“In the earthquakes that are to come, I hope I won’t let my cigar go out through bitterness” [2] —Bertolt Brecht (in his “Poor Man’s Ballad”)

A Nature editorial

A notable editorial in Nature, in March 2022, reaffirms the results of the 1972 study The Limits to Growth (the first of the Club of Rome reports), and notes:

Although there’s now a consensus that human activities have irreversible environmental effects, researchers disagree on the solutions — especially if that involves curbing economic growth. That disagreement is impeding action. It’s time for researchers to end their debate. The world needs them to focus on the greater goals of stopping catastrophic environmental destruction and improving well-being.” [3]

The Nature editorial goes on to argue that, once the existence of biophysical limits to growth is accepted, the debate today centres on two principal positions, green growth versus degrowth, and that they should each make an effort to talk with one another. [4]

It is, without a doubt, a key debate, one that is repeated, with variations, at different levels. To take an example close to home, a friend (and fellow activist in Ecologistas en Acción) told me in June 2022 that the debate on the ecological transition (and the energy transition in particular) is extraordinarily complicated. It is creating divisions among us in the ecological movements[1]. “The question is whether we can get to where we want to (a society that respects biophysical limits) by modifying and reducing an industrialised system, or whether it can be done directly. And it doesn’t look like we have much time for either option.” [5] The question is posed in the same way in the Nature editorial.

I would say that the situation, in the third decade of the third millennium, is tragic: we cannot avoid a hellish climate without an emergency economic contraction (in the global North), rapidly ending capitalist relations of production. [6] And there is certainly room to doubt whether such a transformation is on the horizon. But let’s look at it step by step…

What is an ecological transition?

As industrial societies rush towards catastrophic scenarios, we need an ecological transition. César Rendueles writes: “We must fight together for a just, planned, and public ecological transition, but being clear that a slow and optimal transition is infinitely worse than a fast but less fair one.” [7] Well, let’s try to clarify what an ecological transition is and what optimal or suboptimal possibilities are available to us.

What is an ecological transition? I would say that it is a socioeconomic transformation, based on the evidence of ecological overshoot, which frees up ecological space so that dignified lives are possible for those who are exploited, marginalised, and humiliated today; and so that we can coexist well with the myriad of living beings with whom we share the common home that is the biosphere of Mother Earth. The basic idea of meeting fundamental human needs within planetary boundaries is still enlightening.

The acid test, to identify a true ecological transition, is that it would manage to avoid (or at least significantly reduce) the likelihood of ecocide plus genocide towards which we are heading.

The mere haphazard addition of wind turbines and photovoltaics to our electrical system is not an ecological transition. And we must begin by pointing out that a “carbon tunnel vision” is a kind of reductionism that we cannot afford. [8] But the absence of a systemic approach means that in the debates on ecological transitions the ecological-social problem is always reduced to climate change, the energy problem to electricity generation, and the destruction of the web of life to nothing (because we generally ignore it: we prefer to look the other way). The height of reductionism is reached when one tries to limit criticism of the current model of deployment of hyper-technological renewables [9] to a matter of preserving the view! [10]

What we are suffering from is not just a climate crisis that can be solved with technological transformations driven by “green capitalism”. I wish it were so; we would have much more room for manœuvre! But our real situation is much more difficult. It is a crisis of civilization: a systemic and global crisis the fundamental responsibility for which lies with a capitalism that generates immense external costs for which it takes no responsibility [11], and whose self-expanding dynamic seeks to make the market economy grow indefinitely without taking into account the planetary biophysical boundaries. As long as that does not change, as long as we are not capable of systemic change, it will not matter how many short-term technological fixes we apply. [12]

A few years ago, in my book Ecosocialismo descalzo [Barefoot Ecosocialism], I suggested an image that I think accurately captures the situation we find ourselves in. In their rush forward, industrial societies resemble a runner in a hurdle race, but with hurdles getting closer and increasing in height (diminishing returns conditioned by the second law of thermodynamics!)… and the runner trusts to their magic running shoes, which the multinational shoe company is about to make for them, or so they assure them. [13] One hurdle is the peak in oil extraction (peak oil), but a little further on is the even more fearsome hurdle of the joint “peak” of all non-renewable forms of energy. Close to it is the ongoing depletion of phosphates (with potentially devastating consequences for the dominant model of industrial agriculture; this is a matter of decisive importance almost completely absent from public debate). [14] A little further on are the depletion of aquifers and world fisheries, and the “peaks” of essential metals and minerals for industrial economies, from neodymium to lithium through to tantalum and tellurium. There are also multiple hurdles linked to the degradation of ecosystems and the Sixth Great Extinction of living species… And, to be sure, the terrible hurdles of global warming, with its multiple consequences (among them ocean acidification). A scenario that, according to optimistic forecasts, will become apocalyptic in the second half of the 21^st century; and according to pessimistic forecasts, between ten and twenty years from now.

Unjustified energy pessimism?

Yet might there be more leeway than pessimists realise? Throughout 2022, in Spain, an intellectual controversy took place in the form of an attack against supposed analytical weaknesses in the positions pejoratively termed “collapsist”[2], in the work of researchers such as Antonio Turiel or Luis González Reyes. [15] Among these weaknesses would be unjustified pessimism about energy, which would mean that ecosocial collapses are more improbable and the timescales for the ecosocial crisis are longer than what the so-called “collapsists” estimate.

Now, it is true that the short-term energy shortages that peak oil scholars and activists anticipated in the early 2000s have not occurred on a global scale. The extraction and processing of unconventional hydrocarbons (especially thanks to fracking techniques in the US) has allowed us to buy some time: continuing the forward surge of the societies of the core capitalist countries for a few more years. The lower EROI (rate of energy return on investment) of these oil-like liquids and gases is diluted in the global energy mix and, as Juan Carlos Barba suggested, this production “can ensure several decades of energy viability for the current economic model”. [16] In the 2010s Jørgen Randers came to a similar conclusion with his future scenarios. [17]

But is this really good news? The best that can be expressed is a feeling of bittersweet unease, for this potential, temporary, extension of fossil capitalism’s viability increases the probability of a much worse collapse, due to the degradation of the biosphere to the point of making an uninhabitable Earth (for beings like us). In particular, the danger increases that the greater GHG emissions will tip us into runaway climate change and, with this rapid and uncontrolled warming, leading to an untold devastation of the biosphere. The collapse would be postponed at the cost of aggravating it.

It almost goes without saying that the war in Ukraine and the militaristic “return of geopolitics” (which never really went away) means that fossil fuels will continue to be used until their complete economic exhaustion (as nothing can replace them to power the heavy machinery of armies and societies that want to be superpowers) and that nuclear energy will continue to be deployed, not because it is advantageous for producing electricity (it is ruinous in that sense), but because of its close association with the manufacture of nuclear weapons. [18]

Addition instead of replacement

The long phase of energy decline, in whose early stages we find ourselves, will lead us, whether we accept it or not, to societies that are more austere in both energy and material terms. [19] But for now we continue trying to grow by any means. Richard Heinberg has adequately summarised our situation: renewable energies are not replacing the energy from fossil fuels, but rather adding to it. [20] As Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has been pointing out for years, and Jaume Franquesa now reiterates, strictly speaking, the energy transition does not exist: sources are not being replaced, but new energy capacity is being added from new sources, while global energy use continues to grow. [21] And despite all the investments and installations of renewable energy, global GHG emissions continue to rise. [22]

That is largely due to economic growth: While renewable energy supplies have expanded in recent years, global energy use has skyrocketed even further, with the difference being provided by fossil fuels. The more the world economy grows, the more difficult it is for renewable energy additions to turn the tide by actually replacing fossil fuel power, rather than simply augmenting it.

“In the year 2000, global dependency on fossil fuels was around 90% and twenty years later this percentage only dropped to 83%. The fact that the participation of these fuels in the energy mix has been reduced by only 7% in twenty years does not mean that today we consume less hydrocarbons than before, on the contrary: current consumption is 40% higher than then. This shows another of the characteristics of the history of energy transitions until now: we have never replaced one source with another, but rather added new sources to the previous ones. The history of energy transitions has been a history of additions.” [23]

There will be no real energy transition without seeking a radical decrease (in the use of energy and materials) that our societies are not even considering at the moment. And, on the other hand, continuing to add electricity generation with renewables without touching the other elements of the system submerges us ever more deeply under the corporate control of energy (and, through this, under the control over society as a whole) [24] and within the dynamics of colonial/neocolonial extractivism that are already very powerful today. [25]

What they call transition isn’t any such thing

Xan López, a proponent of the Green New Deal from the Madrid collective Contra el Diluvio [against the flood], suggests that we should call climate delayism “the position that denies the need for urgent or aggressive action to mitigate or adapt to the effects of that climate change” (a position that, of course, places such delayism from the outset in the realm of irrationality, and puts the bulk of the ecological movement out of any accusation of delayism). He goes on to point out that,

An infinity of concerns can come together in climate delayism, many of them not only legitimate, but easy to understand and support. I am thinking of the concern for the environmental impact, for the deepening of territorial inequality, in the distrust towards energy companies, the State, and in general the interference in our towns or regions by foreign powers. Others may have less appeal, but be capable of mobilising a significant number of people, such as the impact on very specific business interests, or the simple desire to reject the costs of an energy transition without rejecting its benefits. [26]

In a very significant way, among the “legitimate concerns” identified, the most important of the reasons that can lead to the motto, “Renewables, yes, but not like this”, is missing: that what is presented as an energy transition (merely adding photovoltaic solar modules and wind generators) is no such thing. Any supposed energy transition that does not aim firstly, in the global North, at ways to live well while greatly lowering energy and materials consumption, is not an ecological transition.

A civilizational trap

We are decades, if not a century, late with this transition.

Ethanol was first used in combustion engines in 1826. Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine in 1890 with the intention of running it on biological fuel. The first practical battery, the Daniell cell, was invented in 1836. The first hydrogen fuel cell was invented in 1839. The energy crises in the 1970s led to the Department of Energy being established in 1977, and since then billions of dollars have funded university and national lab research on energy. The basic and unsolved problem is that alternative sources of energy require fossil fuels for every step of their life cycle. [27]

For example, producing polysilicon is a highly electricity-intensive process. The German analyst Johannes Bernreuter points out that three-quarters of existing polysilicon, an essential component for the construction of photovoltaic cells, comes from Chinese factories… whose electricity is generated largely from coal. [28] Now with the increase in demand for photovoltaic cells to power a “green energy transition”, what is foreseeable is a concomitant explosion in the use of coal. [29] In fact, in 2022 China authorised two new coal-fired power plants per week (106 GW from new projects authorised in one year). [30] Thus we delude ourselves, pretending that the displacements of impacts are real reductions of them…

The dependency of our high-tech renewables on fossil fuels is a central issue. [31]

…investment in renewable energy is itself highly energy intensive. What this means is that, in the short run, we’re going to need more of the black stuff. (…) John Hess, the chief executive of the U.S. independent oil producer bearing his name, predicts that $16 trillion of planned green investments will ‘turbocharge’ demand for oil in the near future. [32]

Or as Antonio Turiel explains:

To date no one has been able to build a hydroelectric dam, a wind turbine or a photovoltaic panel in such a way that fossil fuels are not used in their manufacture, installation, maintenance, and eventual dismantling. No one has done it with just renewable energy because it is not clear that it can be done. Perhaps it could be done with some clever new technology, but surely we would spend more energy than the system would give us back, so that we would have an energy sink and not an energy source. Furthermore, we do not realise that materials we take for granted, such as cement and steel, are critically dependent on the existence of fossil fuels. Nobody addresses this problem seriously because it is insurmountable. It is by no means proven that these systems can be constructed without fossil fuels. In fact, some authors say that the current renewable systems, the electric ones, are only extensions of fossil fuels. Obviously they have a smaller carbon footprint, they emit less CO₂ per unit of energy produced, but without fossil CO₂ they cannot be started up. [33]

And going a little deeper into the matter: as Óscar Carpintero and Jaime Nieto observe, the construction of these high-tech renewable devices implies being able to reach high temperatures in the industry: between 1,480ºC and 1,980ºC for photovoltaic panels; between 980ºC and 1,700ºC for the cement and steel of the wind turbines [34]. Practically speaking, with large-scale production in view, this requires using high-density fuels such as oil, coal, or gas.

While it is technically possible to produce such temperatures using technologies powered by renewables-provided electricity, we must ask how practical and affordable it would be to try to produce photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, on the mass scale envisioned by the “green” energy transition, in that manner. The physicist Carlos de Castro, a colleague of Carpintero and Nieto in the Group for Energy, Economics and System Dynamics at the University of Valladolid, maintains: “In practice, it is crazy to try to produce heat above 1,000ºC using photovoltaics or wind. This heat is much more expensive than if we burn gas, and its EROI is not worth it.” [35]

Further, as Carpintero and Nieto point out:

…a massive renewable electrification of these processes (apart from the reduction in EROI that it would bring about) would also require replacing large amounts of industrial equipment and machinery used for these heating processes (ovens, etc.), which are now largely powered by coal and fossil fuels. [36]

Feasible Recipes vs. Viable Technologies

Now, assuming that alternative energy sources require fossil fuels for every step of their life cycle, let’s assume for the sake of the argument – it’s a huge assumption – that a transition to “100% renewable” (conventionally understood) was achieved in the strict deadlines imposed by the climate tragedy, two or three decades (in reality, the urgency imposed by the ongoing climate tragedy is greater, and the previous energy transitions of industrial society needed much longer time frames). [37] In that period of transition, GHG emissions would hardly decrease or could even increase (due to the already mentioned dependence on fossil fuels and the economic growth that is still being sought). This is what Mariano Vázquez Espí (member of the Architecture, Urbanism and Sustainability Research Group of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) has proposed (only half jokingly) to call the “Carpintero paradox” (after ecological economist Óscar Carpintero, professor at the University of Valladolid), in the vein of the Jevons Paradox (which demonstrated that the increase in the efficiency of steam engines, far from reducing coal consumption, overall increased it). “I formulate it”, says Vázquez Espí, “in my own way, without the author’s permission: In the current situation, building everything necessary for a transition to all renewables by 2050 or so, far from reducing GHG emissions, will increase them”. [38]

The useful life of wind turbines and photovoltaic cells is situated, at most, in that period: two or three decades. So that, as soon as the installation of the first generation of machines was completed, it would be necessary to start replacing them. How would it be done, if we do not have high-tech systems for capturing renewable energy that reproduce themselves?

And do not think that we have suddenly come across this problem: half a century ago, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen already formulated it in these terms.

Viable technologies based on solar radiation or on nuclear reactions require immense amounts of matter for their scaffolds—the former for concentrating a low intensity, the latter for constraining a dreadfully high intensity. Only fossil fuels can be used with smaller installations, in some cases with virtually none at all. …matter seems to be a technological factor as crucial as energy. [39]

As Ernest Garcia has recalled on numerous occasions [40], Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen made a distinction between feasible recipes (things we know how to do) and viable technologies (sets of feasible recipes self-sustaining by a basic feed process). One could also speak of self-reproducing socio-technical systems or durable technical matrices. Viable technologies must be self-reproducing.

Georgescu-Roegen said that, throughout human history, only two viable technologies have existed: the control of fire (pre-industrial societies, or Prometheus I) and the steam engine (industrial societies, or Prometheus II). Now that the fossil energy model is coming to an end, what, if any, will be the third viable technology (Prometheus III)? [41]

As Art Berman explains:

A 100% renewable economy is fine only if we are willing to accept a lower living standard and much smaller population than we have today. Humans have never gone from a higher to a lower density energy source. A renewable energy world would have a smaller and less productive economy because of the lower energy density of its primary source. I am an advocate for solar and wind, and I take climate change very seriously. It is, however, critical that people know the truth: the world will be much poorer when fossil energy is abandoned. [42]

If we do not grasp the profound dependence of industrial societies on fossil fuels, we will underestimate the difficulties of any serious post-capitalist ecosocial transition. And if we open our eyes to the profoundly fossil-based character of capitalism, a phenomenal strategic difficulty appears: decarbonizing means impoverishing ourselves [43], and it seems very difficult to mobilise society in pursuit of climatic and ecological objectives that go hand in hand with a certain amount of impoverishment. Such is the hard pill we have to swallow, not sugarcoat it. (And then, of course, we can and should clarify what is poverty and wealth, what is scarcity and abundance, and how good lives for everyone are thinkable with much less use of energy and materials.) [44]

Letting go

The key word for any ecological transition is less (degrowth), but we are determined to continue using more. “If there are no photovoltaic panels”, we are told, “there will be coal, gas and oil”. What is left out of the debate beforehand is the only thing that would really get us off the path of ecocide plus genocide: using (much) less energy…

Merely adding (electricity generation capacity with renewables) is not making any transition. It is also necessary to relinquish, to do without, to know how to let go. That is very difficult, almost always, in our personal lives. The same is true in our collective life.

Another way of enunciating the key word for a true ecological transition, if we are talking in the Global North, would be renunciation (or áskesis, in the Greek). Give up segments of the human domain; the appropriation of ecological space; the colonial exploitation that became neocolonial; the patriarchal abuse of women; the entertainment that plunders our conscience and attention; the comfort that conceals the structures of crime.

I know that renunciation is not a popular idea. But what will happen when, despite the penetration of wind and photovoltaics in the electrical systems of some countries, GHG emissions continue to increase on a planetary scale, as they are doing now? What will happen when more and more countries on the periphery collapse? What will happen if we enter the runaway climate change phase and have to give up almost everything for lost?

As a researcher and popularizer pointed out on Twitter, high-tech renewables are admirable devices that cannot sustain this civilizational model or help with the ecological overshoot:

The main focus would have to be how we reduce and simplify our civilization to live within the planetary ecological limits and at the same time cover the basic needs of the entire population. This and no other is the great challenge of the decade. Within this real ecological transition (strong reduction in production and consumption), renewables have a role to play. [45]

Let’s conclude. In trying to hang on to our excessive levels of energy consumption in a world that is set on a course of energy decline, we will heap ever more external costs upon the peoples and countries of the periphery (in a neocolonially structured world system) and upon nature (with ever greater sacrifice zones, and perpetrating an ecocide that is also a crime against ourselves). There will be a relevant change in electricity generation in countries like Spain (where it is under way) and they will call it the “ecological transition”. But it will be just playing with words, because, unfortunately, it will not pass the test of practice: avoiding the ecocide plus genocide towards which we are advancing. And we will deceive ourselves, acting like we are working on the problem, like the drunk looking for the keys under the lamppost. [46]

The crucial question of the ecological transition is not how many MW of wind and photovoltaic solar power we are going to be able to plug into the electricity grid [47], but, what new levels of love, justice, and rationality are we going to be able to deploy? And at the moment we are not responding well…

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Jorge Riechmann

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[1] Translator’s note: “movimientos ecologistas” in Spanish. “Ecologismo”, as used by various movements, can have shades of meaning that distinguish it in significant respects from mainstream environmentalism. Such movements tend to call for deep changes of the currently dominant systems and ways of life, beyond merely regulating or reforming them.

[2] Translator’s note: “colapsista” in Spanish.

[3] Translators’ note: This refers to a debate in Spanish media that took place in 2021, when President Pedro Sánchez (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) replied to the Minister of Consumption Affairs Alberto Garzón (United Left, communist and degrowther), who had asked for a smaller consumption of meat in Spanish diets, with a kind of humorous defence of steaks.