The Solutions to Climate Change Are Here
There is no doubt about it – man-made climate change is a crisis whose magnitude is without precedent in human history. Equally true, however, is that we now stand on the brink of an energy revolution set to take us beyond the fuels which have so rapidly warmed our planet.
To mitigate the worst excesses of climate change, that revolution must now be accelerated. Not only is the enduring survival of our species at stake, but the very capacity of the Earth to sustain life. What is more, this opportunity extends beyond simply avoiding catastrophe, with extreme supply in energy potentially critical in severing the chains of under-development which, for so long, has held back the Global South. Riding the experience curve, technologies like solar cells, lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines and LEDs will mean permanently cheaper energy, ultimately not just outdoing fossil fuels but, as with information and labour, taking us beyond scarcity altogether. That is before we even develop the next generation of renewable technologies.
But as we ’ve already seen, this is at odds with the essence of capitalist social relations, a system where ‘the most basic condition for economic eficiency … [is] that price equal marginal cost’ – that is, where things must be made for profit if they are to be made at all. That means one likely response to extreme supply in energy is that companies will try to make the appropriate technology artificially scarce, market rationality requiring that at some point in the commodity chain rationing (what is called excludability) has to be inserted. If that sounds bizarre, it shouldn’t. After all it was the very issue that Larry Summers wrote about in 2001, and his recommendations would ultimately inform how the entertainment industries adapted to the challenges of extreme supply with peer-to-peer distribution and file-sharing as they pursued new business models like Spotify and Netflix. As the price of energy, like labour and information, moves ever closer to zero, there too it is likely we will pay through rents rather than purchasing the good itself.
Limitless Power
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