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The Failure of Imagination — Part 1
Up until a warm sunny afternoon in May 2019 I had what I would call a rather ordinary concept of the future. I was 37 back then with two little devils — masquerading as my sons — a wife and decent job. I didn’t give too much thought to the fate of this civilization, but when I did, I thought that by the time I grow old I would still be living under the same government structure, behind the same borders, would have a car (most probably with a petrol engine), and the usual digital gimmickry— all under the same climate, or maximum a couple of tenths of centigrade warmer than today. In other words: everything would be just like it were in 2019.
Knowing what I know today about this civilization’s trajectory, its resources, overshoot, the climate, the state of our ecosystem and the many other predicaments, I had to realize that the future will be a whole lot different than the present or the recent past.
I had to realize that I was a victim of a failed collective imagination.
The current state of affairs starts to remind more and more scholars to the terminal stage of empires long lost. One of the recurring themes in such ages is the ‘failure of imagination’, not only on the side of the elites, but in the case of commoners too. This civilization too, just like the ones preceding it, seems to have lost the capability to imagine any other future for itself other than the continuation of the present, only ‘greener’. The future we are sold would be only slightly different, but certainly better and a whole lot more sustainable than the past (sic!). The alternatives vary around ‘much more’ and ‘helluva lot more’ technology, capitalism and growth.
Less is not an option.
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False Dichotomies…in an age of a planetary crisis
Environmentalism, and thinking about our future in general has become a victim if false dichotomies (1). These deeply dividing questions are mere distractions however, steering attention away from the underlying predicaments our societies are unwilling to address.
Let’s take the following example…
Fossil fuels — or — Renewables?
A true classic. Notice how this one tries to reduce the complex question of climate change, and in a broader sense humanity’s impact on a massively complex ecosystem called Earth to the simple question of how shall we produce electricity. (Feel free to replace ‘renewables’ with green hydrogen, fusion, tidal wave energy, nuclear, etc. at this point.) If there were a contest to win the title of being the textbook example of a red herring fallacy (2) — this one would surely be among the finalists.
In the real world electricity generation is a mere quarter of our total energy use, while the rest (high heat, transportation, chemical processes and many more) are almost exclusively coming from, or powered by fossil fuels. Not least the entire supply chain of renewables: from mining, through smelting, manufacturing, installation and maintenance. Paradoxical it may sound, but fossil fuels are essential to renewables.
While in theory some of the processes can be electrified, most of them cannot, or the proposed solutions simply do not scale — not even on paper. We are planning to shift completely away from fossil fuels (or turn their emissions ‘net zero’) in a couple of decades, while the globe’s infrastructure took one and a half century, and the best of our resources to build…
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