Towards the end of 2022, I was a panelist at a session on climate change organized by a leading academic conference. Near the end of the session, a prominent scientist declared that we needed to be ‘realistic’. Oil and gas won’t run out any time soon, and we’ve had to accept that as we try to solve the climate crisis.
Of course, the oil and gas industry has this debate all the time, but I recently heard it from a scientist such as someone who attended that conference. Even some environmentalists thrive when they embrace the idea that natural gas should be a “bridge fuel.” But carbon pollution from burning oil and gas (and coal), along with deforestation and livestock farming, contribute to the climate crisis. Is it realistic to think that the problem can be solved while continuing with the behavior that caused it?
A few years ago, I gave a speech at my college commencement, “Don’t be realistic.” I told the graduates in front of me that the plea for “realism” is often used to dissuade those who think the world could be a different place. Those who make them seek to justify the status quo and undermine our ambition to be agents of change. One. An excuse to resist change.
This is not the only time in history that the United States has been asked not to change. This country was founded as a partially enslaved country. At the Constituent Assembly, a fierce battle was fought over whether a nation, freely conceived and devoted to the proposition that all men are created equal, should allow a portion of its population to remain in bondage. Those who advocated the preservation of slavery argued that its abolition was impractical.
Eighty years later, when Abraham Lincoln faced the issue of emancipation, he also faced realist arguments. Some said it was unrealistic to think that former slaves could become self-sufficient members of the republic, or that society was ready to accept them as citizens. In some respects, his second claim was correct. After nearly his century to abolish slavery, the United States has taken another her century to overcome the remnants of enforced segregation, physical violence, and grossly unequal protection under the law. was legally abolished. When Martin Luther King Jr. marched for civil rights in Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, he was advised not to argue too hard. He was advised to take it easy.
But it was his wildly unrealistic expectation of a country that would practice what it preached, a country where all people, not just white men, were not only made equal, but treated equally. It was an exorbitant belief that it was possible to have. That unrealistic expectation helped bring about a new reality.
A truly real solution to climate change is “significant decarbonisation”. That is, reorganizing the energy system to rely on technologies that do not cause carbon pollution. Recent scientific analysis shows that this work must begin immediately and cut emissions in half by 2030 to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
To achieve this goal, we need to turn our attention to proven technology that can do most of the work. This means a rapid expansion of wind and solar, complemented by hydropower, biomass reactors and existing nuclear energy. It also means developing policies that promote energy efficiency. This means focusing research dollars on the energy storage and grid improvements needed to make the most of the wind and sun.
And that means not getting distracted by promises of breakthroughs that may or may not come on time. John MasseyHe worked at Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation centers of the mid-20th century.
Conventional realism argues that we cannot live any other way than we currently do. The fossil fuel industry claims it cannot live without its products. However, history shows that humans have lived and thrived in many different forms. It is not unreasonable to think that in the future we will be able to live less destructive lives than we do now. I need to find it.
