Five Problems with "Renewables"
It is often popular among environmentalists that "renewable energy technologies"
like hydrogen-electric power, photovoltaics, and wind-electic power are desirable
and sustainable replacements for the dirty technologies of industrial society.
However, those technologies have some downsides in a collapse context that are often overlooked, and are worth consideration.
1. The infrastructure for these technologies can not be
produced without massive energy inputs and ecocidal industrial practices
(such as mining) and are therefore useless in the long term,
after the collapse, if we wish to build an ecological society. For
instance, the industrial production of biofuels like ethanol currently
require as much energy to produce (counting tractor fuel, processing,
and synthetic fertilizer and pesticide inputs) as they yield in combustion,
which means that they are not a a true energy source.
2. State and military co-option: Some renewable
infrastructure consists of "remnant" artifacts, that is, artifacts
that were produced by civilization and that can't be recreated or
repaired indefinitely. As they become more rare, the state or military
will surely attempt to take them if they can be found. It is preferable
that these artifacts be destroyed to used by those people.
3. They may be detrimental to the community they are located in.
While they may buffer some of the crash, they may also prevent the community
from trying to adapt to their landbase, to learn and develop the appropriate
skills, and engage in ecodefense and community building. This is because continued
and increasingly less successful attempts to repair and maintain those artifacts
would draw time, energy, thought, work and expertise away from the other important
tasks at hand. Their presence could reinforce people's potential to cling to
patterns of thought and behaviour which we appropriate for living in industrial
civilization, but which are very maladaptive in their new circumstances.
4. Intercommunity Inequity: Their presence in one community may provoke
rivalry, jealousy, theft or sabotage from adjacent communities, since they are
a form of non-entitled wealth. Unlike simpler tools, food, or skills, they can
not be easily shared.
5. The infrastructure is heavy, and could influence a group to chose a
sedentary lifestyle in an area or bioregion where that is not advisable.
This inadvisability may be because of a low food source density in that area,
or because of post-collapse strife, state or military resurgence, ecological
collapse or fragility, or other reasons, which would make it necessary to leave
an area on a rotating or long-term basis. Staying in one area for reasons like
electrical power could be a lethal choice.
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