Welcome back! We’re opening our next year of A/UK by covering two articles that that have different takes on the bottom-line of economic growth and climate catastrophe.

First, a reminder from Nature Geoscience on the limits of “ecomodernism” - the approach that believes in technical innovation as a way to reduce carbon emissions to zero, while maintaining the kind of society we’re used to, with easy access to services, conveniences and mobility. However as the writers remind us:

The imagined clean-energy future envisions a transition to the widespread use of mineral-intensive, high-tech, low-carbon technologies [self-driving cars, solar and wind grids, etc]. Key to manufacturing these low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles and energy storage systems, are metals. Mining these metals comes with costs of environmental pollution and social disruption in the regions from which the minerals are extracted.

The production of low-carbon technologies raises ethical conundrums - such as local environmental degradation at the mining location for the clean, green socioeconomic advancement of the distant end-user. The clean-energy future does not represent a solution sustainable for all who inhabit this Earth.

So the “decoupling” of economic growth and resource-use might have been achieved, in some instances, at the national level, eg Sweden. But studies are showing that over the last decade, there has been a general global re-coupling of economics and resources (reporting on both tendencies, see this 2020 paper).

The Nature Geoscience writers are social scientists, who want to highlight that there are societal assumptions built into the green growth model. The “ethical conundrums” noted above would be addressed by a post- or de-growth model:

In our opinion, degrowth scientists convincingly argue against the concept of high-tech, low-carbon, green growth. Instead, they advocate for a future that does not require a shift from one extraction regime to another — from fossil fuels to minerals — but entails a transition to living under a different political and economic system with a radically smaller demand for resources.

Such a system champions low-tech technologies such as bicycles over high-tech technologies such as electric cars, and technologies are evaluated based on whether they allow for ecologically sustainable human–Earth relations everywhere, for instance, by being open source, durable and repairable.

Overall, the aim is to inhabit Earth while using less energy and with diminished demand upon its resources.

More here.

Against this, the RethinkX think-tank believes that a tighter focus on accelerating the development - through markets and capitalism - of certain prioritised technologies holds out the possibility for a real advance towards elimination of carbon emissions globally, within a very tight timeframe (the mid 2030s). We have covered them previously, and we’re reporting today on their new survey, Rethinking Climate Change: How Humanity Can Choose to Reduce Emissions 90% by 2035 through the Disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with Existing Technologies. In the executive summary, they claim that:

more than three quarters of global GHG emissions can be mitigated by just eight key technologies that are either already at market and able to scale immediately, or ready to begin deploying to market. (See graphic below)

This provides a guide for decision-making based on how to prioritize our efforts to maximize mitigation benefits as soon as possible. Without such a framework, decisionmakers are left with a scattershot rather than focused approach to fighting climate change, which runs the risk of misallocating financial, material, and political resources.

To maximize the climate benefits of these disruptions, investors, policymakers, civic leaders, and other decisionmakers should focus attention and resources in direct proportion to where the fastest and most impactful opportunities for emissions mitigation are located.

Since the overwhelming majority of these opportunities already lie in the Deploy and Scale stages, our primary efforts should be on enabling economic forces to do the heavy lifting by ensuring open, competitive, and transparent markets.

This means removing barriers that favor the incumbents such as utility monopolies in the energy sector, removing regulatory hurdles to electric and autonomous vehicles in the transportation sector, and removing livestock farming subsidies and protections in the food sector.

More here. You have to read the paper to assess the credibility of the RethinkX case. It’s trying to marry the tech-sector mania for “disruption” in business and technology paradigms, to the prioritisation of green hi-tech (much of it sourced from materials that the Nature Geoscience paper regarded as “ethically troubling”). There are doubts about the very functionality of self-driving electric cars at the moment, never mind their energy-efficient properties. And how culturally ready are we for lab meat?

We are not averse to the idea that hoarded and misdirected capital in the current economic system might be redirected towards, or see opportunities in, our inevitable zero-carbon future. But we also think that radically resource-light lifestyles and social commitments are going to be the pull for that, as well as any push from investors seeing the light. The gap between these two papers is one worth exploring.

Eco hi-tech can speed us to our climate targets - but the resources they need can immiserate many. The conundrums of "green" growth