The Global Crisis and Role of So-Called Renewable Energies in Solving It

Aspects and Causes of the Crisis

The climate crisis is only one aspect of the global crisis. Yet, generally speaking, Western governments, media, politicians, NGOs, and publicists have been trying to make us believe that it is the only dangerous and the only global crisis. It appears that for them all other crises in the world are only partial or regional problems of secondary importance. But this is a patently reductionist and superficial view of the present global crisis. Consequently, also the policies that are being pursued for solving the climate crisis are wrong.
    The aforementioned agents of worldwide climate politics plus the UN pressurized nearly all states of the world to sign up to the Paris accord (2015). But no similar global effort is being made to address, let alone solve, the global ecology crisis, the various, seemingly unending civil wars and uprisings in the world, the terrorist attacks of various kinds, increase in crime rates almost everywhere, the unemployment-and-poverty problem in all poor and "developing" countries, and the massive refugee-migrant crises in many parts of the world – in short, the globally growing failed and failing states crisis. To my mind, this is the right description of the critical state of the world today. The climate crisis is only one part of it, and as a crisis, it is of recent origin. It is, of course, also a major, but not a basic (i.e. deeper), cause of the global crisis.
    To justify why I do not consider the climate crisis to be a basic cause of the global crisis, I would like to refer to the present situation in Mexico and Venezuela. They are very advanced candidates for the title "failed state". In Mexico, in short, the main cause of this situation is widespread drug-related crimes, in Venezuela it is the totally wrong economic policy of successive governments of a petro-socialist state. Or take for instance the two cases of South Sudan and Central African Republic. People there are not suffering from any climate-change-related drought or flooding.

Dubious Politics of Climate Politicians

Let us first examine the understanding that climate change is at present the greatest danger to mankind and that, therefore, it should be addressed as the most important task of governments.
    Most government leaders and party politicians admit that climate change is a big danger, but they are not prepared to make an all-out effort to avert or mitigate it. Their topmost policy-priority is continuous economic growth. For stabilizing global warming below two degrees Celsius in the near future, they think it would suffice if the world economy could gradually be made to run on an energy mix of various sources, including some so-called renewables, and that, according to IPCC chief economist Edenhofer,^* would not cost the world more than 0.06 percent growth.
    But radical climate NGOs and activist groups maintain that the economies of highly industrialized countries such as Germany could run 100% on the basis of "renewable energies". And they say that a rapid replacement of fossil-carbon and nuclear energy industries through renewable energy industries would create many new jobs, thus becoming the main pillar of green growth. They have more or less concrete ideas for the transition, even very detailed action plans for a quick transition to 100% "renewables".
    I can here take just one example, only Bill McKibben's action plan entitled A World at War.¹ In it he calls for a "war" effort – although "war" is here only a metaphor – as huge as the American military and industrial mobilization for World War II. In naming his enemy, however, McKibben makes the initial big error in analysis. He thinks it is climate change. He imagines this enemy is committing a huge aggression against us. Once he calls it an "enemy as powerful and inexorable as the laws of physics."
    Isn't it absurd? Any person with some common sense knows that climate change is only the result of global warming. But even global warming cannot be the "enemy". We know today that it is man-made. For a moment McKibben also recognized his error. He himself mentions in a half-sentence "our insatiable desires as consumers," but he does not spell it out as the ultimate cause of the malady. 
    Anyway, he demanded of the then US government (and its future successors) that it should initiate and organize a huge industrial mobilization to get "a hell of a lot of factories" built in order to turn out "thousands of acres of solar panels, wind turbines the length of football fields, and millions and millions of electric cars and buses." David Roberts²  made it vivid:

"Well, have a look at Solar City’s gigafactory, … . It will be the biggest solar manufacturing facility … covering 27 acres, capable of cranking out 10,000 solar panels a day – a gigawatt’s worth in a year. At the height of its transition to WWS [wind, water, solar], the US would have to build around 30 gigafactories a year devoted to solar panels, and another 15 a year for wind turbines. That’s 45 of the biggest factories ever built, every year. That is [even for an American] a mind-boggling pace of building, … ."

Imagine now the huge amount of shit this gigantic effort would simultaneously produce: the environmental pollution, resource depletion, and waste that has to be dumped somewhere.
    We may allow McKibben his war metaphor in the name of poetic license. But if a general makes a wrong analysis of the war situation or, said in the jargon of applied medical science, if the diagnosis is wrong, the strategy or the prescribed medicine may do more harm than good. McKibben's prescription, the huge dose of the wrong medicine – i.e. a huge mobilization for the "Third World War" that climate change, he imagines, is waging against us – is actually uncalled-for. There can be a much lighter and more effective medicine to cure the severe illness based on his more correct diagnosis, namely his half-sentence "our insatiable desires as consumers".
    Any adherent of the old left (old socialism) of any kind would speak of the capitalists' insatiable desire for profit and capital accumulation as the main cause of our troubles. She would call upon us to wage class struggle. But McKibben and climate activists like him are not old-leftists. They are not willing to fight against capitalism, but only against climate change. And this he wants to do, like all past and present old-leftists, by technological means. Blinded by technological optimism, such people believe that a 100% transition to "renewable" energies is possible. They say we need more technology, not less; they assert we could overcome all crises and problems of mankind by means of technology. I already heard in 1984 that the intermittency-and-storage problem of renewable energies can be easily solved, namely by means of batteries and liquid hydrogen.

Critique of technological solutions

Such activists are suffering from some illusions. They appear not to know the most inexorable of all the laws of physics, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics (AKA the Entropy Law that also applies to matter). In reality, so-called renewable energies are neither renewable nor clean. One makes this mistake due to a logical error that must be rectified. We have to differentiate between sources of energy and equipments needed to convert them into electricity and heat. Sunshine, wind, and flowing water are sources that will still be there after Homo sapiens has disappeared from the surface of the earth and will still supply useful energies to the next hominid species– e.g. as driver of sailing boats and as supplier of warmth. So they indeed are renewable and also clean. But the equipments needed to generate electricity from these sources are made of materials that are nonrenewable. And the energy used to produce these material things comes till today for the most part from fossil-carbon and nuclear fuels, both of which are nonrenewable and dirty. So how can solar, wind and hydro-electricity be called renewable and clean? And how can electric cars be preferable to combustion engine cars if the batteries made of nonrenewable materials store nonrenewable and unclean electricity?
    Moreover, these so-called renewable energies are not viable, although they are feasible. Suppose tomorrow, accepting the demand of the movements, all states decide to leave all the still unextracted fossil-carbon and nuclear fuels in the ground. How will then the said equipments be manufactured/built?
    And the equipments that have already been manufactured/built and are supplying electricity have a lifespan of 20-30 years. When they are no longer working and must be replaced, the second generation thereof cannot be manufactured/built, because then, we shall not have any fossil or nuclear energy to be used. Either the fossil-carbon and nuclear fission materials are exhausted or our governments have decided to leave them in the ground. To make the point clear, let me quote an impatient discussant, who, using the pseudonym "foodstuff", put the following questions to protagonists of the so-called renewable energies:³

"I still want to know if the following can be done:

1. Mine the raw materials using equipment powered by solar panels.
2. Transport and convert metal ores, e.g. bauxite-aluminum, using equipment run by solar panels and in a factory built using the energy from solar panels.
3. Make the finished panels in a factory run by solar panels, including building and maintaining the factory.
4. Transport, install and maintain the solar panels using equipment running on solar panels.
All this is presently being done [mainly] with the energy from fossil fuels. How will it be done when they are gone?"

EROEI

Protagonists of 100% "renewable energies" say: we must use a large part of the generated renewable energies for producing the equipment needed for producing the second generation of equipment for producing renewable energies. And so it will go on and on.
    Here comes the crucial question of EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested or energy balance). Assuming that the first generation equipments do produce some net energy, i.e. EROEI is positive, how large is the amount of this net energy? Let us Remember, hundreds of millions of households and enterprises producing consumer goods will first consume electricity from this source. Will there be anything left for investing in production of all the equipments, i.e. producing and reproducing everything necessary for running an industrial economy?
    There is no certainty in this question. Many experts who tried to measure it expressed doubt that the EROEI of solar energy technology is positive. Why is the matter so uncertain?
    The gross ER (energy return) part of the question is easy to answer, and correctly, if you have a good meter attached to the solar panel. But how do you measure the EI (energy invested) part of the question? What the experts do is actually guesstimating. Here bias starts playing a role. So I answer the question in a different, and I think more convincing, way:
    Since almost all raw materials and energy that are till today used to produce the required equipments are nonrenewable, the old mines and wells of the same gradually get exhausted. Miners must then go to ever remoter and ever more difficult places to extract them out of new mines/wells. That means, energy invested (EI) in fuels and minerals progressively increases. That means EI – not only for energy equipments but also for any industrial product – continuously increases. Remember, we are not talking of prices and money costs which depend on many variable factors, but of EI, of energy cost of a product. For example, money cost of production of solar panels would fall further, and hence also their price, if production is transferred from China to, say, Bangladesh, where wages are lower than in China.
    In case of minerals such as copper and Nickel we are digging deeper and deeper and going to ever hotter and icy-colder deserts and polar regions. The copper mine of Chuquicamata in Chile's Atacama desert is in the meantime so deep that the big heavy trucks that bring the ore to the surface can only be seen like toys down below. For oil, we are since long boring in deep seabed. Recently, geologists have found a mountain containing huge quantities of extremely rare cadmium telluride, the material that can greatly increase the efficiency of solar cells. But it stands at a depth of 1000 meters down in the Atlantic Ocean. If that is the objective situation, no small innovation improving the ER side can, I think, in the long run offset the secular trend of rising energy costs (EI). For such small innovations cannot overcome the two cosmological constants involved here, namely (1) the intensity of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth at any particular place – which is very low, so that organisms can survive – and (2) the fact that the sun does not shine in the night.⁴

Conclusion–
Perspective on a Future Sustainable Society

I hope now it has become clear to my readers that "renewable energies" cannot play any role in solving the multifaceted global crisis of today and that, on the contrary, investing in these technologies is a waste of time, effort, energy and, most important of all, scarce resources. If scientists and engineers were honest, they should say that the only really renewable and clean sources of energy, apart from our own physical energy, are wood and other biomass products for fire, wind for sailing boats and wind mills, and flowing water in rivers and streams for water mills – the last two only for generating kinetic energy. And, if we are prepared to exploit other living beings, then also the muscle power of domestic animals.
    Humanity has lived for thousands of years with only such energies. In a not so distant future, we have to be satisfied with that. But that would be impossible with 9+ billions of us. Let me quote here an impossibility theorem that I formulated some time ago:

It is impossible to fulfill the continuously growing "needs", demands, wishes, aspirations and ambitions of a continuously growing world population while our resource base is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb man-made pollution is continuously diminishing. It is a lunatic idea that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

    Our top-priority political tasks today and for a transition period of uncertain duration would therefore be (a) to start a massive campaign for a population control program with the long-term goal of bringing down the world population of homo sapiens to, say, two billions; (b) a campaign for reducing consumption simultaneously with a campaign against the growth ideology; (c) propagating alternative conceptions of peaceful human societies (my own preference is an eco-socialist society); (d) a campaign to let wild forests and the number of wild animals expand.
    These are very broadly defined tasks. Details need to be worked out, which however can only be done if many people show interest.

Notes and References

* Edenhofer, Ottmar & Michael Jacob (2017) Klimapolitik. Ziele, Konflikte, Lösungen. Munich: C. H. Beck, P. 52.

1. McKibben, Bill (2016): A World at War
http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.de/2016/08/2418-bill-mckibben-world-at-war.html

2. Roberts, David (2016): Climate Justice Policy and the Metaphor of War
http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.de/2016/08/2419-climate-justice-policy-and.html

3. "foodstuff", comment as part of the discussion on Ugo Bardi's article. See:

Bardi, Ugo (2016)"But what's the REAL energy return of photovoltaic energy?" in Cassandra's Legacy (online).

4. This presentation on the EROEI of solar energy technologies is based on

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1978): "Technology Assessment. The Case of the Direct Use of Solar Energy";

http://www.peakoilindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Georgescu-Roegen-The-Case-of-the-Direct-Use-of-Solar-Energy.pdf

I discussed all these matters more thoroughly in my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? (1999). London: Zed Books.

For my other, shorter, writings on similar issues, see my blog-site:
www.eco-socialist.blogspot.com

The Ecology Movement is not a Social Movement -- A Response to John Foran's Article on the How-Question

John Foran has issued a wake-up call, a "call to arms", and addressed it to colleagues and comrades:¹
    I feel spoken to. Not only because of its subject, but also because I am both a colleague and a comrade of Foran. I have namely been both studying and writing about social movements as well as actively participating since the 1950s in all movements for radical social change – in India and Europe.² I am a bit dissatisfied with the contents of Foran's article.

Climate Change is Only a Part of the General Global Ecology Crisis Affecting Societies

In the beginning Foran speaks of an unprecedented crisis, in a world beset by massive social problems. He enumerates the latter and then names the unprecedented crisis: it is "climate change" which he regards as "a crisis of humanity and of all species." But climate change did not suddenly fall from the sky like a "wicked" meteorite. Firstly, it is only a part, albeit at present the most dangerous part, of the general global ecology crisis. Climate is changing because of global warming, which in turn is being caused by a particular kind of air pollution, namely excessive concentration of CO₂ and some other green house gases in air. Secondly, this unprecedented crisis of humanity has really been brewing, without being noticed by many people, for nearly two hundred years now, i.e. since the beginning of the industrial civilization. It was already foreseen and indicated in 1972 in the book Limits to Growth, the subject matter of which had six years earlier been dealt with by the American social scientist (political economist) Kenneth Boulding as the central theme of his essay on spaceman economy and cowboy economy (1966).³
    This comprehensive and historical view of today's "unprecedented crisis of humanity" is actually lacking in the wake-up call of Foran. He of course mentions the term "ecology", but only in the context of a scientific principle. I did not find in the article the term ecology crisis. Instead, he uses the term "environment" in the phrase "movements for environmental, climate, and social justice".
    In my experience, the terms ecology and environment (German: Umwelt) are generally loosely used synonymously. But I think, for the sake of clarity, they should be understood as slightly different things.
    Ecology is the branch of biology that studies relations among populations of organisms in an habitat – including both symbiotic and prey-and-predator relations – and between them and their respective physical and organic environment that contains the resources the species need for survival. As soon as we bring in humans in our considerations and study their interactions with other organisms and the physical environment of the particular habitat, ecology becomes a social science, political ecology, because humans are political animals (zoon politicon).
    When a group of humans are trying, say, to keep the air clean – locally or globally, in their own interest or not – it is an environmental movement. The same applies to a movement to protect e.g. a particular marshland or all marshlands of the world or mangrove forests. But when the environmental conditions in a particular habitat or on the whole earth or the numerical relations between humans and other organisms have deviated so much from the equilibrium/optimum (i.e. deteriorated) that the resource base, hence survival, of (a population of) humans is in danger, then we should speak of an (global) ecological crisis. We should use the term (global) ecology movement when we are speaking of the efforts of the whole humanity or a part thereof to restore the equilibrium, i.e. health, of our one and only habitat because it is so important for our survival. To make it clearer, an environmental movement of the NIMBY (not in my backyard) type must not be called an ecology movement. In theoretical ecological literature there is a formula for showing the level of ecological crisis:

Impact = Population  x  Affluence  x  Technology ⁴

     In Foran's wake-up call, however, there is no mention of these elements of the crisis, no mention of overpopulation – of particular populations of humans or of the seven and a half billion humans in the world, no mention of the standard of living, i.e. affluence (resource problem), no mention of high-tech as a problem. There is also no mention of the conflicts of interests and power struggles between different populations of humans (ethnies, nations. identity groups etc.) that result from changes in the above elements. But without such a comprehensive view – global warming being only a part of the total impact of our present civilization – we would neither understand the crisis of humanity nor would we be able to save the biosphere of the planet, humanity's only home. Without such a view, we would also not find a solution to any of the social problems Foran mentions.⁵

What is to Be Done? Are the Social Movements of Any Help?

Nevertheless, unlike his friends Bill McKibben and Co., Foran seems to have realized that we cannot tackle the unprecedented crisis of humanity only by tackling climate change, and that too only by means of a very rapid and massive technological change – 100% renewable energies – brought about with the help of engineers and investors. He is a member of 350.org. So I guess he takes it for granted that, firstly, such a massive technological change is necessary and possible, and that, secondly, it is possible without much negative impact on human society and the global environment. But, unlike many others in his scientific community, he thinks that is not enough. That is why he speaks at the very beginning of

"a world beset by massive social problems – the obscene poverty and inequality that neoliberal capitalist globalization has wreaked on at least two-thirds of humanity, the immobility of the political elite almost everywhere, and cultures of violence that poison our lives from the most intimate relations to the mass murder of the world’s wars.
    These interconnected problems are rooted in long-standing processes of inequality – patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, and now corporate-controlled globalization – whose ongoing, overlapping legacies are making the early twenty-first century a crucial hinge of history."

That is why he is also calling – and this is his great merit – for a radical social change. He writes:

"We may need a combination of both a dense network of movements and a totally new type of political party to achieve anything like deep radical social change. These movements will have to develop both powerful political cultures of opposition, and compelling political cultures of creation."

That is why he wants to make the global climate justice movement the most radical social movement of the twenty-first century. And that may also be his reason for being a member of the Green Party of California. But there are a few problems:

The Ecology Movement is not a Social Movement, Because
There is a Conflict Between Them

Social movements as we know them are not useful for solving the crisis of humanity that we are talking about now. I came to this conclusion in the 1990s. Let me repeat, with a few changes, what I wrote then:

We must realize that there is a fundamental difference between the ecology movement and social and socialist movements of the past. Until the ecology movement emerged, most large movements arose from social problems. In earlier epochs, in the industrial societies, most social problems could, at least partly, be solved through more or less continuous economic growth. Acute poverty could be overcome and wages increased. The poor, the unemployed and students got financial help. Care of the old and the ill was provided for, Women got the franchise and also better paid jobs in industry and trade. Democratic rights were recognized and extended. The demands of all social movements could be fulfilled to a large extent, thanks to the growing cake. But with the emergence of the ecology movement, the situation has changed completely. Now, not only must the cake not grow, it must shrink. The very basis of the ability of industrial societies to solve social problems in its particular way must be attacked if the problems from which the ecology movement arose are to be solved. For the first time in history, a mass movement "promises" to lower the standard of living of the masses.⁶

    In fact, in my experience in Germany from 1982 till now, I have known some old social movements as special opponents of the ecology movement (but not of the environmental movement) and some others as indifferent to the questions and doubts raised by the ecology movement. Thus in the early 1980s, the ecology movement and the Green Party – in its early years, when it was really radical – were opposed and abused by the trade unions and, generally speaking, the working class movement as destroyers of their jobs and prosperity. The latter two, for example, actively opposed the anti-nuclear- energy movement, they opposed the movement to close down the lignite mines. And they opposed the idea of drastically raising petrol prices in order to reduce private motorized transportation (automobile traffic). Roughly the same was the attitude of activists of the Third World solidarity movement. They were generally uninterested in such issues and causes. Their focus was on anti-imperialism, Third World countries' right to development, fair trade, development aid etc.
    In contrast to their oppositional stance or indifference toward the above mentioned radical ecological demands and proposals, no social movement, old or new, have ever hesitated to support e.g. the movement against dying of forests (due to air pollution) or the demand to fit every car with catalytic converters in order to keep the air in urban areas clean. These latter issues are, in my opinion, typical for the environmental movement.

New Social Movements

One may now object that Foran is not a defender of the old social movements (e.g. the old working class movement, old Women's Movement), that he is seeking to mobilize the new ones in order to build "a dense network of movements" and so to "make the global climate justice movement the most radical social movement of the twenty-first century." Right. But it should be in order, I think, to also examine this movement a bit. Here is first its short self-introduction:

"Young people across the globe are leading a movement for a real power shift: we're addressing the climate crisis by standing up to corporate polluters and tackling root causes of the crisis, while lifting up community and people-centered solutions.
    Countries like the United States, who have greater historical responsibility for causing climate change must be held to higher standards for reducing emissions and addressing impacts, including adequate financial support.
    The dirty energy industry is jeopardizing the future of young people, indigenous peoples, people in developing nations, and the very survival of small island states, but there are young people across the planet who are passionate and committed to stabilizing the climate, restoring democracy, upholding human rights, and transforming the climate crisis into an opportunity to design new systems."⁷

    I do not here want to repeat my critique of the logic of isolating the climate crisis  from the whole ecology crisis nor my doubts about the feasibility and viability of the idea of transition to 100% renewable energies for solving the global climate crisis. See for these points my articles on the optimism of McKibben, Krugman, COP21 declaration (Paris) ⁸ But even otherwise this self-introduction does not inspire me very much.
    They claim to be "tackling the root causes of the crisis", I do not see any sign thereof. What are the root causes? Like all old-left radicals before them, they too are blaming the crisis solely on "corporate polluters", "the dirty energy industry", and capitalist/imperialist "countries like the United States" etc. And they want to lift up community and people-centered solutions, as if the communities and the people are totally free from any responsibility for the climate crisis, global ecology crisis or the crisis of humanity. This is a very simple black and white picture. Like in Foran's wake up call, and McKibben's grandiose plan, there is no mention of population and affluence, the most variable and the most important factors in the equation mentioned further above. They may even be saying these two may or must be allowed to continue to grow.
    And then there are the tall claims: "Young people across the globe are leading a movement for a real power shift." How can you lead a movement without first presenting a convincing analysis of the crisis? After all, global warming did not suddenly fall from the sky! Some such radical young people sometimes also talk of the need for system change. Not bad, but at best they mean by "system" capitalism, not industrialism itself. However, the secrets of power of the powerful and the longevity of the system are not that easy to understand, they need deep, thorough and sincere analysis. Radical slogans and presence on the streets in large numbers are not enough.
     Let us now look at a few other new or currently very active old movements that are pursuing a social end, each for itself. They enjoy mass participation, hence they may qualify as a social movement: Unfortunately, after the withering away of the old international socialist movement, which was truly global both in the sense of its presence in the whole world and in the sense of fighting for a socialist society for the whole humanity, the social movements of today (at least those I know of) have reduced themselves to movements for what is generally and properly called identity politics. The separatist movements of today – those of the Catalans, Basques, Scots etc. belong to this category.
    In the USA, the human rights movement is mainly represented by the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier such movements – Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers – have, like the current one, clearly been movements of and for the Blacks and against their oppression and discrimination in the USA. In the media I have several times come across the slogan "white lives matter too". But there is no general movement against the high-handed, now and then even murderous behavior of the US police forces. I haven't ever heard of any contribution of the Black Lives Matter movement (we are here not talking of individuals) to other general or particular causes related to the struggle against capitalism or imperialism nor to the struggle for protecting the environment or the ecology.
    Roughly the same can be said about the new women's (feminist) movement, although there are some feminist theorists who have realized the problem and call themselves eco-feminists, while some others among them organized in the past some conferences and demonstrations on some general issues (e.g. women against nuclear power plants, women against genetic engineering) in which exclusively women were invited to take part and speak. But the anomaly remains. The justification for such special identity-based demonstrations and conferences on general issues is not clear, since there has never been an eco-masculinist nor a patriarchal ecological theory or movement.
    The anomaly recently became clear in the campaign phase of the 2016 US presidential election, in which all women (50% of the voters) were called upon to vote for Hilary Clinton, because now "it was the turn of a woman" to become president, because the "glass ceiling" had to be broken through. But the majority of white women voted for Trump. I recently read an interesting and revealing article on this anomaly. The author Susan Chiradec⁹ asked some white young women about their explanation for Clinton's defeat. She reports that white young women did in their majority vote for Clinton, but "their enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders during the primary seemed to say that for some, feminism’s traditional preoccupations seem out of date." In October, Chiradec had asked some such women "about their perceptions of Clinton." One politically active woman "said she found Mrs. Clinton’s feminism outdated, failing to prioritize climate change, income inequality and the toll of American intervention overseas." Chiradec writes further, "the brand of feminism that spoke to her, though, wasn’t about breaking historic barriers. It was more specific: 'progressive feminism, eco-feminism.' ”
    When one speaks of the ecology movement (as distinct from the environmental movement), one should bear in mind that this movement is not so much in the interest of or for the wellbeing of the present generations of grown-up people as for the wellbeing of the future, yet unborn generations – at the most for that of the children of today. And it is about us modern humans withdrawing from much of those territories that we encroached upon in the past decades and centuries – in order to leave enough space for the rest of nature, i.e. for the other species, so that they can continue to exist on this blue planet.¹⁰ That means, not only must our ecological footprint be drastically reduced, but also the sheer numbers of humans. The women's movement's persistent opposition to any kind of population control program in developing countries in the name of reproductive rights of individual women is not compatible with this imperative, nor the Third World developing nations' right to development.
    To take another example, in India, the "Dalits" (members of the lowest castes among Hindus plus the indigenous tribes) have since time immemorial been suffering from social discrimination and through it also oppression and economic deprivation. In the decades before and after India became independent (1947) they struggled to overcome the caste system. But in the 1990s, they began fighting for special economic rights in the sense of reservation of jobs and places in universities for them. When these demands were accepted, the movement succeeded but it also moved away from its great goal of reforming Hindu society and "annihilate caste". This huge identity-based social movement has nothing to contribute to the struggle to save the biosphere of the planet. Even if, as is happening of late, they realize the limitations of their kind of movement and ally themselves with the national left movement for social justice¹¹, they will have nothing to contribute to it because the whole national left movement has nothing but the interests of the currently living working class in mind.
    Such identity-based movements may very well be necessary as long as a particular group of citizens (Blacks, women, Dalits) do not find adequate attention to their sufferings and particular grievances, oppressions and discriminations in the established political system. But it must be clear that ultimately a black person, a woman, a Dalit etc. is also a member of society at large, citizen of a particular state along with all others, ultimately, as a human being, a citizen of the world. They cannot free themselves completely from their own particular oppression and discrimination unless the system of oppression and discrimination as a whole is overcome. Nor can they secure the future of their children unless the biosphere is protected. Of course, they may get certain concessions, such as affirmative actions to favor them in economic and job matters. The most intelligent and qualified among them can be co-opted in the ruling elite. But the general rule is that favors to particular groups in society do also generate animosity in the other groups, as the recent history of US and India shows.

A Network of Movements and a New Type of Party

Foran's concluding idea is: "We may need a combination of both a dense network of movements and a totally new type of political party to achieve anything like deep radical social change "
    This is not a very new idea. I have experienced, participated in, and studied such a combination in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. The result of that study commissioned by the United Nations University (UNU) is a two-volume book, written in English and published by the UNU Press.¹² In Germany it began with the state-wide anti-nuclear-energy movement and it was quickly followed by the Citizens' Initiative Movement consisting of hundreds of groups (generally called a citizens' initiative) struggling for a cause or against some project of the state or private economic interests. These included the state-wide Peace Movement and a plethora of smaller and mostly local/regional one-issue one-demand movements for protecting an aspect of the environment. The sum total of the latter kind of movements, which were also very much connected, were also called the Environmental Protection Movement. In the same way there arose the Alternative Movement, Women's Movement etc.etc. And finally, from all these movements, arose the Green Party of Germany (Die Grünen), which at the beginning understood itself as an "anti-party party" and as the "electoral-political arm" of the new social movements mentioned above. These movements mostly have had the same qualities that Foran lists in connection with the modern-day social movements that he wants to bring together in a network. As far as I am informed, such movements arose in most highly industrialized rich countries of Europe and North America.
     The point I want to make here is that these movements, in my objective overall judgment, ultimately failed – except some of the one-issue one-demand movements. They either fizzled out or were co-opted into the system, particularly their leaders. Die Grünen have become a pillar of the current system. (Neither PODEMOS nor SYRIZA are willing to be the electoral-political arm of the ecology movement.) There is no space here to go into the details, and one may disagree with this assessment of mine. But, this is in short my argument, if they had been successful there would not be any need today for a climate justice movement, nor for a cry to protecting the biodiversity of the planet.

My own conclusions

In short, all efforts are doomed to failure unless at first an honest analysis of the present world situation is made and propagated and unless it is accepted by the majority of those who form opinions and make decisions. Unfortunately, the majority of those whose task it is to make this analysis and propagate it, are cherishing several illusions. I have elaborated this critique in several contributions to the debate, and presented my own analysis of the present world situation in my major writings.¹³
    So far as the contribution of concerned citizens of the world is concerned, they may organize themselves in a truly ecology movement and not be satisfied with just some environmental improvements (see above for the difference).
    In this connection I may inform the readers that in some countries of Europe a truly ecology movement has begun. It is the De-Growth Movement. There is also an organization called Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) with branches in many industrial countries. And since without the promise of social justice and without global economic equality no poor person, nor any poor nation, would accept an ecology movement that inevitably entails economic contraction, it is necessary to enlarge the ecology movement to a global eco-socialist movement.


Notes and References

1. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-03-14/a-few-thoughts-on-studying-the-most-radical-social-movement-of-the-twenty-first-century/

2. Relevant in the present context are the two empirical studies:

Sarkar, Saral (1993) Green-Alternative Politics in West Germany. Vol. I. The New Social Movements. Tokyo: United University Press.
and
Sarkar, Saral (1994) Green-Alternative Politics in West Germany. Vol. II. The Greens. Tokyo: United University Press.

3. Boulding, Kenneth E. (1966) "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth"

http://www.ub.edu/prometheus21/articulos/obsprometheus/BOULDING.pdf

4. See: Meadows, Donella H.; Dennis L. Meadows; and Jörgen Randers (1992) Beyond the Limits, London; P. 100.

5. For this point see my critique of Bill McKibben's and others' calls for a massive World War II like industrial effort to achieve a quick transition to 100% renewable energies:

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2016/10/saving-planet-american-style-critical_7.html

6. Sarkar, Saral (1999) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books. P. 226f.

7. http://powershift.org/campaigns/global-movement

8. Some of my articles on the subject:

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2016/10/saving-planet-american-style-critical_7.html

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/search?q=Krugman

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/search?q=A+Fraud

See also the following latest info:

"Phys.org reports: The climate friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them, a study said Tuesday. Indeed, by some calculations, the so-called “break-even point” between dirty energy input and clean output may already have arrived, researchers in the Netherlands reported."
    On this Euan Mearns commented: "The numbers in the excerpt are quite damning – 40 years of PV development and it seems that we only now got the first net energy to society."
http://www.ecologise.in/2016/12/19/solar-panels-repay-energy-debt-study/#comment-180

9. Susan Chiradec: Feminism Lost. Now What?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/feminism-lost-now-what.html?hpw&rref=sunday-review&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

10. Let me here state clearly that I am not calling upon the indigenous people to withdraw from e.g. the Amazonas or the rain forests of Indonesia. Their ancestors did not encroach upon these territories in the recent centuries. These constitute their home since time immemorial.

11. On this issue see:

"When Jai Bhim meets Lal Salaam"

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/when-jai-bhim-meets-lal-salaam/article9216080.ece

12. See note 2.

13. See : Sarkar 1999 (note 6) and

Sarkar, Saral (2012) The Crises of Capitalism. A Different Study of Political Economy. Berkeley : Counterpoint.

Thunberg's Problem. A Problem Without A Solution?

For the last two or three months, I have been following the news on the school strike movement of teenagers, the purpose of which is to urge the grown-ups, particularly the politicians, to immediately do what is necessary to solve the problem of global warming, which is resulting in what has been summarized in the term “climate crisis”. As Greta Thunberg formulated it, they want the politicians to “panic”.
    For her initiative, courage and leadership role in the movement, the 16 years old Thunberg has been variously criticized and maligned by several grown-ups including politicians.¹ She was thus compelled to publish an article in self-defense. I request my readers to read it in the original.²
    I was almost moved to tears while reading it. I remembered the time I was 15–18 years old. It was in the 1950s, when the state of the Indian society and of the Third World in general was utterly miserable. It was so not only in the material sense, i.e. in the sense of abject poverty, feudal and imperialistic exploitation and oppression, but also in regard to the level of education and political awareness of the people at large. And then, for the few politically aware people like us, there was the threat of a third world war with deployment of nuclear weapons. But we were in those days not as despairing as Thunberg and her age-mates sound these days, although a third world war followed by a nuclear winter with its consequences threatened to devastate the whole world with one big bang. As against that, the climate crisis and its already palpable negative effects are expected to worsen only incrementally.
    We were less despairing because in those days I and all my politicized age-mates believed we knew the solution: a socialist world society. And we were somewhat confident that the mighty Soviet Union and the global peace movement would be able to prevent a third world war. Today’s youth do not have a comparable confidence in regard to averting the climate catastrophes. When a journalist asked Greta, what, in her opinion, should be done for the purpose, she replied: why do you ask me? I am only a kid. Ask the grown-ups!³

Why This Difference?

I can explain this difference. In our youth, we had ideals, we believed in progress, we believed that in course of history, human society would become ever better, ever more prosperous, ever more egalitarian, i.e. socialistic, and ever more peaceful. We could believe in all that because we could see the rapid scientific and technological development taking place in front of our eyes. And we were aligned with our elder comrades. We all believed, as Erich Honecker, the former leader of the socialst GDR, used to say: “Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf hält weder Ochs noch Esel auf."   (Neither an ox nor an ass can hold back the progress toward socialism.)
    Today, Thunberg and young people of that ilk do not have any ideal, nor this kind of confidence. Whereas we were fighting for an ideal human society, they are only fighting for bare survival of human society as they know it. And they, generally, hardly see any hope of succeeding, i.e. unless some miracle happens. On the contrary, at present, they are seeing that even rich Western societies (USA, France, Sweden e.g.) and emerging Third World societies (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India e.g.) are in deep trouble. Young people of the poorest 3^rd World countries (those of Africa and Central America e.g.) are turning their backs on their native countries and gate-crashing into the rich countries (USA, Europe, Australia, even the South African Republic). On the one hand, of course, more and more technological development is taking place, more and more wonderful goods and pleasure-things are flooding the markets. But, on the other hand, e.g. waterbodies are getting choked with plastic waste, air of big cities is becoming unbreathable. Although more and more goods and services are being produced, more and more people are being rendered unemployed, are being made to live without any perspective on a better life.

The Current Situation

In this situation, against the background of the ongoing global warming and climate crisis, and against the background of numerous negative scientific reports on the state of the world,⁴ UN climate scientists gave the warning that unless humanity does the necessary things by 2030 (i.e. 11 years from now) it would be too late. After this warning, all political leaders of the world should have got into a panic. But they are carrying on business as usual, paying only lip service to the goals they had set in Paris in 2015. Instead, it is today’s youth that are getting into a panic. That is understandable. The greater part of their life is still lying in front of them. It is their life, their future, that is being destroyed by the elders. They are not experts in the matter, but they do understand the danger.
    However, it would be better if they would understand the problem in some depth. Global warming of today is only the effect of some processes that have been taking place since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Of course, it is not just a symptom, it is itself causing damages in the biosphere. But neither the warming nor the climate crisis and their effects can be successfully tackled unless their real causes are recognized, namely our industrial mode of production and consumption, in other words, our current industrial civilization, which is absolutely dependent on burning fossil fuels.

But What is the Solution?

As we know, the school- striking teenagers are only demanding that the politicians finally do something decisively about the problem. They are not claiming that they know the solution, although one can also hear some of them glibly mouthing the same solutions as their radical elder brothers do: “shut down all coal mines immediately”, “let all fossil fuels remain in the ground”, “all energy supply must come from renewable sources” etc. As we also know, all ruling politicians are turning a deaf ear to such demands. Can the problem be solved at all? If yes, then somebody must come forward and say loudly how.
    Below Thunberg’s said article, I read a few usual comments. But one of them is bold. It reads: “The greatest minds in the Western world are working on this. They have produced no solution because there is none.”
    In her article, as if in anticipation of this comment, Thunberg, the 16 years old, had written like a very wise person,

Yes, the climate crisis is the most complex issue that we have ever faced and it's going to take everything from our part to stop it. But the solution is black and white; we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.
    Because either we limit the warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, or we don't. Either we reach a tipping point where we start a chain reaction with events way beyond human control, or we don't. Either we go on as a civilization, or we don't. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.”

Very wise words, but they still do not offer a concrete proposal of a solution. She is reported to have said on another occasion: all the technologies needed for the solution are already there. They need only to be used. Her elder radical brothers and sisters have been saying this since long, adding the point that only capitalism and capitalists, aided by subservient politicians, are preventing their deployment to the necessary extent. Many politicians and engineers dispute the assertion.

The Right Answer to the Conundrum

At this point, I think I must intervene, because I think I have the answer to this conundrum. Read the last two sentences of the above quote carefully. Thunberg writes, “Either we go on as a civilization, or we don’t”. But who said we must go on with this civilization? With this present civilization of the Western world? If we drop this idea, then I think survival of the human species (not of the current Western civilization) is possible – with a different, yet to be fully described, kind of civilization
    The current civilization of the Western world is doomed – there is no doubt about that – because it is utterly dependent on burning huge quantities of fossil fuels. And that, as we know, is the main cause of the climate crisis. This civilization is doomed for another, parallel, reason: because of the certainty that sooner or later the fossil fuel supply, which is exhaustible, will become prohibitively costly – both in money terms and in terms of energy cost.⁵ We are caught, so to speak, in a pincer grip crisis. There are also some lesser causes of the crisis – capitalism, globalization, greed, human nature, anthropocentrism etc. etc. etc. The point I want to make here is that any kind of industrial society, even the morally most perfect industrial socialist society would ultimately come to an end, because of the two parallel causes stated above. But they might also collapse for other reasons long before all the fossil fuels of the earth have been extracted and burnt. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, father of ecological economics, who spoke of fossil fuels – the secret of all material progress of the last 200 years – as “the limited dowry of mankind’s existence on earth”, already wrote in 1970:

“Even with a constant population and a constant flow per capita of mined resources, mankind's dowry will ultimately be exhausted if the career of the human species is not brought to an end earlier by other factors.” ⁶

    This is not the place to go into details of this argumentation.⁷ It is however possible to indicate, in short, the existing doubts about the “solution” that many teenagers in the movement, also all grown-ups in it, so confidently suggest: energy transition, i.e. supplying, as soon as possible, all the energy that this civilization needs from renewable sources. I maintain that that is not possible. Because the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of all “renewable energy” technologies is too low or even negative. Moreover, all the equipment that are needed to produce “renewable energy” – solar panels, wind turbines, reinforced concrete towers and rotors, dams on rivers etc. –cannot be made without the use of fossil fuels, not yet, and will probably never be.

Are the Technologies for the Solution Already There?

If we limit ourselves to the current debates on the current situation, even then there really are two valid points in the arguments of the politicians who dare to openly oppose the teenagers’ school strike movement. In a German TV debate, a young, maybe 35 years old, liberal-democratic politician put forward arguments, which I think I can formulate more clearly and succinctly, because I agree with them. (1) Scientists till now have only done research on the crisis and formulated theoretical solutions. The point, however, is to develop the machines, equipment, and technologies to make the suggested solutions humanly and economically possible. And that is the task of engineers and technicians. The said politician maintained that these machines, equipment, and technologies are still not there. (2) All main participants in this debate and in all debates connected with the general ecological crisis take it for granted that all proposed concrete solutions are already, or must be, feasible and profitable within the general framework of capitalism. Nobody is saying that capitalism must be overthrown first. Thunberg and her demonstrating age-mates are no exception.
    As a must-be-clause, it is an essential condition. But it cannot be fulfilled by many of the machines, equipment, and technologies proposed by eco-activists, that have of course proved to be feasible, and were in the past also profitable, but are not profitable any more. Here are two examples: (a) In Germany, many railway lines and bus services that formerly connected small towns in the countryside have been closed down or their frequency have been sharply reduced because of competition from cars on autobahns. (b) Many materials – plastic packaging materials are just one example – are not being recycled, simply because that is not profitable.
    But it is also true that, even ignoring the profitability criterion (because the state is prepared to subsidize it), engineers could not yet realize some proposed technologies: for example, the carbon capture and sequestering (CCS) technology. Engineers have also failed to bring about the miracle of producing more and more goods with less and less expenditure of resources (decoupling).

Any Solution in Sight?

Frustrated, one may now ask: Is there any solution to the problem at all? Or must we now settle for just enjoying the good time we have left? Indeed, I have read about the existence of a stream of thought in the Western World that maintains that the human species would soon become extinct through its own acts of omission and commission, and hence there is no point in trying to stop the process. Instead, we should try to enjoy life now as much as possible.
    Of course, those who are today, say, 50 or more years old and are having a good income or have a lot of wealth, may say so. But they would continuously suffer from a bad conscience, because their own children and grandchildren, or at least their nephews and nieces, will in the near future suffer from all the crises that they are generating and intensifying. So we must not consider the possibility of imminent human extinction, and we must continue our search for a solution that might have a chance to be accepted because there is none other.
    If we are prepared to drop the conditions that (a) the searched for solution must be one to ensure that the current civilization of the Western world can go on, and (b) that the solution must remain within the parameters of capitalism, then we can think further and suggest a solution. But even that may not be enough. We must also absolutely realize that the number of us humans – 7.6 billion and growing – is already too high for the health of the biosphere.
    This solution, in my opinion, is to strive to transition to a sustainable steady state economy with a much lower level of production and a much lower human population than today’s. I do not at present want to speculate on the question: how much lower? Today, I can only say that the process of contraction must begin immediately. Although the level of material production must be going down, the level of knowledge must not. Knowledge would make up the superiority of the sustainable society of the future to any society of the previous centuries. And what is very important is that the envisioned future societies must be egalitarian ones. Only then will humans and groups of humans be able to live in peace with each other and in peace with the rest of nature. I call this kind of a society an eco-socialist society. There are many others who are thinking in this direction: the advocates of de-growth, of a solidarity economy, of a steady state market economy etc.

Notes and References:

1. Among them even Angela Merkel and the General Secretary of her party the CDU.
2. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/03/response-lies-and-hate-let-me-make-some-things-clear-about-my-climate-strike

3. I did not hear this as o-tone, but as reported by a TV-journalist.
4. The most detailed among all is:
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
http://www.ecologise.in/2017/07/15/viral-essay-uninhabitable-earth/

However, in the end, Wallace-Wells only repeats the unfounded technological optimism of the scientists.
5. Energy cost of a thing is the amount of energy needed to produce it. If e.g. two units of energy needs to be spent to extract one unit of fossil fuel energy, then the project must be given up.
6. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1981) The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. P. 296.
7. I have published several essays on this issue in my blogsite
 www.eco-socialist.blogspot.com. I would here like to recommend only two:

“Saving the Planet, American Style -- A Critical Review, and Some Thoughts and Ideas”
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.com/2016/10/saving-planet-american-style-critical_7.html

and
“The Global Crisis and Role of So-called Renewable Energies in Solving It.”
https://eco-socialist.blogspot.com/search?q=Global+Crisis