In 1917, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor most famous for developing the first practical model of the telephone, gave a graduation speech that became a meandering National Geographic article. In it, he expressed concern that humans would use coal and oil until these fuels became scarce. “We can take coal out of a mine,” he laments, “but we can never put it back. [...] What shall we do when we have no more coal or oil!” Once they’re gone, he suggests, people may be able to capture tidal and wave power or possibly use ethanol, “a beautiful, clean, and efficient fuel” synthesized from waste biomass like sawdust, or even use the “sun’s rays directly as a source of power.” He mused, “What wide expanses of roof are available in all our large cities for the utilization of the sun’s rays!” 

Bell was concerned not only with the exhaustibility of these fuels that have come to be called “fossil fuels” but also the risk that burning them could create a greenhouse effect—a term that had probably been coined by John Henry Poynting ten years prior—that would turn the Earth into a “hot-house.” Half a century earlier, in 1856, Eunice Newton Foote became the first scientist to demonstrate experimentally that carbon dioxide traps heat. Hypothesizing that if there was enough of the gas in the atmosphere, it could heat up the planet, Foote was the first scientist to link carbon dioxide with global climate change.

Now, after a 169-year experiment of continual carbon emissions, we know that burning fossil fuels in such great amounts has indeed created a greenhouse effect, substantially warming the planet. Last year was the hottest year on record, with the global average temperature hitting 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and it will almost certainly be beaten by this year, which will likely be beaten by next year. This warming has occurred far faster than any natural mechanism and thus can only be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels (and downstream events like forest fires and permafrost melting). Echoing Bell’s fear of this effect creating a “hot-house,” scientists today fear the high likelihood of what some call a “hothouse earth” scenario in which this human-caused warming sets off other sources of warming—like decaying permafrost, which releases large amounts of methane, another greenhouse gas that’s significantly more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide—leading to extreme temperatures that make large stretches of the planet inhospitable for complex forms of life like human beings. With fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions hitting record highs every year with no reduction in sight (along with the global temperature), the likelihood of avoiding such a scenario dwindles every day, growing further and further out of reach. 

Many have responded to this crisis with an instinct similar to Bell’s: let’s use various non-fossil alternative energy sources—like his suggestions of tidal, wave, biofuel, and solar power—instead of coal, oil, and gas. While this is generally a reasonable instinct, there are some major hurdles preventing a neat transition from fossil fuels to alternative forms of energy, and there are some related problems that alternative energy simply cannot solve. Bell assumed, after all, that we would only transition once the fossil fuels ran out. But this is something that will happen only long after catastrophic warming is locked in, meaning that we cannot afford to wait that long to begin our transition. Unfortunately, instead of confronting these difficult truths, many mainstream commentators and analysts have been content to get themselves hyped up on speculative “new” sources of alternative energy, devoting religious-like fervor to the idea that miracle tech will deliver us from perpetual hellfire. 

A recent CNN article, for instance, opens with the following claim: “Large reserves of white hydrogen may exist within mountain ranges, [...] raising hopes this clean-burning gas can be extracted and supercharge efforts to tackle the climate crisis.”

There are really three claims bundled cleverly together in this one sentence, and each one is more loaded than the last. The sentence eases us in with an innocuous, neutral fact: white hydrogen may exist within mountain ranges. Fine. But then it claims a “clean-burning gas” may be extracted from these mountain ranges. What makes this gas “clean”? If we mean no particulates (harmful microscopic chemicals) or carbon dioxide come out of, say, a car’s tailpipe when burning this gas, then sure, it’s at least cleaner than a petroleum-based energy source such as standard gasoline. But to accept that it is “clean,” we would have to ignore all the other ways in which the cars that it may power are dirty, like tire pollution (tire wear causes 2,000 times more particle pollution than exhaust) or the demand for petroleum-dependent asphalt created by cars or all the manufacturing waste that goes into making, moving, and maintaining cars. For whom is mountain hydrogen extraction “clean”? For the beings, human and otherwise, who live on and around the mountain that is blasted and made uninhabitable in order to extract the hydrogen, it is not very clean. 

The biggest assumption comes at the end: that this extraction will “supercharge efforts to tackle the climate crisis.” At first, this too might seem like an innocuous observation. After all, isn’t hydrogen gas, which does not emit carbon when burned, a replacement for fuels that do emit carbon dioxide, making its use a contribution to tackling the climate crisis? This seems reasonable until we consider that new sources of non-fossil alternative energy, like this one, have tended not to replace fossil energy but to supplement existing fossil fuel sources. Even when an individual instance of renewable energy generation can be shown to displace fossil energy—like, say, wind displacing coal in Scotland—on the whole, fossil energy increases have kept pace with new renewables. There have been some promising changes with regard to electricity generation in some places, such as Europe, but few provable cases of alternative energy supplanting available fossil energy. Fossil fuel use and carbon emissions are still hitting records alongside growth in alternative energy. China, for example, is building out alternative energy projects faster than any other country. It is also deploying coal energy in greater quantities than any other country. Scotland has achieved an impressive reliance on wind energy and a fracking ban. But the U.K. simultaneously promises to continue relying on North Sea oil “for decades to come,” according to the U.K.’s Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, even as they aim to build offshore wind there. The U.K. is not alone. New fossil fuel spending is happening worldwide to an extent that even exceeds past investment records, indicating that industry and energy companies will continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels into the future, regardless of what other energy sources may come along. 

 

If alternative energy isn’t displacing fossil fuels, can it be said to be reducing carbon emissions and thus tackling the climate crisis? Obviously not: if it’s not reducing emissions, then it’s not tackling the climate crisis. In fact, it may be doing the opposite and contributing to the climate crisis primarily through two mechanisms: 1) by increasing overall energy supply and thereby locking in higher energy demand, and 2) by creating new outlets for fossil energy consumption, namely the infrastructure necessary for alternative energy’s extraction, production, maintenance, and distribution. 

Demand is malleable. Reducing the energy supply can restrain unnecessary consumption and force economies and individuals to prioritize consumption. When fuel prices rise as a result of supply constraints, for example, demand for bloated personal vehicle sizes decreases. As we might expect, when fossil fuels are cheaper, we see cars get bigger, which results in more materials being harvested to build these bigger cars, in turn requiring more asphalt for larger parking lots and wider roads and more resources to repair roads more frequently (a two-ton SUV is sixteen times more damaging to roads than a one-ton car), and more. “Car bloat,” as it’s sometimes called, has led to an increase in the material footprint of cars and has counteracted any potential climate benefits of the increasing fuel efficiency of internal combustion engines (such as the reduction of vehicular carbon emissions). As the size of personal vehicles has increased, so has the demand for more fuel. That is, supply induces demand: demand rises to meet supply. Similarly, highway expansion doesn’t reduce congestion; car use simply increases to fill the wider roads. And building more housing typically doesn’t reduce cost; it can instead increase demand. Aside from induced demand, this also demonstrates the famous Jevons paradox: increased efficiency results in increased consumption. Under these conditions, increasing the supply simply increases demand and rate of consumption, thus locking in the imperative to maintain or expand energy sources in order to sustain that extra consumption. If we see a constantly inflated demand, what incentive would powerful fossil fuel lobbies have to decommission lucrative plants and forego huge, steady annual profits? If there is an ever-rising floor of energy consumption, someone will be there to buy new petroleum. Sometimes that extra consumption is not only superfluous but actively harmful in other ways.

Microsoft, for example, is aiming to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant (parts of which were closed due to a partial meltdown in 1979) and is investing in an experimental reactor in Seattle, all to power its energy-hungry AI data centers. In Ireland, AI data centers have already stalled renewable energy transitions as their energy demands have outpaced new renewables. With the expansion of AI, data centers could account for more than one-fifth of global energy demand within the next five years. It’s unclear whether these sorts of projects would be so prioritized without the “clean” energy justification—in fact, nuclear is even less “clean” than hydrogen—but it hasn’t stopped President Trump from recently ordering an expansion of coal production to power AI data centers. Either way, those AI data centers not only don’t need to exist for any social utility but should not be allowed to exist at all due to the harms they cause. Unlike heating, electricity, or transportation, generative AI—which appropriates existing words and images and reassembles them into uncanny forms—does not provide any positive benefit to humans or other life. On top of energy gluttony, the social harms of generative AI are many: it constitutes or enables widespread intellectual property theft, dramatically increases misinformation, harms student learning outcomes, inundates media with low-quality alternatives, eliminates creative jobs, and much more. The widespread and expanding deployment of AI in surveillance and military applications, like autonomous drone warfare, is even more chilling. Some defenders like to say of the technology that, as with the curses in Pandora’s box, AI technology is “out of the bag,” and so all we can do is let it develop as it will. But this is as ridiculous as saying that nuclear weapons technology is out of the bag, so we just have to let it proliferate to any and all. Sorry, everyone, polio is out of the bag, good luck! In certain contexts like healthcare, various forms of AI may provide benefits. But deciding which energy consumption is beneficial cannot be left to corrupt markets or malignant officials. The only ethical way to govern AI and other high-consumption tech would be through public, democratic control so that it could be harnessed for social good. Under this model, any potential benefits of the technology would be weighed against the massive environmental cost of AI—which seems to be an afterthought in the private, for-profit model that currently governs the industry.

Another recent article titled “Geothermal Power Is a Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet,” this one at the New Yorker, explores another potential source of “clean energy.” Many places around the world use geothermal energy when heat from the earth’s crust bubbles to the surface. Microsoft, Meta, and Google are already using geothermal to power some of their AI data centers. But some geologists are trying to figure out ways of drilling deeper to access even more of the planet’s internal heat. The author, Brent Crane, expresses delight at the prospect of geothermal being able to “supply clean energy for eons.” But, like all drilling, this deep earth drilling carries many risks. Some are known, like the possibility of poisoning groundwater and triggering earthquakes. Crane mentions a 2017 earthquake in South Korea that displaced around 2,000 and injured over a hundred people. It was caused by a geothermal project. “In a world of geothermal anywhere,” Crane points out, “we may feel quakes everywhere, too.” Luckily, we are told, one geologist who happens to have a significant financial interest in geothermal’s success isn’t worried: “Earthquakes come up all the time when we’re talking to the public,” but he “hopes that any seismic events generated by working enhanced geothermal systems will also be imperceptible.” Well, as long as he hopes so. 

Increased earthquakes, polluted water, and potential resultant volcanic activity are some of the known risks of existing drilling methods. But accessing these “eons” of clean energy would require drilling far, far deeper than any humans ever have, which carries many more unknown risks, any of which may prove far more catastrophic than the known risks, and some may even be more calamitous than climate change itself, the problem it is meant to solve. After all, history’s worst-known extinction event, the Permian-Triassic, occurred when there was likely a massive burst of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, and acid rain caused by volcanic activity. It killed nearly all the world’s trees and 90 percent of species.

If the acquisition of this energy doesn’t trigger doomsday volcanoes and consequently wipe out most complex life, could it potentially be a “climate moon shot”? Probably not. The technology needed to access these deep reserves of heat, as Crane reminds readers, does not exist and may not ever. Despite fossil fuel companies and former fracking employees eagerly pointing their veteran-drilling expertise toward this tech, it is highly unlikely to come into commercial viability in the time needed to avert hothouse climate feedback loops, some of which, as far as we know, may have already begun or may begin in the near future. Even if we could access these eons of energy, there is, again, no way currently to ensure that all this new geothermal heat would displace fossil energy and carbon emissions rather than simply powering a lot of new AI data centers or other superfluous and harmful forms of consumption yet to be invented. What’s lacking here is a mechanism of governance capable of replacing fossil energy with an alternative kind (a point to which I will return).

Another harmful form of consumption worth mentioning is cryptocurrency. Abkhazia, Georgia was once primarily powered by hydropower. It is now facing long and frequent electricity blackouts and increasing dependence on fossil energy imported from Russia. The main reason for these worsening blackouts and the use of Russian fuel is that a nearby illegal crypto mine is directing hydropower away from residents. As CNN reports, “The region typically faces seasonal power shortages as water levels drop in the winter, but they have become more disruptive because of crypto mining, which is sucking up electricity 24 hours a day,” resulting in a “humanitarian catastrophe.” This manufactured catastrophe should not be happening at all, and certainly not so that we can power crypto mining. Here we have non-fossil energy, an imperfect one that is harmful in its own ways, that should at the very least be providing for residents’ needs but instead is being illegally directed toward social harms. After all, crypto is a fraud that primarily benefits criminals who use it to pay for illicit pornography, drugs, and services, and it did not exist before 2009. What other new monstrosity might be invented in the next 16 years with the glut of energy that new sources of “clean” energy might provide? Whatever it may be, we have every reason to believe that all these new sources of “clean energy” will go fully toward powering AI and crypto or some other new, superfluous, and harmful source of consumption, rather than to making energy widely available to all or reducing fossil energy use for more necessary consumption. 

The act of building new alternative energy will also probably not decrease carbon emissions and, at this point, is just as likely to increase carbon emissions. The reason for this, besides the fact that it locks in increased energy demand, is that, currently, all energy production is heavily dependent on fossil energy. There is no fossil-free energy source. Solar and wind rely on extensive fossil energy for their manufacture, distribution, and construction, and nuclear and hydrogen rely on extensive fossil energy for their extraction, construction, and deployment. And so if those new alternative energy projects are only adding energy on top of existing and new fossil energy projects while increasing energy demand, instead of displacing existing and new fossil energy projects, then they are increasing net carbon emissions, especially if those projects may not have been as likely to occur with only fossil energy. 

Does this mean there should be no new development of alternative energy or that burning fossil fuels is preferable to, say, wind and solar? Absolutely not. It is, of course, much better—less energy- and resource-intensive—for the wind to turn a turbine and generate electricity than coal or gas. But it does mean that any new alternative energy projects, including mountain hydrogen, should be evaluated aggressively based on their direct and downstream harms. After all, not all “clean energy” is equivalent. Tidal power, for instance, may actually have a modestly positive impact on some marine life because it makes large areas off-limits to trawling, the practice of using huge nets to scoop up and destroy marine life indiscriminately, whereas drilling and mining for fuels and minerals almost always harms wildlife and people, even if these forms of energy are “non-carbon.” 

And this brings us back to the mechanism of governance that’s needed here. In order for these alternative energy projects to put a dent in carbon emissions, they must be coupled with state-mandated restrictions on fossil fuel development and deployment. The only proven way to decrease carbon emissions is to prevent the extraction and deployment of fossil energy in the first place. Remember, the climate crisis is primarily caused by greenhouse gases, the dangers of which scientists have understood for almost 170 years. There is no proven technology capable of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or safely and sufficiently blocking solar radiation (to counter the warmth of greenhouse gases). Nor is there any source of non-carbon energy that will be so good it makes fossil fuels obsolete. The more demand created by both fossil and alternative energy, the harder it will be to decrease fossil energy. Status quo emissions trajectories put us on degrees of warming that could make the planet simply too hot for human and other complex life to live. There is quite literally no outcome worse than one in which the planet is rendered uninhabitable. That’s why stopping fossil energy use as quickly and completely as possible, which is the only known way to prevent this outcome, is imperative. 

This sounds like a terrible deadlock, one that hasn’t improved in the past 100 years since Alexander Graham Bell was talking about moving past coal and oil for tidal power and solar. But there is good news: a world that constrains energy consumption, particularly that of rich people and industry, will be a far better world for all. 

The original CNN article on white hydrogen reveals its ideological bias by taking for granted the need to maintain “humanity’s insatiable energy appetite,” as does, less explicitly, the New Yorker geothermal article. This presumption—that humanity’s insatiable energy appetite should be maintained—is a “growthist” ideology: it is an ideology in the sense that it contains presumed (often incorrect) beliefs about how the world works and moral beliefs about how the world should work. It is “growthist” in the sense that everything is pared down to one imperative above all others: to “grow,” or rather, to achieve compounding increases in profit, territory, energy, or other assets. This ideology is dominant throughout the world, with major political parties, governments, corporations, universities, and other institutions all aligned on this all-powerful idea that fetishizes the production of infinitely increasing profit through unlimited consumption and extraction of natural resources alongside the exploitation of labor. (Though some will complain about using “growthist” instead of “capitalist” here, the reality is that historically, economies that we might think of as “anticapitalist,” like mid-century USSR and late-century China, have also put “growth” above most or all other concerns.) But not only is such an outcome—ever-increasing energy expenditure—a physical impossibility, there is no good reason for seeking to maintain ever-increasing levels of energy production and consumption, and certainly no reason sufficient to justify destroying the living world. The only solution to the interlocked climate, ecological, and fossil energy crises is for humanity to reject the idea of perpetually rising energy demand. In other words, we must become satiable with respect to the consumption of goods and services and, as a result, energy use. Doing so is not only necessary, but it will also make us all a lot happier and healthier.

At one scale, we as individuals must be willing to set a limit on what and how much we consume, finding satisfaction in natural joys rather than chasing the short, disposable highs of voracious consumption. This means, for example, avoiding things like single-use plastics; not buying heaps of short-lived clothing; not depending on energy gluttonous devices like a new phone every year or a massive vehicle; not taking lots of flights for weekend trips; and so on. Good parents know that giving kids everything they want all the time is a sure way to “spoil” them, to turn them into avaricious, selfish, unhappy little monsters. Why do we forget that the same principle applies to adults? While a level of responsible consumption is required of us, people understandably may find this self-abnegation difficult to justify when the very rich consume so much without any such scruples, spoiling themselves and the rest of the living world with them. An Oxfam study found that, through investments and personal activities, a billionaire emits more carbon dioxide in an hour and a half than the average person will in a lifetime.

It’s not just billionaires, either. As Jag Bhalla has shown in this publication, the global 1 percent (and even the top 10 percent) are also emitting way more than their “fair share” of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, ordinary people are facing reduced living standards due to government-imposed austerity and wealth-hoarding by the rich. In the U.K., according to a new analysis, public spending cuts are likely to reduce living standards for all British families by 2030, “with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners.” National wealth that went into public services like the National Health Service, utilities, and welfare benefits is increasingly being diverted to private companies and wealthy individuals. So why should I limit myself to owning one or two cars in a lifetime when someone as demonic as Andrew Tate is allowed to hoard dozens at once? Why should I deny myself things I want and can afford when I am already pouring so many resources into a bunch of parasitic companies and landowners just so I can live, while they are rolling around in profligacy? 

The other side of this problem is that the forces of production have decided, in their insatiable quest for ever-increasing profits, to undertake a decades-long campaign of reducing the quality of their products in exchange for quantity of items sold. Even if we would like to limit ourselves to a single good car for a lifetime, for instance—or avoid single-use plastic or use a phone for ten years or wear high-quality clothes—the companies that dominate markets have made this difficult. They build obsolescence into their products, they cut corners in production, and they charge ever higher prices for increasingly worse goods.

Probably the best solution to both the problem of overconsumption by the rich and overproduction of low-quality products by industry—and the political and market influence of the fossil fuel industry—is to build a government with the willingness to rein them in by force of arms. A powerful state is currently the only force capable of setting a limit on what businesses and the rich are able to produce and consume. The outcome of building such an entity could be utopian: ban AI, and suddenly we won’t be inundated with low-quality information and images and can maintain high-quality creative professions. Aggressively persecute crypto operations, and you cut the financial balls off criminals and prevent a lot of pollution and energy waste. Force automakers to only build cars that are attractive, don’t emit carbon dioxide at the point of use, and are built to last decades, and suddenly there will be fewer and better cars (which would have cascading quality of life benefits for all, like fewer deadly roads, less asthma- and dementia-causing pollution, more beautiful cities, and on and on). Mandate all tech companies build products for quality instead of obsolescence, and force them to take responsibility for safe waste disposal. Tax the rich out of existence, and suddenly there are no more psychopathic oligarchs trying to kill us, no more brutally unfair distribution of resources, no more mafia boss-style politicians rigging the system. As a bonus, we could use that revenue to build comfortable transportation and walkable cities, to maintain research funding, and to rewild habitat. The happiest people in the world live in societies with more equal distribution of wealth and a close association with the natural world—even though they are sometimes among the “poorest” in terms of income—not in societies where rich people get to act like giant toddlers and industries get to pump out heaps of ugly garbage. 

Yet in this moment, when states, politicians, and regulatory bureaucracies are almost totally subservient to industry and the rich, when virtually all trends are going in the opposite direction they need to be, and when public good regulations are being rapidly eroded, the idea that a government might suddenly pull a one-eighty and start reining in the rich and industry looks like utopian fiction. Achieving that would require a large and active labor movement, more vigilante leftist agitators, courageous journalists, rebellious bureaucrats, sympathetic police and armed forces, and much else. It would require a world where the rich and corporate management teams truly understood that if they didn’t get taxed out of existence, they would be ushered out of existence by other means (like, for example, the assassination of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, although the political element to the story is being suppressed by a corporate media that is trying to ensure that public expression of rage against the healthcare industry is kept quiet).  

Even if we don’t currently live in such a world, it’s easy to understand why it’s better than the path we’re on now. We know where we’re headed. Some corporations will flatten the world’s mountains, or drill so deep into the earth’s crust they set off doomsday volcanoes, or fill every crevice with radioactive waste, or cover every square mile of land in solar panels so that tech companies get a few more years of developing ever more sophisticated ways of surveilling people. All known life in the universe will be destroyed so that a few billionaires can become trillionaires for a generation. This growthist fetish is anti-living. It is an ideology that tells us to be happy with a temporary energy-fueled simulacrum of life rather than life itself. Anyone who has spent any time on a mountain would never trade such beautiful ranges for a whole ocean of white hydrogen or the ill-gotten spoils that its extraction would accrue for some investment portfolio. 

Growthism is not just anti-living, it’s anti-life. The Alps are among the areas being explored for possible future drilling. These are some of the last habitats in Europe for numerous species like brown bears, lynx, ibex, wolves, and golden eagles, not to mention many less charismatic ones who also deserve to live. If the mountains are drilled, they may be extirpated. Other ranges, like the Pyrenees and Himalayas, home to lynx and snow leopards, respectively, and much else, may also contain significant white hydrogen pools. If drilled, they would suffer the same death-making as the Alps. If we maintain the current level of energy consumption and continue drilling the land and seas for energy at the current pace, a great deadening will be the fate of everyone and everything. Nothing is worth that.