What we know for certain is that, in principle, solar is more than capable of meeting the world’s expanding energy needs. Given that the same amount of potential energy hits the Earth in ninety minutes as the whole of humanity consumes in a year then, even in the event of demand doubling over the coming decades, solar might not just be the greenest means of powering our world, but the cheapest one too.
Fortunately the same changes in the price–performance ratio of solar cells also apply to the mainstream technologies of renewable energy storage, lithium-ion batteries. There, recent falls in cost only serve to strengthen the conclusion that it is a question of when, rather than if, the world transitions to renewable energy.
From Crisis to Utopia
Ours is a finite world marked by constraints. To a large extent, these constraints define the five crises set to radically shape the course of the coming century.
Together, these crises – encompassing climate change, resource scarcity, ever-larger surplus populations, ageing and technological unemployment as a result of automation – are set to undermine capitalism’s ability to reproduce itself. That is because they could dissolve some of its key features like the presumption of constant expansion and infinite resources, production for profit, and workers having to sell their labour.
In 1984 the futurist Stewart Brand made the now-iconic declaration ‘Information wants to be free.’ He would later clarify what that meant, saying,
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chaos under heaven