The Age of Low Tech by Philippe Bihouix: review by Mark Garavan
For some time now a simple climate change narrative has been foregrounded in the political and media mainstream. This has been particularly evident in the wake of the most recent IPCC Report. In this narrative, climate change is acknowledged but is seen primarily as a problem of excess CO2 in the atmosphere. The key issue is presented as the need to reduce carbon by phasing out the burning of fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable forms of energy. The political fault-line is then drawn around how quickly one does this. Indeed, the substance of much of the various climate conferences has often centred on the question of the speed of this replacement. Conservatives want to move slowly, radicals quickly. In either case though the proposal being pushed forward is that the core challenge is simply to switch our energy source from carbon to various renewables and the issue of climate is solved. The current economic system then carries on and does so even better than before. Better because it is now rendered ‘sustainable’, that is, it can endure ad infinitum.
Philippe Bihouix’s book is a sharp wake-up call that cuts easily through this facile analysis. His book shows in clear terms not only just how simplistic this narrative is but how plain wrong it is. Drawing on straight-forward engineering assessments, he shows how renewable forms of energy cannot in a physical, literal sense replace carbon. The tangible raw materials required to fully replace carbon sources with new energy production methods simply don’t exist. Even the attempt to extract and produce them will precipitate the very climate crisis that the endeavour is seeking to avoid. More generally, new technological solutions, including the proffered ‘green technologies’, inevitably require vast material resources that just are not available…
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