Essay by Eric Worrall
The Atlantic arguing that progressives are inhibiting the green transition by putting more effort into fighting corporations than helping them build green infrastructure.
What Many Progressives Misunderstand About Fighting Climate Change
Wishful thinking hampers the clean-energy revolution.
By Alec Stapp
SEPTEMBER 25, 2022, 6:30 AM ETAbout the author: Alec Stapp is a co-founder of the Institute for Progress.
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The good news is that, with reasonable reforms, the energy transition is fully within reach. Private investment in clean-energy technology is skyrocketing, and even Big Oil is starting to realize there is no future in fossil fuels.
But this may not be enough for some environmentalists. Jamie Henn, an environmental activist and the director of Fossil Free Media, recently told Rolling Stone, “Look, I want to get carbon out of the atmosphere, but this is such an opportunity to remake our society. But if we just perpetuate the same harms in a clean-energy economy, and it’s just a world of Exxons and Elon Musks—oh, man, what a nightmare.” Many progressive commentators similarly believe that countering climate change requires a fundamental reordering of the West’s political and economic systems. “The level of disruption required to keep us at a temperature anywhere below ‘absolutely catastrophic’ is fundamentally, on a deep structural level, incompatible with the status quo,” the writer Phil McDuff has argued. The climate crisis, the Green New Deal advocate Naomi Klein has insisted, “could be the best argument progressives have ever had” to roll back corporate influence, tear up free-trade deals, and reinvest in public services and infrastructure.
Such comments raise a question: What is the real goal here—stopping climate change or abolishing capitalism? Taking climate change seriously as a global emergency requires an all-hands-on-deck attitude and a recognition that technological solutions (yes, often built and deployed by private firms) can deliver real progress on decarbonization before the proletariat has seized the means of production. A massive infusion of private investment, made not for charity but in the anticipation of future profits, is precisely what’s needed to accelerate the clean-energy transition—which, like all revolutions, will yield unpredictable results.
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Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/capitalism-clean-energy-technology-permitting/671545/
Author Alec Stapp is co-founder of The Institute for Progress, which appears to be a pro-Biden big academia front.
The author goes on to argue that paving hundreds of thousands of square miles with solar panels requires relaxing environmental laws which allow people to object to such developments. The author also says nice things about nuclear power.
I give this piece half marks. While it is unusually rational for an Atlantic climate article, the author still misses or glosses over some important points, such as the sheer scale of effort required to transform the energy system.
For an idea of scale, our Willis ran the calculations in 2021. Willis explained in Bright Green Impossibilities, to hit Net Zero by 2050 the USA would need to add a little over 2GW of 24×7 zero carbon generation capacity every day. Think of this as a brand new nuclear reactor commissioned every day until 2050, to replace the 22 terawatts of average power capacity / 193 Petawatt hours of energy per year provided by fossil fuel.
Even using nuclear reactors this is a wildly implausible target. When you translate this magnitude of nuclear capacity build to solar panels or wind turbines, bearing in mind nuclear power runs 24×7, and wind and solar most definitely do not, the numbers soar into absurdity.
Do we thank Obama at this point, or not?
Quote“Cost of charging an electric car surges by 42% – with prices nearing the same as petrol. An electric car driver exclusively using rapid or ultra-rapid public chargers pays around 18p per mile for electricity, compared with roughly 19p per mile for petrol and 21p per mile for diesel, according to new figures
SKY News
Without tax and duty on the diesel motor fuel (55pence per litre plus 20% sales tax), the 21pence figure would be 13pence
Without tax on the electricity, it would be 17pence
My little VW 2litre diesel gets me 12.5 pence per mile (inc tax)
I ‘tuck in’ with the big trucks – the one in front gives me a tow and if there’s one behind, I get a push.
If you can get into a convoy of 2 trucks in front and one behind, you get an almost free ride.
It’s a much less stressful drive as well
“Look, I want to get carbon out of the atmosphere, but this is such an opportunity to remake our society.”
In one sentence, the fellow gives two examples of his sheer ignorance. Were he to simply study some basic biology and ecology he’d realize his first goal is suicidal. Nothing advanced, simple junior high school level stuff (Jr High in 70’s). As to his second proposal, it would take some well informed study of history and basic understanding of human nature and human drives to realize the futility or foolishness of that endeavor. Again that could be accomplished with a decent High School history course and maybe an introductory AP course in psychology or anthropology.
Pity we are stuck with fools such as these having any effect on political decisions.
I suppose we could throw a couple of lumps of coal at them, to help them with the idea of getting carbon out of the air, but is does seem like a lot of hassle.
It’s a central tenant of progressivism to believe mankind can be perfected by perfecting society. That’s why they don’t prosecute criminals. Society is to blame for crimes. In fact, criminals are really victims, or so they want us to believe.
“The good news is that, with reasonable reforms, the energy transition is fully within reach. Private investment in clean-energy technology is skyrocketing, and even Big Oil is starting to realize there is no future in fossil fuels.”
Really within reach???
Abolishing capitalism. Next stupid question.
Pro-Green and anti-green.
Pro-Single/Central/Monopolistic solutions and anti-capitalism.
‘Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.’ So said Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and generally acknowledged author of the Green New Deal.
They’re not called Watermelons for nothing. In the 1980s, the left, lost in the wilderness after the collapse of the USSR, found solace in the Brundtland Report and took over the Environmental Movement, as saving the planet gave them the excuse for dictatorial powers over all society, which, as Communists, they want.
I think you have your dates wrong, or perhaps it was a typo.. The USSR collapsed in the 1990’s.
Before the collapse, the USSR funded many environmental groups, especially the anti-nuclear enviros.
I think he may be confusing the fall of USSR with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That event scrapes into the eighties by just about 2 months.
Well, no, the demoralization of the left started in the 1980’s. Before the wall fell or Gorbachev. Don’t you remember?
I do but Roberts assertion that it only happened after the fall of the USSR is not correct. The fall of communism started before the wall fell or Gorbachev and coincided with the leftist slump but that isn’t what Robert said.
Bingo! We’re starting to get to the root of the AGW scam. All the propaganda in the world won’t be able to put lipstick on AGW when the truth comes out.
Answer: maintaining the subscriber base and keeping up with Hollywood on the edgy mandate/quota
The immediate goal is the midterm elections.
Biden new environmental justice office to oversee $3 billion in grants (cnbc.com)
We’ve gone from campaign street money to minorities to this.
It is the way of the Democrat to bribe the electorate, in a proud tradition going back to LBJ bribing the Southern Black voters shortly after they won the right to vote.
“. . . even Big Oil is *starting to realize* there is no future in fossil fuels.” says the Atlantic article.
But the article referred to in the hypertext, indicated here between asterisks, doesn’t say that AT ALL.
“The good news is that, with reasonable reforms, the energy transition is fully within reach.”
Not so fast. Without economical long-duration storage or “Dispatchable Emission-Free Resources” (NYS, undefined), the energy transition is out of reach.
The “energy transition” WILL ALWAYS BE OUT OF REACH, since wind and solar are 100% dependent on fossil fuels for their existence, and since they don’t produce enough energy in their less-than-promised life spans to produce their replacements, much less produce the energy we need. Even if they could find the magic storage device needed to store what is produced when not needed.
‘Progressives’ have noticed that getting the ‘Green Transition’ to actually work, without alienating the whole population, is very difficult and would invilve great effort. As a result, they prefer to fight financially fragile corporations and intimidate them into abject surrender..
I don’t want to seem too harsh but this guy is a naive crackpot.
When “Climate Justice” became the chant of choice the mission became crystal clear.
Climate Crusaders are Social Warriors. AKA Commies.
Social justice and equity for well off Tesla owners does have its bothersome trials-
The EV ‘social equity’ dilemma that may put apartment residents off electric cars (msn.com)
Meanwhile will some old fashioned user pays dampen the weather changing zeal?
Cost of charging an electric car surges by 42% – almost the same as petrol prices (msn.com)
While the bright sparks at Stanford work out that electron equity with weather worrying depends very much on the time of day-
Why Exactly is Charging Your EV Overnight Bad? (msn.com)
I like the big sign that says ‘Capitalism is the Disease … Socialism is the cure’
It’s turning into a standard thing for this kind of people.
1) A ‘Harsh cold virus is the Disease … World lock down and Heart Disease injections are the Cure’
2) ‘Confusion in an 8 year old is the Disease … Creating a track for mutilation is the Cure’
3) ‘I have a hang-nail … Cut of your finger’
4) ‘Racism is the Disease … Burning, vandalism, theft, burning is the Cure’
5)
The catastrophe is already happening , if only the voting serfs could see it .
Killing our industrialism and way of life rather than just adapting to or mitigating against the extremes of weather is astounding how the public and our leaders have caved in to raving loonies .
What more do the blocks the stones the worse than senseless things really need?
‘Open invitation’ for activists to ‘hit the streets’ after protester charges dropped (msn.com)
And since the weather is actually NOT ‘getting more extreme,” there isn’t much to “adapt” TO.
“there is no future in fossil fuels.”
WRONG, fool.
There is no future WITHOUT fossil fuels. !
Well, there actually IS a “future” without fossil fuels – it’s called THE STONE AGE.
What’s old is new again.
Their idea of abolishing capitalism is not doing away with large corporations or big financial institions.
It is doing away with choice for the common man.
Everything, including all kinds of very personal things will be decide by the all encompassing fusion of state and corporation. Money will have no true utility anymore other than to keep score of distribution of certain items.
Yep the schoolbook example of Fascism, that’s what these loonies are after and they must be stopped at all cost.
Socialism is the perfect cure for reducing CO2 emissions – it kills millions of people who then no longer need food, clothing, housing, water, or material goods.
Remember to tap the brakers when they start to threaten the media oligarch owners themselves and the U.S. Capitol.
“Taking climate change seriously as a global emergency requires an all-hands-on-deck attitude and a recognition that technological solutions (yes, often built and deployed by private firms) can deliver real progress on decarbonization before the proletariat has seized the means of production. A massive infusion of private investment, made not for charity but in the anticipation of future profits, is precisely what’s needed to accelerate the clean-energy transition—which, like all revolutions, will yield unpredictable results.”
It also requires billions of slaves- and all the capital on the planet in perpetuity, hence climate change equals capitalism. Meaning if you fight the good fight (/sarc) for implementing policies and technology to deal with the climate, you are actually pro-capitalist on a crime against humanity level.
Silly question…
Oddgeir
Since anyone with half a brain knows that stopping climate change isn’t possible or desirable, the latter must be the goal.