{"id":48454,"date":"2019-09-14T08:21:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T13:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48454"},"modified":"2019-09-14T08:21:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T13:21:22","slug":"a-globalised-solar-powered-future-is-wholly-unrealistic-and-our-economy-is-the-reason-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48454","title":{"rendered":"A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic \u2013 and our economy is the reason why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A globalised\u00a0solar-powered\u00a0future is wholly unrealistic \u2013 and our economy is the reason\u00a0why<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Over the past two centuries, millions of dedicated people \u2013 revolutionaries, activists, politicians, and theorists \u2013 have been unable to curb the disastrous and increasingly globalised trajectory of economic polarisation and ecological degradation. This is perhaps because we are utterly trapped in flawed ways of thinking about technology and economy \u2013 as the current discourse on climate change shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are not just generating climate change. They are giving more and more of us climate anxiety. Doomsday scenarios<\/a> are capturing the headlines at an accelerating rate. Scientists from all over the world tell us that emissions in ten years must be half of what they were ten years ago, or we face apocalypse. School children like Greta Thunberg<\/a> and activist movements like Extinction Rebellion<\/a> are demanding that we panic. And rightly so. But what should we do to avoid disaster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most scientists, politicians, and business leaders tend to put their hope in technological progress. Regardless of ideology, there is a widespread expectation that new technologies will replace fossil fuels by harnessing renewable energy such as solar and wind. Many also trust that there will be technologies for\u00a0removing carbon dioxide<\/a>\u00a0from the atmosphere and for \u201cgeoengineering<\/a>\u201d the Earth\u2019s climate. The common denominator in these visions is the faith that we can save modern civilisation if we shift to new technologies. But \u201ctechnology\u201d is not a magic wand. It requires a lot of money, which means claims on labour and resources from other areas. We tend to forget this crucial fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would argue<\/a>\u00a0that the way we take conventional \u201call-purpose\u201d money for granted is the main reason why we have not understood how advanced technologies are dependent on the appropriation of labour and resources from elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A globalised\u00a0solar-powered\u00a0future is wholly unrealistic \u2013 and our economy is the reason\u00a0why Over the past two centuries, millions of dedicated people \u2013 revolutionaries, activists, politicians, and theorists \u2013 have been unable to curb the disastrous and increasingly globalised trajectory of economic polarisation and ecological degradation. This is perhaps because we are utterly trapped in flawed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[27164,111,3193,674,1564,786,8487],"class_list":["post-48454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-alf-hornborg","tag-capitalism","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar-energy","tag-technology","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48455,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48454\/revisions\/48455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}