Here’s what i posted in the “Views” thread under the Mark Schlosberg article promoting this march:
“Clean energy” is not clean. It is not fossil fuels, and that is great, but “clean energy” is PR talk.
Massive mining of “rare earth” minerals; massive infrastructure projects (not just directly for energy infrastructure, but ongoing growth of everything that energy fuels); massive disruption of human communities and ecosystems; ongoing growth of “the economy” and maintenance of the “endless growth” model that is destroying ecosystems and dis-integrating the ecology.
It should be called what it is: non-carbon energy, or non-fossil energy. More specifically, wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy.
Related points i’ve made before in these comments:
- “Climate Chaos” only kicked in (in an experientially and empirically obvious way) little more than a dozen years ago. But the “mass extinction” event that we are in the midst of, began long before climate chaos kicked in. That should be a clue that “solving” energy, and even “solving” climate, WILL NOT “solve” mass extinction.
- The main engine of ecosystem dis-integration and mass extinction is LAND USE. Human “development” of chemical industrial commodity agriculture, and human “development” of cities and transportation infrastructure, are the PRIMARY DRIVERS of the mass extinction that is underway. Just in the 40 years 1975 - 2005 - (right up to the doorstep of climate chaos kicking in) - half of all animal wildlife on Earth vanished. “Fixing” energy - without massive other changes in the economy and in human impact on the Earth - will do nothing to arrest mass extinction.
- We need a MASSIVE REDUCTION in “the economy.” We need to abolish “growth” as the measure of “economic success.” We need WAY LESS STUFF. And we need to live our lives, our actual lives, using our minds and our hands and our relationships, as ecological stewards, so that our actual contributions to the ecology of the Earth actually contribute to the ecology of the Earth.
Complete transformation of the whole economy - not just the fossil fuel energy sector - is necessary if we are to avert the ecological collapse that is already happening.
Fantasies of a “clean energy revolution” “saving the Earth” are fantasies. We need realism, with a realistic assessment of what is causing ecological collapse, and a realistic prescription for averting ecological collapse.