Linearity and reductionism:
Linearity
meaning the effect of cause is proportional to that cause, reductionism
meaning you can take a part of a process, fiddle with it, and put it
back, sort of speaking, without the other components and aspects of the
process being affected that much or at all. Both turn out to be dogmas
of some distant past. You can't look at a nuclear power plant without
thinking about environment as well as power output for industry - hence
livelihoods of people. Abolition of environmentally unfriendly industry
cuts deep into social security, etc. As for linearity, check the
butterfly effect as an example of how a small change can result into
large effects.
And: humans are preconditioned to
being relative oriented - I look at my peers to check my personal
success and achievements, not at everybody of my age around the world,
which would be more absolute - and - and this is the main culprit - we
think short lived: "this diaper needs to be replaced" has priority to
"it will be spending years on some municipal waste dump decomposing" or "it will be
incinerated to release god-knows-what-rubbish that needs to be extracted
from the outlet of the incinerator".
So:
Fact
A:
We need more energy, every year. Relative discoupling energy consumption with regard to growth of economy does not
help (meaning the energy required per unit of growth gets smaller). When gasoline becomes cheaper, (more) people drive more.
Fact
B:
Energy availability is a problem, as we don't know anything about
the availability of some sources orhave trouble managing the side-effects of others.
Nuclear (fission) has posed severe
dilemmas - "how can we manage extremely dangerous waste that will
outlive us and tens to hundreds of generations past us" (every once in a
while some nuclear missile from the former USSR turns (or turned) out
missing, hence if we can't guarantee state stability, how can we manage
hazards?) as well as "even uranium will run out, some day..." and "what
about the inherent monopolies, caused by the sheer mass of investment
required" -
Nuclear (fusion) seems to be working properly in the
sun, because it has a very powerful engine, sun's gravity, but no commercial
application has popped up yet, here on earth.
Windpower has the
drawbacks under the form of requirement of rare earth metals, space
required between windmills and the need for wind.
Sunpower requires rare earth metals and Sun (hence only daytime production).
Hydro power has its drawbacks under the form of areas being flooded and effects on fish and transport over water.
And
last but not least the carbon-based fuels, coal and so on have their
own set of problems, apart from their probable dropping availability (there is a lot unknown about the reserves of oil. Apart from the fact that oil extraction from shale and tar sands is hopelessly polluting, oil is managed by commercial enterprises, which want us to use as much oil as long as possible, so they won't tell us the oil is running out, because we would revert to other technologies, such as electric cars; Apart from the fact that shareholders would leave the companies managing small oil reserves...)
Fact
C: economy turns out to be somewhat of a problem as well: in Belgium,
as long as nuclear power can be exploited the way it is, no investor
will invest in alternative energy as long as the return isn't sure. so
the fact that money invested requires money returned keeps us in the
nuclear power modus and puts off investment - and hence research as
well. Why bother researching some path towards cleaner energy as long as
nuclear energy is cheap and abundant?(Update on 1/9/12: reactors turn out to have construction errors,
ruptures, which could cause them to be should down all of a sudden... But even if it turns out to be the hayday of nuclear in Belgium, we still have the idea that nowadays, investment is controlled by money, and money wants to make more money, not save the world...)
Example: if you
have a forest, you own, you'd better cut it down, sell the wood and
make the money make money on financial markets. But then again, the
other functions of the forest, such as storing carbon or keeping up
biodiversity, are depleted. These functions need to be performed by new
technologies, requiring more energy - few man made processes are as
efficient as natures.
Fact D:
externalization. Nothing illustrates this as good as the following:
ordinary banks, having savings and loans of ordinary people, take risks.
As long as everything goes well, money is made, but when these risks
turn out to be bubbles, the government has to bail out the banks, as
they can't go bankrupt, because all savings of people would vanish.
People like you and me pay taxes to pay for the interests paid on the
money the government borrowed to bail out the banks. That's
externalization: ordinary people end up paying the damages. Same goes
for the environment, depletion of resources, ...
So,
foregone conclusion, if you take Fact D and Fact A: we require more
energy for all that has been externalized.
Fact B states that energy
will likely not be as available, although we need more of it. Investments will
only be made if enough profit can be made from it.
So, we have two paths: either there isn't
enough of the required energy, which will leave only energy for the
richer among us, or there is, but then it still will be a lot more
expensive than nowadays energy due to more energy required and no new available source.
Intermezzo: what if some new method, eg nuclear fusion, already existed, but was kept in the dark because of profit reasons: first deplete oil and uranium, then coal, and then make money from this new source. Well, how fucked up would that be?
I think we're heading for problems.
