Något om "den gröna omställningen" och dess omöjlighet. ENGLISH: Something on "the green transition" and its impossibility.
(elaboration of this English blog post by me)
Dear environmental activist and green transitioner. It is with sadness and sorrow and compassion that I say this to you now. I don't want to be cynical. But I don't think any large-scale green transition will be possible. What is currently so popular. Which finally had a breakthrough.
The reason is simple. We don't have enough metals/minerals to make it work. The main source of this claim that I have is the Finnish professor of geometallurgy, mr. Simon Michaux, having the right scientific training and professorial expertise on the subject.
In the latter article we read: "Note that 189 years worth of copper production, 400 years of nickel production, 9,921 years of lithium production, 1,733 years of cobalt production, 29,113 years of germanium production, and so on, would be needed for the first 20 years of wind and solar installations."
So, you read correctly; regarding lithium, which is considered by many to be the most important key in the green transition, in renewable energy technology and electric cars, we need almost 10,000 years of lithium production to supply a single generation of 20 years of solar panels and wind turbines, with this metal. So this is only for one single generation. What do hundreds of years of high-tech civilization need? Many want our civilization to survive for hundreds of years, at least? And note that this only applies to solar power and wind power. What about all the other things we need, the transition to electric cars, electric trucks, electric airplanes and the rest?
The strange thing is that these facts completely escape the planners of our society. People like Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. All with techno-grandiose plans. Just think about it, they don't sit down and count on these things. They don't even seem to ask the questions about this. This is completely beyond my understanding. That you can be so deaf and blind to reality, to the simplest mathematical facts. For me, it's not difficult to understand, with my secondary school math knowledge (the same applies to the issue of oil exports, they don't count on that either, I managed to do it in this book, with secondary school math).
I'm just saying: math has never been more important. Having a fingertip feeling for math. Nevertheless, it appears like our politicians seem like they never went through either secondary school math, high school math or university math.
Again, I feel like saying that I hope some Swedish politician reads this and does something about the mathematical illiteracy in this area. We need public education, friends.
But if you don't want to see a thing, you won't see it either. You don't google it. You put the blinders on. You organize the whole of political life and the whole of society so that such information should not reach your ears. Because you are obsessed with your progress, with your techno-grandiosity.
Yes. There will be no green transition. It is perhaps sad for all environmentalists. For Greenpeace. But for me it's not sad. Because I don't want this bulldozer of a civilization to live forever, and destroy the earth even more, just that we run it on renewables, not oil. It's like running a logging machine on renewables, instead of oil. The forest is cut down in any case. Wishing civilization to last forever is as stupid as wishing hell to last forever, as the Christian fundamentalists do.
Therefore, my sympathy goes only to your crushed hopes, not to the defeat of your techno-grandiosity.
But. The Christ hope is left. It is soon the only thing left to put one's hope in.