Deny, baby, deny

Energy security and environmental sustainability aren’t just two sides of the same coin, they’re two aspects of the same principle. We all want to be able to forget about the threat of losing what we have. The challenge that comes with our reliance on fossil fuels is, at its core, all about finding alternatives that we don’t have to worry about. Renewable sources. Clean sources. Domestic sources.

Civilization should be concerned with more than just a reliable and affordable source of energy. Government should be devoted to ensuring a fair crack at peace, order, justice, health, liberty, equality, fraternity, and, if you prefer, the pursuit of happiness. That’s quite enough to fill the legislative agenda of our elected representatives, without piling on the need to locate, guard and exploit energy.

And yet, governments everywhere are obsessed by necessity with energy. How did we get here?

By not acknowledging two facts that have been widely known for more a long time. First, sooner or later we’re going to run out of organic fossil fuels. Second, returning all that carbon to the atmosphere several orders of magnitude faster than it was removed will produce profound changes to the biosphere.

Some have argued that it’s just bad luck that we’re only figuring out just how much we’ve altered the carbon budget and heat balance of the planet now, when it might be too late to jump off this particular train without suffering fatal injuries. But that’s simply not true.

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