Editor’s note: A new report that microplastics pollution is hampering photosynthesis in plants, and that the result is the loss of some 10% of the world’s primary productivity, including food crops. We are now risking to blot out the planetary photosynthesis machine, just because we think that stopping the growth of the plastics industry is a subversive idea. But the report gets something in reverse: it is not that these effects “extend from food security into planetary health.” It is the opposite .But that changes little in a situation in which nothing changes, except for the desperate attempt of solving problems by killing the messenger, that is, “driving a dagger into the climate change religion”

“Previous research has indicated that microplastics can damage plants in multiple ways. The polluting particles can block sunlight reaching leaves and damage the soils on which the plants depend. When taken up by plants, microplastics can block nutrient and water channels, induce unstable molecules that harm cells and release toxic chemicals, which can reduce the level of the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll.”

We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. Here’s why you should never, ever drink the rain. A number of studies have documented microplastics in rain falling all over the world — even in remote, unpopulated regions. Plastic particles have infiltrated the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Also, the microscopic shards of plastic found in every corner of the planet may be exacerbating antibiotic resistance, a new study has found.

Plastic Pollution: So Much Bigger Than Straws

by Jackie Nuñez, The Revelator
March 14, 2025

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen the current U.S. administration grasping at straws, mocking restrictions on single-use plastics, and trying to distract from the real issue: Plastic poisons people and the planet, and the industries that produce it need to stop making so much of it.

When I started “The Last Plastic Straw” movement in 2011, the sole purpose was to bring attention to a simple, tangible issue and raise awareness about the absurdity of single-use plastic items and engage people to take action.

So what are the real problems with plastic? Plastics don’t break down, they break up: Unlike natural materials that decompose, they fragment into smaller and smaller pieces, never benignly degrading but remaining forever plastic. All plastic items shed plastic particles called microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics, which we inhale, ingest, and absorb into our bodies. Plastics, depending on their manufacturing composition, contain a mixture of more than 16,000 chemicals, at least 4,200 of which are known hazards to human health. When we use plastic straws, cups, plates, utensils, and food packaging, we are literally swallowing those toxic plastic particles and chemicals.

These tiny microplastic and nanoplastic particles accumulate at alarming rates throughout our bodies: in our blood, hearts, lungs, penises, testicles, uteri, and more. Researchers estimate a whole spoon’s worth of plastic resides in the average human brain, where it definitely doesn’t belong.

Plastic particles have also been found in placenta and breast milk, so children today are being born plasticized. This is a toxic burden that today’s youth should not have to bear.

🧠 A new study found the amount of microplastics & nanoplastics in human brains increased by 50% between 1997 to 2024. Researchers found that in people with dementia, plastic particles were six times more numerous than in people without dementia. It was also found that plastic particles in human livers are increasing over time. ⁠
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🔬75% of the plastics found in human tissue samples were one of the most common types of plastics: polyethylene. Polyethylene (PET) is used in everyday items like food packaging, bottles, bags, toys, and more. ⁠
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📈 With microplastics and nanoplastics building up in our bodies it’s time to put plastic-free solutions in place, for people and the planet. ⁠
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Source: The Journal of Nature Medicine

It goes without saying that plastic’s harms to our health come at an enormous cost to us, who must suffer through the heartbreaking and painful diseases it causes. It’s estimated that every 30 seconds, someone dies from plastic pollution in the Global South, an area overburdened by mountains of plastic pollution that is shipped away from the Global North under the guise of “recycling” only to be dumped and often burned, releasing additional toxic pollution. Financially too, plastics are expensive: The chemicals in plastic alone cost the U.S. healthcare system $250 billion in just one year.

We can’t recycle our way out of this. Plastic was never made to be recycled and is still not made to be recycled.

Our leaders who support continued or even increased plastic production seem ignorant of the facts about plastic pollution. Let us enlighten them: All plastic pollutes, and single-use plastic items like straws are not only hazardous to our health, they’re especially wasteful.

We could all save money if our government prioritized building up plastic-free reuse and refill systems, where we hold on to our stuff rather than continuously buy it and throw it away. Such reuse and refill systems were the reality before single-use plastic was mass-produced and marketed. And they worked. Most U.S. voters support reducing plastic production, along with national policies that reduce single-use plastic, increasing use of reusable packaging and foodware, and protecting people who live in neighborhoods harmed by plastic production facilities.

To change this nightmare scenario, our leaders need to support policies that reduce plastic production, not grow it. This means curbing wasteful plastic production and supporting plastic- and toxic-free, regenerative materials and systems of reuse and refill.

As the advocacy and engagement manager at Plastic Pollution Coalition, my work continues to support the solutions to this massive global crisis — strong policies that focus on plastic pollution prevention, better business practices, and a culture shift. We work together with our allied coalition organizations, businesses, scientists, notables and individual members every single day to make these solutions a reality — no matter how much the U.S. administration or other leaders try to undermine, belittle, or dismiss efforts to minimize the use of straws and other quickly disposed plastic products that poison our planet and our bodies.

Plastic never was and never will be disposable, and neither are people.

This article first appeared on The Revelator and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Banner Credit: Taklamacuwv Lamia on Wikimedia Commons

Editor’s note: “A new study in Science indicates that reforestation projects, which restore degraded or destroyed forests, are the most effective land-based method for carbon removal and biodiversity protection. Meanwhile, the authors found that afforestation, in which trees are added where they didn’t exist before, and bioenergy cropping, in which carbon-removing crops are planted to make biofuels, can have negative effects on wildlife, outweighing the benefits of carbon removal. The research highlights the importance of identifying the best places for reforestation projects, but the authors emphasize that reforestation is not a replacement for fossil-fuel reduction.”

Evidence suggests that allowing forests to regenerate of their own accord – a process known as “proforestation” – is a more effective, and perhaps more importantly, a more immediate way of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere than planting new forests. Coined by scientists William Moomaw and Susan Masino, the term basically means, in Moomaw’s words, “allow[ing] trees that are already planted, that are already growing, to continue growing to reach their full ecological potential, to store carbon, and develop a forest that has its full complement of environmental services.”

By Charles KOLOU / Mongabay

KARÈ, Togo — Under the hot sun of an April afternoon in northern Togo, we made our way by motorcycle across the impoverished prefecture of Kozah. It wasn’t a long journey, about 30 minutes, but threading between trucks and cars on National Highway No. 1, it was a treacherous one. When we arrived, we were greeted with a smile by “Dadja” Pékémassim Ali, the 57-year-old chief of the canton of Kouméa, where the village of Karè is located.

“We’re glad you’ve come to talk about this forest, whose restoration we’re delighted to see,” he told us. “Out of ignorance, and in a desire to satisfy our needs, our people set fire to the forest and cut down all the trees. And for years, we suffered from scarce rainfall, no timber, and even hotter temperatures. Our children no longer knew of the area’s birds and other animal species.”

Ali gave us his approval to climb Karè’s mountain and visit the sacred forest known as Titiyo forest. As we entered the forest, we were greeted by a cool breeze and the sound of birdsong.

Since the 1800s, the sacred forest of Titiyo has been the site of annual rituals that involve traditional dances and the celebration of various deities. People come from throughout the canton of Kouméa and the entire Kozah prefecture.

It’s also an area of biodiversity conservation. This ecosystem, vital for the Karè village community, has suffered severe degradation since 1992, in the wake of a political crisis in Togo. Pressure from a growing population led to its rapid destruction as trees were felled for charcoal, firewood and timber, reducing the forest to almost nothing.

“Ever since we destroyed this forest by cutting down the trees, and with bushfires, mainly for hunting, the rain stopped,” said Kossi Karani, a Karè villager. “And we suffer from that because it affects our agricultural yields. The animals had disappeared, as well as the birds. There was no more life in the forest.”

But today, this sacred forest persists and has even begun to recover, thanks to the determination of a son of Karè: Sylvain Tchoou Akati.

Akati said he remembers watching helplessly as Titiyo’s destruction began, when he was just 12 years old. The tragedy left such an indelible impression that it prompted him to start fighting to restore Togo’s forests.

“The destruction of our sacred forest of Titiyo is recent, it happened before my very eyes,” he told Mongabay. “It all started with a need for wood to put a roof on the village elementary school. The forest was gradually destroyed until 2005.”

Today, Akati is the executive director of an NGO based in the capital, Lomé, known as AJEDI, or Youth Action for Integral Development. Its mission is to support and coach local communities in sustainable development. Akati’s motivation for restoring his own village’s forest comes not just from his love of nature, but also from encouragement by his uncle, Anam, well known in Karè for his love of planting trees, notably teak and mango.

Although he left Karè in 1997 to pursue his secondary and university studies in Lomé, Akati never abandoned his love for Titiyo. He became an activist for the preservation of forest ecosystems and sustainable development, and founded AJEDI in 2008. A few years later, in 2015, he set about restoring his native village’s forest.

“I cannot allow Titiyo, this sacred forest, to disappear without me doing something about it, especially given climate change. So in 2015, I visited my father, who was still alive, to tell him of my intention to restore the forest that our grandfather was responsible for preserving,” he said.

Raising public awareness

But Akati said he knew he couldn’t do it alone. Through his NGO, he began rallying the members of his community.

“We organized a meeting in the public square, which was attended by people from the surrounding villages. I explained to them the environmental, cultural, economic and social importance of restoring our forest, which is part of our shared heritage,” Akati said.

“During the training, we were made aware of how restoring the forest can contribute to good rainfall and improve agricultural production,” Tchilalo Pitekelabou, a member of the project’s monitoring committee, told Mongabay. She was one of six people appointed to the committee by the community’s members after the meeting. “We were also made aware of how forest resources can make our lives easier. That’s why we became involved, both men and women, in the restoration of Titiyo.”

The awareness-raising campaign prompted the Karè villagers, especially its women, to commit to the restoration of the forest. “In the early years, we sometimes watered the seedlings in the dry season to ensure their growth,” Pitekelabou said.

People who owned land within the forest’s perimeter agreed to give up their plots for reforestation.

A helping hand from the government

In 2019, Akati presented his project to Togo’s Ministry of Environment and Forest Resources, receiving positive feedback.

“The forest had become highly degraded and consisted of just a few trees,” said Yawo Kansiwoe, the Kozah prefectural official responsible for water, forests and the environment. “The local population and authorities were desperate to find ways of restoring it. This is what caught the attention of the NGO, which held discussions with local officials to jointly determine how the forest could be restored. Sylvain Akati’s determination encouraged us to give our full support to the NGO in all its awareness-raising and reforestation activities.”

In 2019, the first year of reforestation, the environment ministry provided technical and financial support worth $5,702 to support the reforestation of around 3 hectares (7 acres), allowing the planting of 3,500 seedlings, including Khaya senegalensis, earleaf acacia (Acacia auriculiformis), melina (Gmelina arborea), African locust bean (Parkia biglobosa), baobab (Adansonia digitata), kapok (Ceiba pentandra) and neem (Azadirachta indica) trees.

“We chose these species because they are sacred. The baobab, kapok and African locust bean are sacred in this forest,” said Koudjabalo Ayouguele, AJEDI’s local representative for the Kara region, where Kozah prefecture is located. “But beyond that, we have also planted trees such as Khaya senegalensis, which will enable us to restore the forest quickly.”

After this first year, the rest of the reforestation work fell to Akati. But he was able to draw on the commitment of local authorities eager to see Titiyo restored.

New life makes the birds sing

“We are grateful to our son Tchoou, who had the idea of enlisting us to help restore this forest,” said Ali, the Kouméa canton chief who also serves as the primary guardian of the area’s traditions and customs. “In the beginning, there were a lot of us, but along the way some became demotivated because there was no money to be made straight away. But others like us, who understood the wider importance, remained determined. And we’ll never give up.

“Before, children didn’t know about the birds in this area, but with the restoration of the forest, we can show them all the types of birds here,” he added. “And we ourselves are happy, because the birds are singing in our ears again, something we haven’t experienced here for years with the disappearance of the forest.”

As well as birds, other animals have also found refuge in the Titiyo forest. “Thanks to this forest, a fresh breeze now blows through the village of Karè,” Akati said. “It’s like a microclimate. And there are monkeys, cane rats [Thryonomys swinderianus], reptiles like the boa [sic, boa constrictors are not native to Africa], the eastern green mamba [Dendroaspis angusticeps], vipers and snakes that have returned to the forest.”

On top of this, from a cultural perspective, the local people can now once more perform traditional rites with joy.

Kansiwoe, the prefectural official, said seeing the forest’s recovery is a source of great satisfaction: “We are delighted with the encouraging results of the restoration and recovery of this forest, which at its core is a sacred place, and preserves this sacred forest tradition.”

Now that the forest has begun to be restored, it’s time to consider how to maintain it.

“Protecting this forest remains a major challenge, and it is something we are working on,” Akati said. “For the time being, the watch committee is carrying out its mission well, which consists of monitoring the forest, making fire patrols, and continuing to raise awareness so we avoid bush fires and tree cutting. So far, thanks to their work, no bush fires have been recorded. We hope, thanks to their commitment and that of the population, to continue in this way.”

Beyond that, he pointed out a practice carried out by his grandparents, which could be a crucial asset.

“What we also want to do to help preserve the forest is to reinstate an old practice or law, which prohibited entering the forest in the rainy season and which everyone respected without question. This rule also prohibited entry into the sacred forest without authorization,” he said.

In search of support

To safeguard the Titiyo community forest, Akati also needs financial and technical support. He said establishing some income-generating activities linked to the forest should increase the chances of its preservation.

“Now, we need to find ways to preserve what we’ve achieved. We’re thinking of promoting beekeeping and market gardening, and building a multipurpose facility with a solar energy system. In the long term, in addition to beekeeping, we’re also thinking of developing nontimber forest products, given the species planted in the forest.”

With his commitment to restoring forest ecosystems, Akati is also looking for support to enable him to restore other sacred forests across Kozah prefecture. Now in his 40s, he’s already hard at work restoring the sacred forest of Landa, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Titiyo.

“It’s not just Titiyo that was threatened with extinction,” he said. “Our experience here can now help us restore all of Kozah’s sacred forests.”

Banner image: Red-throated bee-eaters (Merops bulocki), Pehonko, Benin. Image by Yves Bas via iNaturalist(CC BY 4.0).

Editor’s note: “In recent years, the Southeast Asian country of Vietnam experienced a boom in renewable energy investments driven by generous feed-in tariffs, under which the state committed to buying electricity for 20 years at above-market prices. However, the high tariffs increased losses for Vietnam’s state-owned power utility EVN, the only buyer of the generated electricity, and led to an increase in power prices for households and factories. Authorities have repeatedly tried to reduce the high tariffs. Now they are considering a retroactive review of the criteria set for accessing the feed-in tariffs.”

“It’s really hard to build wind farms in Arizona, and if you put this into place, it’s just pretty much wiping you out,” said Troy Rule, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a published expert on renewable energy systems. “It’s like you’re trying to kill Arizona’s wind farm industry.”

United States Congressional House Republicans are seeking to prevent the use of taxpayer dollars to incentivize what they describe as “green energy boondoggles” on agricultural lands, citing subsidies that could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

They are expensive to build, just finding their footing on this side of the Atlantic, and have faced backlash from parties as varied as beachfront property owners and fishermen to coastal businesses and fossil fuel backers(most of the developers have fossil fuel ties).

The future of Humboldt County’s offshore wind industry appears increasingly uncertain following mass layoffs at RWE and Vineyard Offshore, the multinational energy companies leading efforts to develop commercial-scale floating wind farms on the North Coast. The job cuts come in response to widespread market uncertainty following President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban offshore wind development in the United States.

A critical permit for an offshore wind farm planned near the New Jersey Shore has been invalidated by an administrative appeals board.

By Malaka Rodrigo / Mongabay

COLOMBO — In a dramatic turn of events, Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s Green Energy Limited (AGEL) has withdrawn from the second phase of a proposed wind power project in northern Sri Lanka. The project, which was planned to generate 250 MW through the installation of 52 wind turbines in Mannar in the island’s north, faced strong opposition since the beginning due to serious environmental implications and allegations of financial irregularities.

While renewable energy is a crucial need in the era of climate change, Sri Lankan environmentalists opposed the project, citing potential ecological damage to the sensitive Mannar region. Additionally, concerns arose over the way the contract was awarded, without a competitive bidding process.

The former government, led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, had inked an agreement with AGEL, setting the power purchase price at $0.82 per unit for 20 years. This rate was significantly higher than rates typically offered by local companies. “This is an increase of about 70%, a scandalous deal that should be investigated,” said Rohan Pethiyagoda, a globally recognized taxonomist and former deputy chair of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

Legal battles

Five lawsuits were filed against this project by local environmental organizations, including the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society, the Centre for Environmental Justice and the Environmental Foundation Ltd. In January, the newly elected government expressed its desire to cancel the initial agreement and to renegotiate its terms and conditions, citing the high electricity tariff. Environmentalists welcomed the decision, believing the project would be scrapped entirely. However, their relief was short-lived when AGEL clarified that the project itself was not canceled, only the tariff agreement.

Government spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa later confirmed that the project would proceed after renegotiating a lower power purchase rate. However, two weeks later, AGEL announced its complete withdrawal from the project, a decision widely believed to be influenced by the government’s stance.

Wind energy potential 

Sri Lanka has been exploring wind energy potential for more than two decades, with the first large-scale wind farm in Mannar named Thambapavani commissioned in 2020. This facility, comprising 30 wind turbines, currently generates 100 MW of power. With an additional 20 turbines planned, the Mannar wind sector would have surpassed 100 towers.

The Adani Group had pledged an investment totaling $442 million, and already, $5 million has been spent in predevelopment activities. On Feb. 15, the Adani Group formally announced its decision to leave the project. In a statement, the group stated: “We would respectfully withdraw from the said project. As we bow out, we wish to reaffirm that we would always be available for the Sri Lankan government to have us undertake any development opportunity.”

Environmentalists argue that Mannar, a fragile peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow land strip, cannot sustain such extensive development. “If built, this project would exceed the carrying capacity of the island,” Pethiyagoda noted.

Mannar is not only a growing tourism hub, known for its pristine beaches and archaeological sites, but also Sri Lanka’s most important bird migration corridor. As the last landmass along the Central Asian Flyway, the region hosts millions of migratory birds, including 20 globally threatened species, he added.

Sampath Seneviratne of the University of Colombo, who has conducted satellite tracking research on migratory birds, highlighted the global importance of Mannar. “Some birds that winter here have home ranges as far as the Arctic Circle,” he said. His research has shown how extensively these birds rely on the Mannar Peninsula.

Although mitigation measures such as bird monitoring radar have been proposed to reduce turbine collisions, power lines distributing electricity remain a significant threat, particularly to species like flamingos, a major attraction in Mannar. The power lines distributing electricity from the already established wind farm near the Vankalai Ramsar Wetland and are already proven to be a death trap for unsuspecting feathered kind.

Nature-based tourism

Given Mannar’s ecological significance, conservationists say the region has greater potential as a destination for ecotourism rather than large-scale industrial projects. “Mannar’s rich biodiversity and historical value make it ideal for nature-friendly tourism, which would also benefit the local community,” Pethiyagoda added.

With AGEL’s withdrawal, Sri Lanka now faces the challenge of balancing its renewable energy ambitions with environmental conservation. However, there are other sites in Sri Lanka having more wind power potential, and Sri Lankan environmentalists hope ecologically rich Mannar will be spared from unsustainable wind farms projects.

Photo by Dattatreya Patra on Unsplash

Editor’s note: “I think hope is really harmful for several reasons. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and they blind us to real possibilities. Does anybody really think that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anybody really think that if a democrat would have gotten into the White House that things would be ok? Does anybody think that vivisectors will stop torturing animals just because we stand outside with a sign?

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stand out there with that sign. What it means is, do we really believe that they will stop because we do that? And if you don’t believe that, what does that mean? The book I have just recently completed is really centered around this question. Do you believe that the culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to obtain a sustainable way of living? If you don’t, what does that mean for our strategy and for our tactics? We don’t know. The reason we don’t know is that we don’t ask that question. The reason we don’t ask that question is that we’re so busy pretending that we have hope.” – Derrick Jensen December 1st, 2004

“Biosphere Collapse: We Are in a Terminal Phase

The Sixth Mass Extinction is not a future risk—it is happening now, and human activity is the sole cause.

Extinction Rates: Current rates are 100–1,000 times higher than the “background” rate of the Cenozoic era. While the oft-cited “250–300 species per day” figure is debated (due to undercounting invertebrates and microbes), conservative estimates still suggest ~150 species lost daily. For context, the Permian-Triassic extinction (“The Great Dying”) wiped out 90% of species over 60,000 years. We’re matching that pace in decades.

Habitat Destruction: 75% of Earth’s land surface is degraded by human activity. Forests (critical carbon sinks) are vanishing at 10 million hectares/year. Oceanic dead zones (hypoxic regions) have quadrupled since 1950.

Food Web Collapse: Phytoplankton (the base of marine food chains) have declined 40% since 1950. Insect biomass is dropping 2.5% annually, threatening pollination and soil health.

Conclusion: The biosphere is unravelling faster than evolution can adapt. Humans are not exempt—we are apex predators in a collapsing food web.”

Editor’s note: Water, as well as forests, do not need to be managed. They just need to be left alone.

By Petro Kotzé / Mangabay

Water seems deceptively simple and is easy to take for granted. It has no color, taste or smell and is one of the most plentiful chemical compounds on Earth. Recycled endlessly through the biosphere in its various forms, it is fundamental to keeping our planet’s operating system intact, and has done so for millions of years.

Water is life. Earth’s oceans are where life likely originated, and freshwater is essential for plants and animals to persist and thrive. It is basic to all human development. But as our 21^st-century world gallops ahead, we are vastly manipulating the water cycle at an unprecedented rate and scale to meet the ever-growing needs of an exploding population.

By 2030, we will have built enough dams to alter 93% of the world’s rivers. Estimates vary, but we already use around 90% of the planet’s freshwater to grow our food. More than half of us now live in cities, but by 2050 a projected 68% of the world’s nearly 8 billion people will reside in urban areas. That metropolitan lifestyle will require astronomical amounts of water — extracted, treated, and piped over large distances. Humanity also prevents much rainwater from easily infiltrating underground, reducing aquifers, as we pave over immense areas with impermeable concrete and asphalt.

But these easily visible changes are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Researchers are shining new light on sweeping human alterations to Earth’s water cycle, many playing out in processes largely unseen. In the Anthropocene — the unofficial name for the current human-influenced unit of geologic time — we are already pushing one of Earth’s most fundamental and foundational systems, the hydrological cycle, toward the breaking point.

Trouble is, we don’t yet know when this threshold may be reached, or what the precise consequences will be. Scientists are resolutely seeking answers.

Water cycle basics

The hydrological cycle is powered by the sun and flows through eternal inhalations and exhalations of water in different states, as it is exchanged between the atmosphere and the planet. Liquid water from oceans, lakes and rivers rises via evaporation into the sky, to form water vapor, an important greenhouse gas that, like carbon dioxide, helps insulate the planet to maintain that “just right” temperature to maintain life as we know it.

Atmospheric water vapor then changes to liquid, falling to earth as precipitation. It then flows as runoff again across the landscape, and what doesn’t go back into waterbodies, settles into soils, to be taken up by plants and released via transpiration as vapor skyward. A large amount of freshwater is also locked in glaciers and icecaps.

Within this cycle, there are constant complex interactions between what scientists call blue and green water. Blue water includes rivers, lakes, reservoirs and renewable groundwater stores. Green water is defined as terrestrial precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture.

A fully functioning hydrological cycle, with balanced supplies and flows of blue and green water, is essential to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, human food availability and production, and our energy security.

It also regulates Earth’s weather and influences climate. Atmospheric temperature, for example, is dependent on evaporation and condensation. That’s because as water evaporates, it absorbs energy and cools the local environment, and as it condenses, it releases energy and warms the world. Throughout the Holocene geological epoch, a relatively stable water cycle helped maintain balanced temperatures and conditions able to support civilization.

However, in the Anthropocene, human activity has impacted the water cycle, the climate and ecosystems. For one, as more human-produced CO₂ and methane build up in the atmosphere, more solar energy is held by the planet, causing global warming. And the hotter the air, the greater the quantity of water vapor the atmosphere can hold. That’s bad news because water vapor is itself a powerful greenhouse gas, greatly increasing the warming.

Measuring hydrological cycle change: ‘It’s complicated’

As our anthropogenic manipulation of the water cycle escalates on a global scale, we urgently need a holistic way to monitor these modifications and understand their impacts. Yet, the topic has not received the urgent scientific attention it requires. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no study comprehensively investigating whether human modifications of the water cycle have led, could be leading, or will lead to planetary‐scale regime shifts in the Earth system,” researchers noted in a 2020 paper on the role of the water cycle in maintaining fundamental Earth functioning.

One key concern of scientists: If severe hydrological shifts occur in too many regions, or in key regions that greatly influence the water cycle or water availability (such as the Amazon), then that could provoke shifts in other regions, in a global chain reaction, says study co-author Dieter Gerten, working group leader and Earth modeling coordinator at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

“Conceptually we know that there must be a limit for how much we can disturb the [hydrological] system before we start feeling serious impacts on the Earth system and then, by extension, to humanity,” says one of the paper’s other co-authors, Miina Porkka, a postdoctoral researcher at the Water and Development Group at Aalto University in Finland.

International researchers under the auspices of the Stockholm Resilience Centre have been hammering away at answering these questions. They had to start with the basics. One big problem to date has been scientists’ lack of a metric for quantifying serious water cycle alterations. How do we even measure changes to the water cycle?

“It gets complicated,” says Gerten, who has been involved in the research to bring a global perspective to local water management since 2009, as conducted under the Planetary Boundaries Framework; Gerten is also a professor of global change climatology and hydrology at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Measuring change: Blue water

The Planetary Boundaries Framework defines a safe operating space for humanity as represented by nine natural global processes that, if severely destabilized, could disrupt Earth’s operating system and threaten life and civilization. The freshwater planetary boundary presents one such threshold, and scientists are working to define a global limit to anthropogenic water cycle modifications.

Initially, in 2009, river flow was used to try and measure the boundary threshold, Gerten explains, because blue water in all its forms was seen to integrate the three largest anthropogenic manipulations of the water cycle: human impacts on precipitation patterns, modifications of soil moisture by land use and land cover; and water withdrawals for human use.

This research used a simple calculation of the global sum of the average annual surface water flow in rivers, with an assumed 30% of that accessible water needing to be protected. This “freshwater use” boundary was set at 4,000 cubic kilometers (960 cubic miles) per year of blue water consumption. This is at the lower limit of a 4,000-6,000 km3 (960-1,440 mi3) annual range designated as a danger zone that takes us “too close to the risk of blue and green water-induced thresholds that could have deleterious or even catastrophic impacts on the Earth System,” researchers wrote in a 2020 paper that evaluated the water planetary boundary.

With only an estimated 2,600 km3 (624 mi3) of water withdrawn annually at the time of the study, scientists concluded we were still in the safe zone. However, “That [conclusion] was immediately criticized,” Gerten says, in part because scientists were already seeing ample regional water-related problems. Another criticism argued that the measure of blue water alone did not reflect all types of human interference with the water cycle and Earth system.

Gerten later led work that proposed quantifying the boundary by assessing the amount of streamflow needed to maintain environmental flow requirements in all river basins on Earth. This approach had the advantage of recognizing regionally transgressed limits and thereby deduced a global value.

According to this newer calculation, the freshwater use planetary boundary should be set much lower, at about 2,800 km3 (672 mi3), Gerten says, which means humanity is already much closer to the danger zone than previously thought. “Water is more limited on Planet Earth than we think,” Gerten cautions.

Redefining the freshwater boundary: Green water

Over time, a consortium of researchers was formed to deeply scrutinize the freshwater boundary. This resulted in follow-up work in 2019 and 2020 proposing that the freshwater boundary be divided into sub-boundaries related to major stores of freshwater: namely atmospheric water, frozen water, groundwater, soil moisture, and surface water.

Since then, scientists simplified their approach further. “Even though we are talking about very complex matters,” Porkka says, the boundary definition, to be useful as a metric, needed to stay “relatively simple.”

The most recent and sweeping reassessment of the freshwater planetary boundary was published in 2022. “Our suggestion is to … change the name from ‘freshwater use planetary boundary’ to ‘freshwater change planetary boundary,’” says study lead author Lan Wang-Erlandsson from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “Then, to have two components,” she adds, “One for green water, and one for blue water.”

“Water has so many functions in the Earth system, and many of them happen invisibly via green water,” Gerten explains. “We don’t see it and we don’t feel it. That’s why [green water] has been neglected over decades. The focus has been on river flows and groundwater because we can see it, feel it, use it, and touch it. But [as a result] a big share of the water cycle has been overlooked.”

The newly accepted metric for tracking green water: The soil moisture in the root zone of plants, or more technically: “the percentage of ice-free land area on which root-zone soil moisture anomalies exit the local bounds of baseline variability in any month of the year.”

This new proxy is appealing because it is directly influenced by human pressures with change over time measurable. In turn, soil moisture directly impacts a range of large-scale ecological, climatic, biogeochemical and hydrological dynamics.

Using this novel green water boundary transgression criteria, scientists detected a major hydrological departure from the baseline set during the Holocene. And the evidence for such a departure is overwhelming: Researchers found “unprecedented areas [of Earth] with root-zone soil moisture anomalies,” indicating an exit from the so-called “safe zone.”

A second criteria, Earth Systems Resilience, was also instituted. Researchers evaluated the state of regional climate systems (ranging from monsoons to land carbon sinks and large biomes) to see which have seen enhanced changes in their process rates, resulting in ripple effects that could destabilize the Earth system, Wang-Erlandsson explains.

A transgressed freshwater change boundary

Unfortunately, examples of compromised Earth System Resilience transgressions are rife across the planet.

Take the Amazon Rainforest, for instance. It is now understood that carbon uptake likely peaked there in the 1990s, with a sequestration decline since then driven by escalating climate change and fires, along with global demand for agricultural commodities, which spurred extensive Amazon forest clearing, bringing major land-use change. More recently, African tropical forests have passed their carbon uptake peak.

When these vast biomes and natural systems are put under extreme multiple stressors, the effects can self-amplify and lead to greater, more rapid, rates of change, Wang-Erlandsson says: In South America, this combination of stressors, particularly deforestation and climate change, is inducing intensifying drought, which is now leading to cascading perturbations in living systems. Scientists now think the rainforest biome, stable for thousands of years, is reaching a tipping point, and could quickly transition to seasonal forest, or even a degraded savanna. This shift could lead to the transformation of the South American monsoon system, and a permanent state of reduced rainfall and impoverished biodiversity.

But what starts in the Amazon won’t likely stay there: The rainforest’s destruction will release massive amounts of carbon, intensifying climate change, potentially leading to climate and ecological tipping points in other biomes.

Another concerning example (although debated) of an Earth system shift is the suggestion of a weakening carbon fertilization process, in which higher atmospheric carbon concentrations result in speeded-up photosynthesis as plants try to improve water efficiency in the face of drought. It is thought that this effect is happening already, brought on by limitations in nutrient and soil moisture availability.

In drylands, climate change and ecosystem degradation are triggering vicious cycles of infiltration capacity loss — a decrease in soil moisture and moisture recycling, resulting in increasing desertification and biodiversity loss. In polar permafrost regions, soil moisture saturation could accelerate thawing, generating dangerous methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Alarmed by the water cycle’s departure from the Holocene baseline, and noting “worrying” signs of low Earth System Resilience, researchers early in 2022 declared the green water boundary to be “considerably transgressed.” The situation, they said, will likely worsen before any reversals in the trend will be observed. “Green water modifications are now causing rising Earth system risks at a scale that modern civilizations might not have ever faced,” the study states.

We don’t yet know what the planetary-scale impacts will ultimately be, but, Porkka says, we have an idea of how impacts could be felt in different parts of the world.

Disastrous extreme weather events

Regional extreme events, including floods and mega droughts, are already occurring, Porkka notes. Examples are to be found on every continent.

On Africa’s southeast coast, as just one example: the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists has found that human-induced climate change has increased the likelihood and intensity of heavy rainfall associated with tropical cyclones. The group based their findings on an analysis of tropical storms Ana and Batisrai, which battered parts of Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in early 2022. Both cyclonic systems brought devastating floods that caused severe humanitarian impacts, including many deaths and injuries and large-scale damage to infrastructure. These sorts of extreme weather events put great pressure on socioeconomic and political institutions, and could easily destabilize struggling developing nations.

And the situation is worsening. The number of disasters related to weather, climate or water hazards has increased fivefold over the past 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization. An assessment from 1970 to 2019 found more than 11,000 reported disasters attributed to such hazards globally, resulting in more than 2 million deaths and $3.64 trillion in losses. All are indicative of a careening hydrological cycle.

Of the top 10 climate disasters, those causing the largest human losses during that period were droughts (650,000 deaths), storms (577,232), floods (58,700), and extreme temperature (55,736 deaths). In economic terms, the top 10 events included storms (costing $521 billion) and floods ($115 billion).

Porkka points out, however, that freshwater system destabilization impacts can be more subtle than extreme events. Widespread irrigation of croplands, for example, can increase evaporation to such a high degree that even distant precipitation patterns are altered. Part of the problem is that we do not know if consequences like these are negative or positive.

“[W]e know that we’re changing the [hydrological] system in fundamental ways and, once we do, we don’t really know how the impacts accumulate,” says Porkka.

While many riddles remain, scientists now feel they have a reliable metric for accurately tracking transgressions of the freshwater change boundary. “The prime question was what the key variables are, and I think that is relatively solid now with soil moisture [green water] and river flows [blue water],” Gerten says. “The next questions are, where exactly to put the boundaries, and what happens if they are transgressed?”

Based on these findings, researchers are calling for urgent action: “The current global trends and trajectories of increasing water use, deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, atmospheric pollution, and climate change need to be promptly halted and reversed to increase the chances of remaining in [Earth’s] safe operating space.”

That’s a tall order, and no matter humanity’s actions, we don’t know how things will play out. “Water is so fundamental and elemental, and at the same time, so varied,” Gerten says, and there is no silver bullet for solving our hydrological problems.

Banner image: Farmers tending to their agricultural land in Uzbekistan. Image by Petro Kotzé.

Citations:

Scanlon, B. R., Jolly, I., Sophocleous, M., & Zhang, L. (2007). Global impacts of conversions from natural to agricultural ecosystems on water resources: Quantity versus quality. Water Resources Research, 43(3). doi:10.1029/2006wr005486

Gleeson, T., Wang‐Erlandsson, L., Porkka, M., Zipper, S. C., Jaramillo, F., Gerten, D., … Famiglietti, J. S. (2020). Illuminating water cycle modifications and earth system resilience in the Anthropocene. Water Resources Research, 56(4). doi:10.1029/2019wr024957

Gleeson, T., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Zipper, S. C., Porkka, M., Jaramillo, F., Gerten, D., … Famiglietti, J. S. (2020). The water planetary boundary: Interrogation and revision. One Earth, 2(3), 223-234. doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2020.02.009

Gerten, D., Hoff, H., Rockström, J., Jägermeyr, J., Kummu, M., & Pastor, A. V. (2013). Towards a revised planetary boundary for consumptive freshwater use: Role of environmental flow requirements. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5(6), 551-558. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2013.11.001

Zipper, S. C., Jaramillo, F., Wang‐Erlandsson, L., Cornell, S. E., Gleeson, T., Porkka, M., … Gordon, L. (2020). Integrating the water planetary boundary with water management from local to global scales. Earth’s Future, 8(2). doi:10.1029/2019ef001377

Wang-Erlandsson, L., Tobian, A., van der Ent, R. J., Fetzer, I., te Wierik, S., Porkka, M., … Rockström, J. (2022). A planetary boundary for green water. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. doi:10.1038/s43017-022-00287-8

Hubau, W., Lewis, S. L., Phillips, O. L., Affum-Baffoe, K., Beeckman, H., Cuní-Sanchez, A., … Zemagho, L. (2020). Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests. Nature, 579(7797), 80-87. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2035-0

Wang, S., Zhang, Y., Ju, W., Chen, J. M., Ciais, P., Cescatti, A., … Peñuelas, J. (2020). Recent global decline of CO₂ fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis. Science, 370(6522), 1295-1300. doi:10.1126/science.abb7772

Ravi, S., Breshears, D. D., Huxman, T. E., & D’Odorico, P. (2010). Land degradation in drylands: Interactions among hydrologic-aeolian erosion and vegetation dynamics. Geomorphology, 116(3-4), 236-245. doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2009.11.023

Van Luijk, G., Cowling, R. M., Riksen, M. J. P. M., & Glenday, J. (2013). Hydrological implications of desertification: Degradation of South African semi-arid subtropical thicket. Journal of Arid Environments, 91, 14-21. doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2012.10.022

Knoblauch, C., Beer, C., Liebner, S., Grigoriev, M. N., & Pfeiffer, E. (2018). Methane production as key to the greenhouse gas budget of thawing permafrost. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 309-312. doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0095-z

Photo by Leslie Lopez Holder on Unsplash

With states, corporations, utilities and the federal government setting aggressive renewable energy goals, as well as big tax incentives such as in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, wind and solar developers have been pushing projects that are igniting fierce battles over property rights, loss of farmland, climate change, aesthetics, the merits of renewable power and a host of other concerns.

Michigan wants to fast-track renewable development. Local townships are suing.

By Izzy Ross / “This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.”

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

A backlash lawsuit is challenging how the state of Michigan plans to approve large renewable energy projects, just weeks before a new law is set to go into effect.

About 80 townships and counties are suing the Public Service Commission, the state’s energy regulating body, over how it plans to grant siting permissions to renewable projects. The suit, filed November 8, could shape how and where solar, wind, and battery storage are developed — and it muddies the process for projects to be approved in the meantime.

Last year, Michigan’s Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a bundle of ambitious climate policies, including changes to the application process for large renewable projects. One of those laws, Public Act 233, allows the state to greenlight utility-scale renewables — like solar arrays of at least 50 megawatts — that in the past could have been slowed or blocked by local governments. The bill passed on promises that it would help meet clean energy goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing developers with additional paths forward.

Renewable energy advocates had high hopes that it would mark a turning point for Michigan, which has a deep history of local control. In crafting PA 233, lawmakers followed the example of states like Illinois that in recent years have worked to streamline permitting and curtail local governments’ power to restrict renewables.

“I think there was a huge amount of relief on the part of landowners, who have had options agreements and contracts to participate in wind and solar projects, but have been blocked from getting lease payments, essentially, by backlash from local governments,” said Matthew Eisenson, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. Eisenson has argued for regulators to clarify Michigan’s law to ensure projects are protected from local restrictions. According to the Sabin Center, by the end of 2023, at least 22 clean energy projects had been stalled throughout the state by local governments (though some have since moved forward) and at least seven townships had placed severe restrictions on developing industrial solar in areas zoned for agricultural use.

Critics of the law, meanwhile, allege that it wrests control away from the people who live in these areas, and the local governments that know what’s best for their communities.

Legal challenges to Michigan’s new climate laws weren’t exactly unexpected; an effort to repeal the siting law entirely failed earlier this year, because organizers didn’t collect enough signatures to put it to a vote. But this latest appeal in Michigan has gained national attention, with the climate news site Heatmap News writing that it may be “the most important legal challenge for the “renewables” industry in America.”

The lawsuit is challenging the Public Service Commission’s plans to implement the renewable siting law, not the law itself. And as other states consider permitting reform — and whether to keep big “renewable” projects under local or state control — such legal actions could be easier than trying to repeal an entire law, Eisenson said: “There are more options.”

This latest legal challenge was filed after the Public Service Commission announced how the new law for approving project sites would work — a process that involved months of public engagement by the commission in an effort to clarify the rules, including what, exactly, local governments need to have on the books to get the first say on a proposed project.

The lawsuit says the commission’s regulators didn’t follow the proper rulemaking procedures to issue such requirements, and that they undermined the local control that’s baked into PA 233. In particular, the suit challenges the commission’s definition of a “compatible renewable energy ordinance” — a local law that complies with specific state guidelines. PA 233 stipulates that renewable project developers first apply locally as long as the government has a compatible ordinance. If that local ordinance is more restrictive than state law, developers can instead apply directly to the state for approval.

That left some big questions.

Sarah Mills, a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan who researches how renewable energy impacts rural communities, said while parts of PA 233 are clear — such as the sections on setbacks, fencing, height, and sound — others are murky.

“There’s a whole bunch of things that are traditionally regulated for renewable energy projects that are not mentioned in the law,” she said, like whether local governments can require trees and bushes or ground cover.

The Public Service Commission claims that for a local ordinance to be compatible, it can’t include restrictions on things not included in the law. The plaintiffs behind the appeal disagree.

“That’s not the state of the law, and frankly, it rewrites the legislation, because it doesn’t say that,” said Michael Homier, an attorney with the firm Foster Swift Collins & Smith, who is representing the plaintiffs.

What it comes down to, Homier said, is the scope of the commission’s authority: While he acknowledges regulators can still weigh in on applications, the suit challenges the commission’s broader interpretation of how the law should work.

A commission spokesperson said they couldn’t comment.

Under the commission’s order, only the local government that is zoning a renewable project needs to be considered when granting an approval.  But the lawsuit argues that when more than one jurisdiction is affected — like when a county overlaps with a township — both entities should be included in the decision-making.

Mills points out this would affect how much money would flow to local communities from these projects. The state’s law says communities where large projects are located would receive $2,000 per megawatt, along with any required legal fees, which the developer would pay.

“If the affected local unit of government isn’t only the zoning jurisdiction, then the developer would need to pay $2,000 to the county and to the township. So it would be $4,000 per megawatt,” Mills said, in which case “developers are going to have to pay more money.”

Those represented in the appeal are a minority of local jurisdictions; Michigan has 83 counties and more than 1,200 townships. Many are to the south and around the agricultural region in the east colloquially called “The Thumb,” though a few are farther north.

Watchdog groups that track efforts to oppose renewable energy projects say legal challenges are part of coordinated opposition to such development.

“The lawsuit is an extension of ongoing efforts by anti-renewables interests to thwart clean energy in Michigan, and seeks to open the door to poison-pill local rules that effectively prohibit renewables development,” said researcher Jonathan Kim of the Energy and Policy Institute in an email.

In Michigan, debates over large-scale clean energy projects have been acrimonious, and have had consequences for elected officials. Douglass Township, with a population of a little over 2,200, held a recall election in 2022 — part of a wave of unrest in Montcalm County driven by opposition to renewables. “So our community was totally behind us working on ordinances that would protect them from industrialized wind and solar energy,” said Cindy Shick, who won the race for township supervisor as part of the recall.

The state’s recent siting law drastically diminished the local control they had crafted, according to Shick, and the commission’s order eroded it even further, which is why the township joined the lawsuit.

Reasons for opposing utility-scale renewable projects vary widely, from concerns about a loss of agricultural land to the effects such developments would have on the environment. Other critics point out that companies too often fail to consult tribal nations and ignore Indigenous rights when pursuing projects.

Still, others in support of more development say it’s a boon to communities and people looking to make money by leasing their land. Clyde Taylor, 84, is a farmer who grows hay in Isabella Township in central Michigan. The township is among those suing, though Taylor hasn’t looked into the lawsuit.

He’s allowing a company to build a solar array on around two dozen acres of his land. While he has “mixed feelings” about the state’s new siting law, he generally supports it.

“We have to have laws on the books to make this thing fly,” he said, referring to renewable energy adoption. “And they’ve made it fair enough,” with solar projects under 50 megawatts staying in local control.

Ultimately, the local governments involved in the lawsuit are asking the Court of Appeals to cancel at least part of the commission’s order. The law is set to go into effect on November 29. If the appeal is successful at halting the Public Service Commission from implementing the order, it’s unclear how PA 233 would work as the suit moves through the court, a process that could take more than a year.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/michigan-public-service-commission-permitting-reform-lawsuit/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Editor’s note: “Energy is, of course, fundamental to both human existence and the functioning of capitalism. It is central to production, as well as the heating and lighting systems that most people take for granted, and the energy sector is by far the single largest producer of greenhouse emissions.” A transition to 100% electrical energy will never happen. The percentage of electrical energy is 20%, of which 3% are “renewable”. Those figures have never been higher in well over 50 years. Also everywhere in the world, the development of “renewables” has and remains propped up by government support.

From a distance, the Ivanpah solar plant looks like a shimmering lake in the Mojave Desert(a death trap for migratory). Up close, it’s a vast alien-like installation of hundreds of thousand of mirrors pointed at three towers, each taller than the Statue of Liberty. When this plant opened near the California-Nevada border in early 2014, it was pitched as the future of solar power. Just over a decade later, it’s closing. Ivanpah now stands as a huge, shiny monument to wasted tax dollars and environmental damage — campaign groups long criticized the plant for its impact on desert wildlife.

“It was a monstrosity combining huge costs, huge subsidies, huge environmental damage, and justifications hugely spurious. It never achieved its advertised electricity production goals even remotely, even as the excuses flowed like wine, as did the taxpayer bailouts.

And now, despite all the subventions, it is shutting down about 15 years early as a monument to green fantasies financed with Other People’s Money, inflicted upon electricity ratepayers in California denied options to escape the madness engendered by climate fundamentalism.”

Instead of forcing coal and oil into obsolescence, we’re merely adding more energy to the system — filling the gap with “renewables” while still burning record amounts of fossil fuels. This is the real danger of the “energy abundance” mindset: it assumes that a limitless supply of “clean” energy will eventually render fossil fuels obsolete. In reality, “renewable” energies are not replacing fossil fuels, but supplementing them, contributing to a continued pattern of broad energy consumption.

Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: ‘Forget the energy transition: there never was one and there never will be one’

At first glance, no one is waiting for a historian to play down the idea of an energy transition. Certainly not at a time of environmental headwinds. But above all, Fressoz wants to correct historical falsehoods and reveal uncomfortable truths. ‘Despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before.’

In his latest book, More and more and more, the historian of science, technology and environment explains why there has never been an energy transition, and instead describes the modern world in all its voracious reality. The term “transition” that has come into circulation has little to do with the rapid, radical upheaval of the fossil economy needed to meet climate targets.

In France, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has been provoking the energy and climate debate for some time. He denounces the obsession with technological solutions to climate change and advocates a reduction in the use of materials and energy.

The cover of the French edition of your book says ‘the energy transition is not going to happen’. Why do you so strongly oppose this narrative?

We are reducing the carbon intensity of the economy, but that is not a transition. You hear very often that we just need to organise ‘a new industrial revolution’, most recently by US climate envoy John Kerry. You cannot take this kind of historical analogy seriously, this is really stupid.

The idea of an energy transition is actually a very bizarre form of future thinking, as if we would transform from one energy system to another over a 30-year period and stop emitting CO2. If it were to come across as credible, it is because we do not understand the history of energy.

But don’t we have historic precedents? Didn’t we transform from a rural economy that ran on wood to an industrial society with coal as the big driver?

This is an example of the many misconceptions of the history of energy. In the 19th century, Britain used more wood annually just to shore up the shafts of coal mines than the British economy consumed as fuel during the 18th century.

Of course it is true that coal was very important for the new industrial economy in 1900, but you cannot imagine that as if one energy source replaced the other. Without wood, there would be no coal, and therefore no steel and no railways either. So different energy sources, materials and technologies are highly interdependent and everything expands together.

So I guess you won’t agree either with the claim that oil replaced coal in the last century?

Again, oil became very important, but this is not a transition. Because what do you use oil for? To drive a car. Look at Ford’s first car of the 1930s. While it ran on fuel, it was made of steel, requiring 7 tonnes of coal. That’s more than the car would consume in oil over its lifetime! Today it is no different: if you buy a car from China, it still requires about three tonnes of coal.

You should also take into account the infrastructure of highways and bridges, the world’s biggest consumers of steel and cement, and that is just as dependent on coal. Oil drilling rigs and pipelines also use large amounts of steel. So behind the technology of a car is both oil and a lot of coal.

You suggest looking at energy and the climate problem without the idea of ‘transition’. How? 

Focus on material flows. Then you see that despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased (excluding wool and asbestos). So modernisation is not about ‘the new’ replacing ‘the old’, or competition between energy sources, but about continuous growth and interconnection. I call it ‘symbiotic expansion’.

How do you apply this idea of symbiotic expansion of all materials to the current debate about the energy transition?

The energy transition is a slogan but no scientific concept. It derives its legitimacy from a false representation of history. Industrial revolutions are certainly not energy transitions, they are a massive expansion of all kinds of raw materials and energy sources.

Moreover, the word energy transition has its main origins in political debates in the 1970s following the oil crisis. But in these, it was not about the environment or climate, but only about energy autonomy or independence from other countries.

Scientifically, it is a scandal to then apply this concept to the much more complex climate problem. So when we seek solutions to the climate crisis and want to reduce CO2 emissions, it is better not to talk about a transition. It is better to look at the development of raw materials in absolute terms and to understand their intertwinedness. This will also restrain us from overestimating the importance of technology and innovation .

Didn’t technological innovation bring about major changes?

Numerous new technologies did appear and sometimes they rendered the previous ones obsolete, but that is not linked to the evolution of raw materials. Take lighting, for example. Petroleum lamps were in mass use around 1900, before being replaced by electric light bulbs. Yet today we use far more oil for artificial lighting than we did then: to light the headlights of the many millions of cars.

So despite impressive technological advances, the central issue for ecological problems remains: raw materials, which never became obsolete. We speak frivolously about technological solutions to climate problems, and you can see this in the reports of the IPCC’s Working Group 3.

Don’t you trust the IPCC as the highest scientific authority on climate?

Let me be clear, I certainly trust the climate scientists of groups 1 and 2 of the IPCC, but I am highly critical of the third working group that assesses options for the mitigation of the climate crisis. They are obsessed with technology. There are also good elements in their work, but in their latest report they constantly refer to new technologies that do not yet exist or are overvalued, such as hydrogen, CCS and bioenergy (BECCS).

The influence of the fossil industry is also striking. All this is problematic and goes back to the history of this institution. The US has been pushing to ‘play the technology card’ from the beginning in 1992. Essentially, this is a delaying tactic that keeps attention away from issues like decreasing energy use, which is not in the interest of big emitters like the US.

What mitigation scenarios do exist that do not rely excessively on technology? 

As late as 2022, the IPCC’s Working Group 3 report wrote about ‘sufficiency’, the simple concept of reducing emissions by consuming less. I’m astonished that there is so little research on this. Yet it is one of the central questions we should be asking, rather than hoping for some distant technology that will solve everything in the future.

Economists tell what is acceptable to power because it is the only way to be heard and to be influential, it is as simple as that. That is why the debate in the mainstream media is limited to: ‘the energy transition is happening, but it must be speeded up’.

The transition narrative is the ideology of 21st century capitalism. It suits big companies and investors very well. It makes them part of the solution and even a beacon of hope, even though they are in part responsible for the climate crisis. Yet it is remarkable that experts and scientists go along with this greenwashing.

Do you take hope from the lawsuits against fossil giants like Shell and Exxon? 

Of course Exxon has a huge responsibility and they have been clearly dishonest, but I think it is too simplistic to look at them as the only bad guys.  Those companies simultaneously satisfy a demand from a lot of other industries that are dependent on oil, like the meat industry or aviation. More or less the whole economy depends on fossil fuels, but we don’t talk as much about them.

That’s why it is inevitable to become serious about an absolute reduction in material and energy use, and that is only possible with degrowth and a circular economy. That is a logical conclusion of my story, without being an expert on this topic.

Degrowth is not an easy political message. How can it become more accepted?

I do not offer ‘solutions’ in my book since I don’t believe in green utopias. It is clear that many areas of the economy won’t be fully decarbonized before 2050, such as cement, steel, plastics and also agriculture. We have to recognise this and it means that we simply won’t meet the climate targets.

Once you realise this, the main issue becomes: what to do with the CO2 that we are still going to emit? Which emissions are really necessary and what is their social utility?  As soon as economists do a lot more research into this, we can have this debate and make political choices. Yet another skyscraper in New York or a water supply network in a city in the Global South?