Amy Westervelt in The Intercept talks about the need to not just mindlessly replace fossil energy with its sustainable equivalent, but also think about ways to reduce demand:
IN 2019, THEA RIOFRANCOS was splitting her time between researching the social and environmental impacts of lithium mining in Chile and organizing for a rapid energy transition away from fossil fuels in the United States. A political science professor at Providence College and member of the Climate and Community Project, Riofrancos was struck by the contrast: Lithium is essential to the batteries that make electric vehicles and renewable energy work, but mining inflicts its own environmental damage. “Here I am in Chile, in the Atacama Desert, seeing these mining-related harms, and then there I go in the U.S. advocating for a rapid transition. How do I align these two goals?” Riofrancos said. “And is there a way to have a less extractive energy transition?”
It’s an American centric article, but the same arguments apply to the Netherlands and Europe too. Even ‘clean’ energy has massive ecological costs and everything we can do to lessen those by lessen the need for it helps. Improve public transport rather than just sit in the same traffic jam as you do now, only in an electric car. The problem is that even just swapping out fossil fuels for solar is beyond our governments, still happier pushing more billions of subsidy towards Shell or talk about starting up gas production in Groningen again than even get close to serious about investing in wind or solar energy. The Dutch government even going so far as to pretend it can build two new nuclear plants in the next decade.
Anything beyond “the same way we do things now, but sustainable(ish)” seems clear utopian thinking to me.
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