Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
But the error bars on energy supplies and climate sensitivity include more pessimistic possibil-
ities. A faltering of useful fossil energy supply rates could trigger an unwinding of the global finan-
cial system as well as international conflict. It is also possible that the relationship between carbon
emissions and atmospheric temperatures is nonlinear, with Earth's climate system subject to self-
reinforcing feedbacks that could result in a massive die-off of species, our own included.
Choose your assumptions—optimistic, pessimistic, or somewhere in between. In any case, this
is a big deal.
We are living at a historic moment when the structure of society (economic and political systems)
and its superstructure (ideologies) are about to be challenged as never before. When infrastructure
changes, what seemingly was solid melts into air, paradigms fall, and institutions crumble, until a
new societal regime emerges. Think of a caterpillar pupating, its organ systems evidently being re-
duced to undifferentiated protoplasm before reorganizing themselves into the features of a butterfly.
What a perfect opportunity for an idealist intent on changing the world!
Indeed, fault lines are already appearing throughout society. From a cultural materialist point of
view, the most important of these relate to
how
the inevitable infrastructure change will occur. Pro-
ponents of distributed renewable energy sources are the underdogs while the defenders of central-
ized, fossil energy systems the incumbents in deepening disputes over subsidies and other elements
of government energy policy. Meanwhile, grassroots opposition to extreme fossil fuel extraction
methods is springing up everywhere that companies are fracking for oil and gas, drilling in deep wa-
ter, mining tar sands, or blasting mountaintops to mine coal. Opposition to an oil pipeline is fueling
one of the hottest political fires in Washington, DC. And concern about climate change has acquired
an intergenerational dimension, as young people across America sue state governments and federal
agencies for failing to develop climate action plans.
9
Young people, after all, are the ones who will
most forcibly face the consequences of climate change, and their attitude toward older generations
may not be forgiving.
10
We are also seeing increasing conflict over the structure of society—its systems of economic
distribution and political decision-making. As economic growth grinds to a halt, the world's
wealthy investor class is seeking to guarantee its solvency and maintain its profits by shifting costs
onto the general public via bailouts, austerity measures, and quantitative easing (which lowers in-
terest rates, flushing money out of savings accounts and into the stock market). Jobs downsize and
wages fall, but the number of billionaires billows. However, rising economic inequality has its own
political costs, as documented in Amazon's recent best-selling topic, a 700-page tome called
Cap-
ital in the Twenty-First Century
,
11
which unfortunately fails to grasp the infrastructural shift that is
upon us or its implications for economy and society. Polls show rising dissatisfaction with politic-
al leaders and parties throughout the West. But in most countries there is no organized opposition
group poised to take advantage of this widespread discontent. Instead, political and economic insti-
tutions are themselves losing legitimacy.
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Infrastructural tremors are also reverberating throughout international geopolitics. The world's
dominant superpower, which attained its status during the 20th century at least partly because it was
the home of the global oil industry, is now quickly losing diplomatic clout and military “credibil-
