The Old Future Is Gone, and Technology Won’t Bring It Back

A buildup of new energy capacity won’t flush oil and fossil gas out of the system.  Electricity generation from wind, solar, and biofuel sources has soared 50-fold since 2000, but the share of the world’s energy provided by fossil fuels fell only from 87 to 85 percent. In recent years, the global quantity of “human-made mass,” surpassed the total weight of all living plant, animal, and microbial biomass on Earth. This production of human-made stuff (the quantity of which has been doubling every 20 years or so) is triggering Earth-wide devastation, with climate disruption, mass species extinctions, and breakdown of entire ecosystems. Countless wind turbines will be required, each with a generator containing 60 tons or more of metal. The grid upgrade will require huge quantities of copper for new power lines as well as  copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel to produce hundreds of millions of tons of lithium-ion batteries for power storage. Many millions of batteries will also be needed to convert the national vehicle fleet to run on electricity.  Now, if plans to “electrify everything” are carried out worldwide, the tonnage of metal extracted and processed in the next 15 years alone will exceed the tonnage that humans have produced during the 5,000 years since the start of the Bronze Age.  Almost 400 new mines will be opened worldwide by 2035 just to keep battery factories supplied with cobalt, lithium, and nickel. Decade after decade, billions of tons of batteries will need to be replaced.  The alternative to a voracious, high-energy economy would be one that provides for just enough material production to equitably ensure a decent, satisfying life for all.