It will take decades to completely leave fossil fuels, writes Richard Heinberg. But we can do it, starting with the easy stuff: going big time for wind and solar, raising energy efficiency, replacing oil-fuelled vehicles, and moving to organic farming. But deeper changes will follow as we transition to a more enduring sustainability - consuming better, and much less.
A hundred years ago, markets ruled: fortunes were made, workers abused, bubbles blown. The Austrian School of economists, led by Ludwig von Mises, said this was fine: despite temporary messiness, the market knows best.
During the past weeks, the world’s media have been transfixed by the convulsions of the US and global fi nancial system. At stake are billions in bail-outs and trillions in derivatives. The viability of banks and currencies is threatened, and ultimately the savings and investments of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.
As the urgent necessity of our transition away from fossil fuels becomes plain, it’s inevitable that some of us will take that necessity seriously enough to explore the edges of ‘normal’ behaviour.
The question arises soon after readers or lecture audiences first become acquainted with global oil depletion and climate change. I must be asked it at least once a week.
Take relentless population growth. Add decades of expanding per capita resource consumption. Simmer slowly over rising global temperatures. What do you get? Traumatic information. That is, information that wounds us through the very act of obtaining it.
On 12 January, chief scientific adviser Sir David King told the Guardian, ‘any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change – including nuclear power – is one of “utter hopelessness”.’
