Why I Oppose Pipelines

Its the Fossil Fuel, Not The Pipeline

rising purple line is projected emissions – solid red line is reductions to meet 2 degrees C. Doted red line reflects need for demand reduction to reflect rate of scaling up zero carbon energy.

The above chart comes from an outstanding truth telling lecture by Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center (please watch the whole thing Delivering on 2 Degrees C – Evolution or Revolution?).

Anderson looks at carbon budgets and what kind of radical changes in energy and economic life would be required to meet the current consensus goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

He also critiques various studies and asks why they all share totally unrealistic assumptions and gloss over the hard reality and implications of the science.

Climate chaos is why I oppose pipelines – its the investment in fossil infrastructure that should be going into lowering energy demand and making a transition to the concept of “degrowth” – or planned economic recession.

(of course I oppose the landscape destruction, water and air pollution, and risks of pipelines, but the #1 issue is obviously and overwhelmingly climate).

This goes beyond the “leave it in the ground” approach, because renewable energy sources will not be available to scale up rapidly enough to meet energy demands of a growing economy – we must change the growth and consumption dominated economic model.

But no one wants to acknowledge that continued economic growth makes it impossible to avoid climate chaos and that deep emissions reductions will force revolutionary changes in current consumption rates and US lifestyles.

In fact, most of the pipeline and energy infrastructure debates in NJ completely ignore the climate imperative.

The climate and renewable energy debates follow many of the flawed assumptions and politicized thinking that Anderson critiques, such as a focus on long term goals (80% renewable energy by 2050) and magical thinking that these kinds of dramatic transitions will occur painlessly and with little or no sacrifice in lifestyles or radical change in the current concentrations of political and economic power.

I share Anderson’s perspective that in order to solve a problem, it’s full dimensions and implications must be acknowledged. While failure is likely, its better to fail honestly than to avoid the hard truths.

Plus, these kind of truths need not trigger despair – they could just as likely mobilize emergency action and radical change.

Either way, it looks like revolutionary change is coming soon – one way or another – via mitigation of emissions or via adaptation to the climate chaos that will ensue if we don’t (or maybe both).