Neo-Malthusian Prophets of Doom
The discourse of imminent ecological disasters is leading us down the path of real economic disasters
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“Everyone agrees that the climate is changing, but there are violently diverging opinions about the causes of change, about the consequences of change, and about possible remedies.”
― Freeman Dyson, Global Warming Hysteria
In light of COP28, the world has its attention on climate change and by extension on its proponents. Sure, the climate is changing and we ought to transition to cleaner energy sources. We ought to minimize the negative human impact on nature and we ought to raise awareness, indeed. But at what point does raising awareness by predicting the imminent doom become counterproductive?
The present advocates of climate change are no different from prophets of doom of previous generations. The concern on the Earth’s finite resources originates in Robert Malthus’ writings who in his 1798 work An Essay on the Principle of Population stated that ‘’The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.’’ Since then, many warnings were issued, from the imminent end of coal and oil to various minerals. Needless to say that these were all wrong, since the prediction of imminent disasters continues to be pushed into the future. This record of failure may explain why the prophets of doom have to be increasingly dramatic to hold public attention. The radicalization over climate change has split the discourse into two camps only: proponents of a radical change and proponents of business as usual. There is little nuanced and balanced takes anymore and if you dare to hold such a view you are under attack from both sides. As a consequence, the concrete steps in the journey of decarbonization are obfuscated. It is not clear how this will be done, beyond the mantra of building more solar and wind energy generation. There is too much effort going into policies and propaganda, when it should be going into engineering.
Engineering is the only key that will allow us to truly decarbonize. One often neglected engineering metric is Energy Return on Investment (EROI). In terms of numbers it is the energy produced by a system divided by the energy used to build such system. If a wind turbine has an EROI of 1, it means that the energy it produces over its lifetime covers only the energy used to build it. There is no surplus energy. If you do this at scale, you are actually wasting energy and are on a path of deindustrialization. A more tangible example is given by the photovoltaic panels installed in Spain between 2006 and 2009. Their EROI over 25 years is 2.45, much lower than the EROI of 5-10, needed for a thriving society. Modern solar panels and wind turbines have a better EROI (Figure 1), but due to the intermittency of their energy generation, they need batteries which lower the EROI. Hydro offers a good EROI, but is geographically constrained. Nuclear is a sensible solution, but also a massive project which cannot be easily deployed.
Another useful engineering metric is energy density, or how much energy can be extracted per unit of volume (Figure 2). Renewables simply cannot compete. The modern world is built by fossil fuels precisely because of their high energy density, easy storage and versatility. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, it is difficult to imagine a world were fossil fuels are not used. Renewable technologies are simply not mature enough yet to completely displace fossil fuels.
If the renewables cannot displace fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, where are we going with all of this talk of decarbonization and imminent doom if we don’t achieve it? Probably nowhere good. The danger of rushing and deploying immature technologies on such a large scale can destroy economies. Consider the case of Germany and their counterproductive falling back on coal and the subsequent shrinking of their economy. Without a stable and low-cost energy generation, we will be on the path of deindustrialization.
Realistically, you can expect an increasing share of renewables and nuclear energy, but fossil fuels are here to remain for a while. Ideally, a more aggressive funding of renewables R&D happens with a focus on increasing the efficiency of solar panels and the energy the batteries can store. Then, perhaps renewables can play a leading role as decentralized energy sources, adding to the resiliency of energy generation. Anything else is but a pipedream.
That’s all for now. Until next time 🔋!
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