‘Renewable’ energy has another trick up its sleeve. It has become a key weapon in the War on CO2. ‘Renewable’ energy reduces CO2, therefore renewable energy is untouchable, holy, irreproachable. That other stuff—overconsumption, mining, manufacturing, recycling, biodiversity, soil, vegetation, water, air, animals, life, etc.—it’s important, sure. We’ll get to that later. No we won’t because we’re already long down the road in the Sixth Mass Extinction. In the 50 years from 1970 to 2020, as the Growth Death Cult revved into overdrive, there was a:

• 73% collapse in wildlife
• 49% decline in marine life
• 50% decline in insects
• 69% decline in vertebrates
• 83% decline in freshwater species

The ‘renewable’ energy ‘green’ mining boom accelerates all these collapses—and more—so that the Sixth Mass Extinction will be even more devastating than it would have been had we not chosen acceleration, and rather chosen to radically slow down. Instead, we are being sold the absolute lie that you can use as much energy as you want, once it’s ‘renewable’. It’s ecocide.

We cannot escape the fact that all energy production and use changes our environment, whether it’s oil or solar, coal or wind, gas or hydro. We must massively reduce the amount of energy and materials we use—75% or more—to have any hope of preserving enough of our environment to give life a decent chance post-collapse. Energy use reduction is a crucial step in the long retreat from a collapsing civilization, as we seek to protect the land and the life on it.

Instead, wind, solar, hydro, biomass are voraciously demanding land and materials. “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant,” the International Energy Association reported. Tom Murphy, a professor emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, explained that:

“Renewable energy requires an order-of-magnitude more material per unit of electrical energy delivered than does fossil fuel combustion. This translates to never-ending mining, manufacturing, pollution, and all the associated ecological costs. It’s not a build-it-once-and-done game. Renewable energy is therefore not actually renewable, since it depends crucially on non-renewable materials.”

Tom Murphy is not some ‘renewable’ energy denier. He laughed when I told him that I was once a solar panel booster. He was too. He tried to make solar energy work:

“Besides knowing the semiconductor physics inside out, as a hands-on guy I have experimented with various off-grid configurations of panels, built my own curve-tracer to explore partial shade effects, tried different battery chemistries, learned the ins and outs of four different charge controllers, tried different inverter types, performed extensive monitoring and analysis, etc. Plus, living an off-grid lifestyle connected me more viscerally to weather trends, and my energy haul (and expenditure) becomes more personal. I wrote a Physics Today article in 2008 on getting started.”

When I asked Tom about the fossil fuels versus ‘renewable’ energy debate, his response was simple: “In a sense, to me, the question is similar to: which is worse—death by decapitation or bullet through the head? What we do with the energy in either form is leading to a sixth mass extinction.”