You’ve done great work here to analyze the Guardian, though I would still recommend that you look up the year-by-year record of global fossil fuel use, measured in terrawatt-hours, published by Our World in Data. It’s the only chart that really shows the truth about humanity - fossil fuel use was 31k in 1960, the year of my birth, and it’s risen, and risen, and risen, up, and up, and up, through all the years of the Guardian and environmentalism and net zero sugar and every minute and event of our lives to be at 140,231 terrawatt-hours in 2023.
No despair? No recrimination? Why not, given that indisputable record, that absolute certainty of continued mega-terrawatt-hours?
Humans “do” fossil fuels, which is worse than “doing” nothing, but it is what we have done, and what we will do.
Amusingly, I thought to myself when first posting "Should I go back further than 1988?" and then thought, "Nah, leave something for the commenters," and they/you did not disappoint!
The heartbreaking reality is that the first warnings about the environmental impact of GHGs show up in the 19th century, so we have absolutely no excuse. We filled the 20th Century with ever-more-elaborate machines of war and myth-making around them to justify the land and labour consumed by related enterprises. We locked ourselves into an oil imperialism so rigid that there's no getting out of it in time - and even if we do make minor strides to divest from oil and gas, it's always into more forms of extractionism, never a concerted reduction in consumption patterns. We're just too enamoured with this way of life to give it up.
But more on that in a future piece. I've been eaten up by other work meetings this week, and I'm a bit behind my time here. Very thankful all the same to have a careful reader who keeps me on my toes and won't put up with heavy-handed hopium. There's enough of that already.
You’ve done great work here to analyze the Guardian, though I would still recommend that you look up the year-by-year record of global fossil fuel use, measured in terrawatt-hours, published by Our World in Data. It’s the only chart that really shows the truth about humanity - fossil fuel use was 31k in 1960, the year of my birth, and it’s risen, and risen, and risen, up, and up, and up, through all the years of the Guardian and environmentalism and net zero sugar and every minute and event of our lives to be at 140,231 terrawatt-hours in 2023.
No despair? No recrimination? Why not, given that indisputable record, that absolute certainty of continued mega-terrawatt-hours?
Humans “do” fossil fuels, which is worse than “doing” nothing, but it is what we have done, and what we will do.
Amusingly, I thought to myself when first posting "Should I go back further than 1988?" and then thought, "Nah, leave something for the commenters," and they/you did not disappoint!
The heartbreaking reality is that the first warnings about the environmental impact of GHGs show up in the 19th century, so we have absolutely no excuse. We filled the 20th Century with ever-more-elaborate machines of war and myth-making around them to justify the land and labour consumed by related enterprises. We locked ourselves into an oil imperialism so rigid that there's no getting out of it in time - and even if we do make minor strides to divest from oil and gas, it's always into more forms of extractionism, never a concerted reduction in consumption patterns. We're just too enamoured with this way of life to give it up.
But more on that in a future piece. I've been eaten up by other work meetings this week, and I'm a bit behind my time here. Very thankful all the same to have a careful reader who keeps me on my toes and won't put up with heavy-handed hopium. There's enough of that already.