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Down to the Wire
Post Carbon Program Director Daniel Lerch was interviewed by PlanetShifter Magazine on addiction to fossil fuels.
From the interview:
What is uncertain in our pollution-packed industrial economy? We burn fossil fuels and emit carbon. The Earth dies, Right?
The Earth is going to continue along just fine even if we manage to set off catastrophic climate change. It's been through massive climate upheavals before and it will again. What matters to us is whether we continue to the same kind of biosphere in which we were able to evolve into Homo sapiens, develop culture and civilization, and built the modern world as we know it. And that, really, is the ultimate uncertainty we're flirting with in our fossil-fuel-dependent global economy of nearly seven billion people: we're consuming and wasting so much, so fast, that we really are threatening the ecological basis of our modern existence.The Post Carbon Institute home page uses the “addicted” in the stark choice between staying the course and choosing alternative fuels. What do you mean by addicted? Who is the pusher? Who is the addict?The easy answer is "we consumers and our economies are the ones addicted to fossil fuels, and it's the big energy companies and their cronies in government who are the pushers." But of course it's more complicated than that. It's really the entire modern, globalized economic system that is addicted to fossil fuels, and you could argue that anyone or any institution that contributes to that system in its current form -- whether it's building a new lane of highway or permitting a new offshore oil well-- bears some responsibility as a "pusher."Moreover, think about what "addiction" really means. I think when a lot of people talk about our "addiction to fossil fuels" there's an implication that it's a simple choice between than and renewables, almost a Nancy Reagan-esque "just say no!" attitude. But it's not at all a simple choice. As communities, businesses, households, and individuals we have inherited a centuries-old, deep-seated addiction, and trillions of dollars worth of institutions and infrastructure all built around that addiction. It's not something we can change with a simple choice or with simple actions. And yet, we need to break that addiction, and quickly. So it is a choice, and it's very stark choice.
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