Claim: Socially Engineered Greed Stops Renewables from Solving Climate Change

Essay by Eric Worrall

Rich nation consumers who have been deceived by clever marketing into demanding material wealth and modern conveniences are stopping greens from saving the planet.

Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists

New paper claims unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster

Rachel Donald
Sat 13 Jan 2024 23.00 AEDT

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“We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate exploitation of human behaviour.

“We need to become mindful of the way we’re being manipulated,” says Merz, who is co-founder of the Merz Institute, an organisation that researches the systemic causes of the climate crisis and how to tackle them.

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They claim that unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster. “We can deal with climate change and worsen overshoot,” says Merz. “The material footprint of renewable energy is dangerously underdiscussed. These energy farms have to be rebuilt every few decades – they’re not going to solve the bigger problem unless we tackle demand.”

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“We’re talking about replacing what people are trying to signal, what they’re trying to say about themselves. Right now, our signals have a really high material footprint –our clothes are linked to status and wealth, their materials sourced from all over the world, shipped to south-east Asia most often and then shipped here, only to be replaced by next season’s trends. The things that humans can attach status to are so fluid, we could be replacing all of it with things that essentially have no material footprint – or even better, have an ecologically positive one.”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/human-behavioural-crisis-at-root-of-climate-breakdown-say-scientists

The abstract of the paper;

World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot

Joseph J Merz, Phoebe Barnard, William E Rees, Dane Smith, Mat Maroni, Christopher J Rhodes, Julia H Dederer, Nandita Bajaj, Michael K Joy, Thomas Wiedmann, Rory Sutherland

Abstract

Previously, anthropogenic ecological overshoot has been identified as a fundamental cause of the myriad symptoms we see around the globe today from biodiversity loss and ocean acidification to the disturbing rise in novel entities and climate change. In the present paper, we have examined this more deeply, and explore the behavioural drivers of overshoot, providing evidence that overshoot is itself a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour. We work to name and frame this crisis as ‘the Human Behavioural Crisis’ and propose the crisis be recognised globally as a critical intervention point for tackling ecological overshoot. We demonstrate how current interventions are largely physical, resource intensive, slow-moving and focused on addressing the symptoms of ecological overshoot (such as climate change) rather than the distal cause (maladaptive behaviours). We argue that even in the best-case scenarios, symptom-level interventions are unlikely to avoid catastrophe or achieve more than ephemeral progress. We explore three drivers of the behavioural crisis in depth: economic growth; marketing; and pronatalism. These three drivers directly impact the three ‘levers’ of overshoot: consumption, waste and population. We demonstrate how the maladaptive behaviours of overshoot stemming from these three drivers have been catalysed and perpetuated by the intentional exploitation of previously adaptive human impulses. In the final sections of this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary emergency response to the behavioural crisis by, amongst other things, the shifting of social norms relating to reproduction, consumption and waste. We seek to highlight a critical disconnect that is an ongoing societal gulf in communication between those that know such as scientists working within limits to growth, and those members of the citizenry, largely influenced by social scientists and industry, that must act.

Read more: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00368504231201372

What a hideously misanthropic vision of the future. Why should we give up one iota of all the consumerist toys we have created? Why should we give up having however many children we want, when there is plenty for all?

At least the study authors are honest about the immense material footprint of renewable energy.

Nuclear power is not subject to these kinds of green limitations. France runs a modern, consumerist economy which derives just under 70% of its electricity from zero carbon nuclear. Even if reducing CO2 emissions turns out to be necessary, by embracing nuclear we could create a zero carbon economy which doesn’t involve people learning to love wearing rags.

Even better, nuclear energy will eventually open the way to retrieving an effectively endless supply of resources from non-terrestrial sources, when we finally exhaust Earth’s resources. Space drives of immense power such as Nuclear Thermal Propulsion and Project Orion (enough power for a manned starship, let alone an interplanetary transport) could make science fiction levels of non-terrestrial extractive industries economically viable – an option for resource acquisition and exploitation this sad green vision of the future will never deliver.

There are no limits to growth, other than those we choose to impose on ourselves.