One of the key features of neoliberalism is the abandonment of administration. That is, in the period following the Second World War, there was a growing recognition that economic complexity required a greater degree of economic intervention. In the UK, for example, it was clear that strategic sectors (without which the war would have been lost) such as railways, steel working and coal mining, had to be maintained despite private corporations being unable to operate them profitably. And so, the state was obliged to employ people who knew how to get things done. And crucially, parliament itself was largely comprised of politicians who had worked on the shop floor or had had to meet a wage bill. Professional politicians were a tiny minority in those days.
Fast forward to today, and parliament is stuffed full of professional gobshites with no experience of operating or managing anything in the real world. The same goes for full-time government employees, who no longer have public infrastructure to operate, but merely oversee the lavish distribution of corporate welfare. In between government and the real world is a price-gouging cabal of consultancies, supplemented by tame think-tanks and NGOs, which tell government what to think, and then take large sums of money to (largely fail to) implement policy. And overseeing the system are the plethora of unaccountable supranational organs like the IMF, World Bank, WHO, WEF, and European Commission, each of which apparently believing that human-made laws can reverse the laws of physics.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the risible net zero policies adopted in Europe and laughed at by the rest of the world. At the root of the farce is the belief by the self-identifying European leaders that technological progress can continue on an exponential upward curve. In part, this seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Moore’s Law, which held that the number of circuits on a computer chip would double every two years – which it did… until we ran out of physical space. In part, it derives from the commercial process of product development in which the technology improves, and prices fall as mass production and economies of scale kick-in.
To the casual observer, it appears that permanent – and possibly infinite – technological improvement is built-in. Indeed, this belief has provided Big Tech with a kind of get-out-of-jail-free mantra for every time the technology fails (which is increasingly often these days):
It is only a prototype It will improve It is inevitable.
It is this kind of thinking which underpins the delusional proposition that we can replace the annual 137,236.67-Terawatt hours of energy we consume from oil, coal and gas, with wind and solar which currently accounts for just 6.5 percent (8,935.84 Terawatt hours) of that. To do so would require the construction of a Hornsea offshore wind farm (which cost nearly £3bn and took 10 years to build) every day between now and 2050… something which any serious examination of the material costs renders impossible:
The root of the problem is philosophical. The belief that technology can be permanently improved is simply wrong. As this Open University course on environmental management explains, technological development follows an “S” curve:
“The S-curve shows the innovation from its slow early beginnings as the technology or process is developed, to an acceleration phase (a steeper line) as it matures and, finally, to its stabilisation over time (the flattening curve), with corresponding increases in performance of the item or organisation using it. Over time, the technology reaches its technological limit of usefulness or competitive advantage.”
We see this process unfold in the development of steam locomotives from Trevithick’s 1804 prototype to Gresley’s Mallard reaching the 126mph steam record in 1938, or from the 1904 Wright Flyer to the Concorde – the latter also including a “radical” switch from piston to jet engines which might be equated to the switch to lithium-ion in battery technology. Crucially, these end points are beyond the economic limit – both the Pacific class luxury trains and the Concorde were forms of taxpayer-funded luxury travel that only the wealthy could afford, so that both became politically unsustainable. Translated into physics, the energy and material cost of further improvement was greater than the returns.
At this point, we may choose to believe that there were a whole series of cheap and easy technological improvements which the best minds employed somehow failed to notice. And so, far from reaching – and likely exceeding – the economic (i.e., energy and material) limits to improvement, with the right financial incentives, the technologies of the net zero project might be about to undergo a kind of quantum leap which will allow wind turbines to out-power combined cycle gas turbines and electric cars to travel thousands of miles between charges. But before we bet humanity’s future on this, we might stop to consider that the proposed technologies of the energy transition have been around for a very, very long time. Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery” in 1749, although the first recognisable device for storing and discharging electricity was developed by Volta in 1800. The first electric car was developed by English inventor Thomas Parker in 1884, with the first commercial version developed by German engineer Andreas Flocken in 1888. The previous year, 1887, saw the development of the first electricity-generating wind turbine by American scientist Charles F. Brush. (Note also that these were inventions of the late coal-age originating in the three leading economies of the nineteenth century).
The point is that all of the cheap and easy improvements to these technologies – which are central to the “green” project – were discovered and deployed long ago. Moreover, each have physical limits which are well understood. So that, no amount of neoliberal techno-fantasising on the part of Herr Schwab and his acolytes nor empty legislation on the part of the Marie Antoinettes in European parliaments is going to achieve that which is only possible in science fiction movies. To return to that Open University course:
“In radical innovation, the ‘gap’ or discontinuity… conveys the sense of a break from one technology to the other, newer, radical technology. Thus a radical technology fulfils the same need, but is based on a different knowledge and practice base. An example might be photographic film being largely replaced by digital storage media in digital cameras. Paradigm paralysis is when an organisation resists the shift to the new idea, process or product. One example is the Kodak photographic company, traditionally a hugely innovative company responsible for the invention of the digital camera, but which continued to prioritise its commitment to film and printing of images despite the digital revolution in camera and media technologies.”
The biggest “radical innovations” though, have tended to follow a shift in primary energy. Early industrial technology, powered by animals, wind or water were puny compared to the technologies which developed in the steam age. And these in turn were eclipsed by oil age technologies. But while innovations – like the digital camera and the lithium-ion battery – of the late oil age are impressive in terms of miniaturisation and resource efficiency, there is little more in the way of improvement to be made. The same goes for the net zero technologies. Indeed – as is increasingly evident in the European economies – the consequence of diverting ever more public funds to inefficient and intermittent energy sources is that the wider infrastructure – including Europe’s remaining heavy industry – is falling apart… the reason you’re eating out of a foodbank is because the Green-Industrial Complex ate your lunch. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, “the problem with neoliberalism is that it eventually runs out of other people’s money.”
Is there a viable alternative? Probably not. The most likely short-term future is that, beginning in the UK and across Europe more generally, we are about to experience a collapse in living standards worse than the Great Depression. And when this occurs, we will be left with a long list of things which we still know how to do, but which can no longer be done in practice – probably including grid-scale electricity generation. Globally, we are likely to see an end to the current neoliberal green fantasy in favour of a combination of nuclear (because it is potentially far more energy-dense than fossil fuels) and geoengineering (because preventing sunlight reaching the Earth is the only even vaguely viable means of halting global warming)… and even this – somewhat dystopian – future will have to come out of the BRICS block, because the neoliberal western empire is simply too ossified and dilapidated to change course.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
This last para encapsulates my thinking .. I've posted on this yonks ago:
The most likely short-term future is that, beginning in the UK and across Europe more generally, we are about to experience a collapse in living standards worse than the Great Depression. And when this occurs, we will be left with a long list of things which we still know how to do, but which can no longer be done in practice – probably including grid-scale electricity generation. Globally, we are likely to see an end to the current neoliberal green fantasy in favour of a combination of nuclear (because it is potentially far more energy-dense than fossil fuels) and geoengineering (because preventing sunlight reaching the Earth is the only even vaguely viable means of halting global warming)… and even this – somewhat dystopian – future will have to come out of the BRICS block, because the neoliberal western empire is simply too ossified and dilapidated to change course.
"The reason you’re eating out of a foodbank is because the Green-Industrial Complex ate your lunch." As if there is any real green thinking behind any active political policy in the UK.
De industrialisation was Thatcher's way of attacking the working class and the service economy which replaced it is a ponzi scheme. Not a green industrial policy in sight.
I've read all the articles posted here and John Grey was saying much the same 20 years ago. Conditioning us for failure and hopelessness as the rich continue to feed off the despairing.
Technology isn't a solution but organising and solidarity is a mitigation and I don't read any of that from this sheep guy.
yes. no doubt we're f....d. it was this certainty and my incredulity at the lack of apparent concern in the media which led me by a round about route to media lens in 2005. The media are complicity but CoS it's preaching helplessness.
There are mitigations. We can manage deflation or let the balloon burst. The former requires that we organise bottom up.
From his past writings this not my impression. In my dictionary reactionary is a synonym for ultra conservative.
"The reason you’re eating out of a foodbank is because the Green-Industrial Complex ate your lunch." As if there is any real green thinking behind any active political policy in the UK.
Well, there is NetZero, the current active economic and political policy by the government to mitigate climate change. In my view this is putting lipstick on the pig. You cannot square the circle of capitalist growth forever in the matrix of financialization and neoliberal rent extraction.
He is perhaps exaggerating when he mentions Green-Industrial Complex, probably because he is angry. At the end of the day, this new ‘green’ policy is just an extension and a new variation of the ole Thatcher’s deindustrialisation and neoliberal policy which has now accelerated using the new tool, so to speak.
Furthermore, this de-industrialisation of the west, goes hand-in-hand with the globalised economy as per Shwab and in the US of A i.e. transferring the industrial production to the Third World, at cheaper rates, essentially.
Technology isn't a solution but organising and solidarity is a mitigation and I don't read any of that from this sheep guy.
Tim Watkins doesn’t tout technology as the answer to all our problems, in fact he argues the opposite. He examines how humanity has used the energy resources historically and the limits to growth.
I don’t disagree that solidarity is a mitigation per se, but for that one needs to have a clear picture of where one is going. He provides that.
Don’t think he claims to provide solutions except when he is musing. If anything, he has warned about the catastrophic collapse (Depression etc.) and what possible outcomes you may get from that scenario in terms of societal changes.
I need stronger arguments to get me to believe this guy is a reactionary.
I don't use your dictionary. reactionary is not a synonym for ultraconservative, not did I intend to use it as such. Blaming green policy for pauperisation of the population unfairly links the green agenda to the cause of that poverty.
Thatcher outsourced our industry using an oil windfall - exactly the opposite of green industry.
This type of writing makes it harder not easier to engage the population with necessary changes which include managed contraction and convergence. He does suggest technological alternatives - nuclear and climate engineering - with no discussion of alternative structural solutions.
Blaming green policy for pauperisation of the population unfairly links the green agenda to the cause of that poverty.
One could ask who’s green agenda? From my perspective, he refers to the current government's NetZero policy, which is a greenwash balm. A neoliberal answer to climate disaster, to make us believe that they are doing something. I know, I have worked for a spell in the green industry on NetZero and such.
Neoliberals are using their green policies to continue with the same trajectory of impoverishing their populations.
Thatcher outsourced our industry using an oil windfall - exactly the opposite of green industry.
Was Thatcher a neoliberal? Just saying, irrespective of the fact whether she used North Sea oil or not as one of her tools.
Green industry: the current investment in wind and solar energy? – it relies on fossil fuels to get there. Thermodynamic metric of EROI and all that. Sure, one can manage it and minimise the use of fossil fuels somewhat (managed contraction as you say in your next para).
This type of writing makes it harder not easier to engage the population with necessary changes which include managed contraction and convergence.
As I said in my earlier post:
I don’t disagree that solidarity is a mitigation per se, but for that one needs to have a clear picture of where one is going. He provides that.
Furthermore, we need to get into a revolutionary spirit and upend this vile neoliberal consensus which has gripped the west. Business as usual ain’t gonna crack it.
He does suggest technological alternatives - nuclear and climate engineering
This is in passing, and as I commented:
Don’t think he claims to provide solutions except when he is musing.
He is right about nuclear from the perspective of the S curve of energy exploitation (again EROI). Not that I want to do a Monbiot myself, as a life-long anti-nuker. Not unless we can get thorium reactors to work (this reported in Nature in 2021 and now the latest from 2023):
The common useage as I intended it from the OED "opposing political or social progress or reform" albeit (loosely) associated with extreme conservatism.
No doubt you will disagree but blaming our poverty on current Green agenda when our poverty was a direct consequence of neoliberal Thatcherism is an unnecessary smear.
Whether it's in passing or not he is proposing technofixes and no real radical change.
His lifeboat analogy represents a false dichotomy which again suggests that radical change will lead to death of half the population hence my characterisation. Managed contraction is moving our lifestyles far closer to that already "enjoyed" by half the planet which does not require mass death.
I tried to make it as readable as possible, but have obviously failed in conveying my ideas and rebuttals, since the same points are recurring in this last post. Ah well .. : /
No. Consider that thorium reactors are a different type of technology from the 'normal' run of the mill nuke reactors. One cannot use it for producing nukes using this. Russkies seem to believe that fast-breeder reactors solve the problem. Hence their latest nuclear fast-breeder reactor in Turkey just completed by them.
Thorium reactors already working in China do not produce this catastrophic consequences as in Fukushima (apart from the fact that Fukushima reactors were built in the area of problematic seismic fault lines which in addition were being liable to tsunamis). Total f**k up in engineering terms .. not sure what they were thinking about : /. This would not happen with thorium reactors. End of.
I am only going by what has been reported in the Nature and the latest clip I have posted on this. The whole point being that we simply cannot wholly rely on the current green solutions like wind and solar power (and storage) in its current iteration. Thermodynamic EROI and all that. Still needs an input from fossil fuels. That is my understanding. We've had a lot of discussions on this on TLN in the past and Rhis took a lead on this, RIP.