re: energy

Some of us are starting to get a premonition that a future of Solar Arrays Everywhere might be pretty ugly. It might be pretty destructive of habitat re: All Our Relations. On the other hand, maybe technological progress in that area will get the panels down to smaller sizes so that they become less obtrusive.

Some de-growthers, like Ted Trainer, say the only solution will be less energy usage. But they may be forgetting how clever human beings are.

Our planet flies around close to a gigantic energy source. The amount of energy that comes in every day from the sun is a zillion times more than we currently use to power industrialism. If we could harness just double what we do now, we could, technologically, keep going indefinitely with all the production, consumption, extraction, pollution, exploitation, population.

In a certain sense we happen to be sustainability experts. If we’ve over-fished the oceans, well, we’ll perfect fish-farming. If we’ve decimated the insect population, well, we’ll automate pollination. If natural stuff disappears, well, we’ll fabricate substitutes in the laboratory.

With those prospects, I think the critique needs to focus on the immorality of what we’re doing to all the other fauna and flora (to “God’s creation”) and what we’re doing to the human quality of life.