Will the "energy transition" actually happen? This concept is central to discussions about climate change and is based on the idea that there have been energy transitions in the past: from wood to coal, then from coal to oil. It would therefore seem that all that is needed is one last transition, from oil to decarbonized energies (renewables or nuclear), to avoid climate chaos. But is this phasic view of history accurate? In Without Transition: A New History of Energy, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz irrefutably demonstrates that it is not.
In this comprehensive work on the material history of the 19th and 20th centuries, the historian of science, technology, and the environment establishes that there has never been an "energy transition." Not only do energy sources accumulate and not replace one another, but they are also symbiotic: the development of one enables the development of another.
For example, the development of coal mines has caused a surge in the consumption of... wood, needed for the supports in the mine shafts. Thus, we have never consumed as much wood, coal, and oil as we do today, despite the growth of renewables. Energy sources are so intertwined that it is illusory to think we can decarbonize our economy within the timeframe necessary to contain global warming.
So, who benefits from this discourse of energy transition? Jean-Baptiste Fressoz revisits its origins within a small group of "atomic Malthusians." In the 1950s, these scientists envisioned a utopian future thanks to nuclear power, which they believed would compensate for the long-term depletion of fossil fuels. Revived in the 1970s after the oil crisis, the concept of energy transition has even spread within the environmental movement, which sees it as inevitable in the face of the impending depletion of fossil fuels.
As climate change alarms emerge in the public debate, the transition is brandished to delay decisions, using the arrival of new technologies as a pretext. This techno-solutionist belief, as Jean-Baptiste Fressoz demonstrates, is also held by Working Group III of the IPCC.
Thus, the energy transition, based on hypothetical new technologies, is still favored over other, more radical solutions such as degrowth. Yet, reducing the enormous quantity of materials and energy produced is the only way to avoid climate catastrophe. But governments and industrialists alike refuse to acknowledge this, and have therefore made the energy transition "the ideology of capital in the 21st century."
Agrippine (UCL Nantes)
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, Without Transition. A new history of energy, Seuil, 2024, 419 pages, 24 euros.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Jean-Baptiste-Fressoz-Sans-transition-Une-nouvelle-histoire-de-l-energie
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #368 - Culture - Read Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: Without Transition: A New History of Energy (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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