Yet we can’t escape the hype. It seems like almost every day we hear a story about how ‘cheap’ hydro, wind, solar and biomass have delivered 50%, 70%, 100% of electricity demand. It sounds amazing, like the energy problem is almost solved if we only believe a little more in these new magic technologies. There’s a part to this story that gets conveniently left out. Electricity generation meets roughly 20% of total power requirements. All those mines, factories, farms, trucks, buses, ships—they’re still running on coal, oil, gas. If you’re meeting 50% of electricity demand with ‘renewables’, therefore, you are meeting roughly 10% of total energy demand. So, still a very long way to go on an impossible road of the Growth Death Cult, where these new energy sources cannot even keep up with all the new demand that’s emerging because of the explosive growth of AI and data centers.
Global demand for fossil fuels reached record levels as the 2020s progressed. Even coal demand was growing to historic highs. Many august institutions claimed that fossil fuels would ‘peak’ or ‘plateau’ by 2030. Others estimated that even by 2050, fossil fuels would be meeting anywhere from 40% to 60% of total global energy demand, which would mean the same—or even more—oil, coal and gas by volume as was produced in the 2020s because of overall growth in demand. It’s a scam. There is no transition when we live in a world of enormous energy demands, and every year, those energy demands grow. Life is being devoured by the Growth Death Cult.
Mining is not the only impact hydro, wind, solar and biomass have on land. These technologies take up huge areas of land. “Replacing conventional fuels like-for-like with renewables could require a global area three orders of magnitude larger than currently used for energy,” Dr Sebastian Dunnett, a nature scientist and biodiversity expert, has written. “At the same time, conservationists call for 30%—or even 50%—of the earth to be set aside for nature.” Three times more land for solar and wind machines when we need twice as much land for wild nature. It doesn’t add up. “We’re going to do what we’ve always done with our environmental problems, push one on to the other,” Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San José State University, told National Geographic. “We’re moving our climate problem onto our biodiversity crisis. It’s just more of the same.”
One small example of mining devastation for ‘green’ metals is in the Philippines, where the race for copper and nickel to support “the global shift to renewable energy is already harming the lives and natural environment that communities rely on, placing them in increasing danger,” a Global Witness report found:
“The military has been linked to the highest number of documented killings and detentions of land and environmental defenders in the Philippines over the past decade. These abuses have gone unchecked by President Marcos Jr as he oversees the militarisation of ‘green energy’ infrastructure and increased targeting of human rights defenders and mining critics using anti-terror legislation.”
Indigenous people of the Philippines made a Declaration of Unity for the Defense of the Environment, Ancestral Lands, and Indigenous People’s Rights:
“We are in the midst of a climate emergency that must be immediately confronted. Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of resisting the worsening climate crisis. We must fight the deceptive energy transition that serves only the interests of capitalist countries and corporations, seizing ancestral lands and wealth through destructive mining and energy projects – such as hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar power projects.”
Diné Navajo environmental protector, Klee Benally, summed things up well:
“From deadly nuclear power to lithium and rare earth mining, and the privatisation of water, the greening of the economy is still a war against Mother Earth and all existence.”
“The proposition of unplugging from a ‘dirty’ power source and plugging into a ‘green’ one does nothing to address the underlying power relations. It reinforces them. ‘Green Energy’ sustaining a Green Economy still demands resource colonialism.”