I have been struck by how AA works to help people with addiction to alcohol. It is not always successful, but there is something to learn from why it works when it works to help people. There are two huge lessons I learned from a detailed study of the Twelve Steps and The Big Book that they use to share stories of challenges and success:
- You must get past your excuses and face yourself and all the garbage that your heart and mind have collected to justify your bad behaviors. You can’t just admit you need help … you must “bottom out” in your belief you can do this alone.
- This can’t just be an intellectual exercise. You must commit to a continuing dialogue of interaction with another person who has gone through these challenges and work weekly on the progress toward sobriety.
The pattern I am seeing in all of life today is our tendency and temptation to use easy buttons and pills to take away our responsibilities. The easy buttons are to elect people who we think will make our life better without any sacrifices or commitments on our part. Failing that, we want a pill to take away personal accountabilities and responsibilities.
It is time we admit we are in real trouble as energy addicts and commit to working towards energy and societal sobriety together.
Begin your journey by watching Planet of the Humans, followed by the newly released and widely acclaimed documentary, David Attenborough’s Ocean. At 99, it may be his last production attempting to awaken the world to the reality of man’s impact on the planet. I would call it his best.