A guide to being delusional

You too can be delusional in three easy steps. Read on to learn how!

Step 1: Believe that language creates reality.

Believing that language creates reality is a common flaw in today’s postmodern-leaning society. People do it all the time. It’s a critical first step in being delusional.

Using the word “clean” in terms like “clean energy” and “clean technology” is a great example of an attempt to use language to create reality. I’ve previously described the use of the word “clean” in these terms as thought-terminating dogma because it hides the material realities of what so-called clean energy and clean technologies actually require. When people read the term “clean technology,” they assume it means that technology is good or will somehow “save the planet.” They don’t think any further about what that technology might involve, because the word “clean” has stopped them from looking more deeply at the issue.

Today’s news provides a great example of using the word “clean” in an attempt to create an alternate reality, otherwise known as a delusion. An article in E&E News about direct air capture (DAC) technologies — “massive facilities that remove carbon dioxide from the sky” — is about how the Biden administration is providing over a billion dollars in grants for this new “clean technology industry.” Being generous about the meaning of “clean,” we understand that “clean” is applied here because these machines capture more CO2 than they emit as they are running, and, at a few facilities, store that CO2 in the ground. (To date, most DACs have not stored the CO2, but rather sold it to — smack your forehead now — oil companies for “enhanced oil extraction,” a process that obviously renders the DAC technologies moot in regards to “saving the planet from climate change.”) To build the DAC technologies requires mining materials (and destroying the land in the process), refining those materials, manufacturing the machines, installing them, and supplying energy to keep them running— a whole lot of energy, because they are energy intensive technologies. Each one of these steps creates CO2 emissions.

By using the word “clean,” corporations and the Biden administration are hoping to create the illusion that DAC technologies will somehow solve climate change and are, as an industry representative is quoted in the article as saying, “a big deal.” Never mind that to capture annual global CO2 emissions would require over 3 million of these machines. Oh, the profit incentives for that industry! A big deal indeed. You might realize that corporations can win big on both ends of that game: they get paid to emit CO2 into the atmosphere— by extracting fossil fuels and other materials and selling these materials and the products they make from them — and get paid to make and install DAC technology to pull that CO2 from the atmosphere and store it or use it to extract more materials. But don’t think about that too much, because if you do, you won’t be able to complete Step 1.

If the word “clean” is used often enough, by corporations that wish to profit from extraction and from the products they manufacture, by the government administrations that enable these corporations by writing laws and supplying incentives to support their activities, and by the media reporting on all this, then eventually the public comes to believe DACs and other so-called clean technologies are indeed clean. What the general public understands to be clean might be very different from the reality, but say it often enough — “clean, clean, clean!” — and you can convince yourself that all these technologies being described as “clean” appear out of thin air without even a smudge of dirt from the land destroyed to build them or a single molecule of CO2 emitted in the process. 

Step 1 is complete.

There are many other terms that fall into this category, for instance: “green,” “net zero,” “carbon offsets,” and “nature-based solutions.” These words and the word “clean” have been used successfully to create the illusion that there is such a thing as a “clean technology” or “clean energy.” There isn’t. 

Words do not create reality, but if you want to delude yourself, believe that they do. 

Step 2: Ignore reality.

Once you believe that language makes reality, the second step is to ignore actual reality — the reality of the material, biophysical world.

For instance, to use another example frequently in the news, if you’ve managed to convince yourself that adding the word “clean” in front of EVs makes “clean EVs” real, to maintain this delusion you must force yourself to ignore the complex, energy intensive, polluting, global coordination of materials and refining, shipping, manufacturing, and waste disposal required to build cars. You must also ignore the poisoning, ripping, tearing, cutting, and shredding of the natural world that making, using, and disposing of cars and their batteries requires. As with “clean DAC technologies,” this is especially true when we’re talking about scaling these technologies globally.

Lithium Americas Corporation’s Thacker Pass Lithium Mine will eventually supply enough lithium for one million EV batteries per year (so they say). This is likely an overestimate because corporations like to talk big about themselves, but let’s assume this is correct. It sounds like a lot of EV batteries, doesn’t it? The reality is, of course, that enough lithium for one million cars is a drop in the bucket when compared to the 1.5 billion cars currently on the planet. Even if the mine were to eventually supply the lithium for 41 million cars (the lifetime of the mine is estimated at 41 years), this is still a fraction of the lithium required for 1.5 billion EV batteries.

Batteries to store grid energy, required for electric grids powered by intermittent “clean” technologies (there’s that word again!) such as wind turbines and solar panels likewise require a lot of lithium, much more than car batteries, especially if we attempt to replace fossil fuels with electricity for lighting, appliances, heating, cooling, industrial processes, etc.

Both kinds of batteries require many other minerals along with lithium, including cobalt, nickel, graphite, manganese, copper, and more. A 2022 Benchmark Minerals report found that more than 300 new mines would be required to meet minerals demand for EV and grid storage batteries, just through 2035. A 2021 paper in Energies 2021 found that “[a]n entire year of production from the world’s largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility — Tesla’s $5 billion Gigafactory in Nevada — could store only three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand.” A 2021 report by Simon Michaux for the federal government of Finland found that to replace fossil fuels with the first generation of “clean technologies” would require 43 times the known global reserves of lithium.

To believe that manufacturing 1.5 billion EVs and many more billions of grid storage batteries will somehow “save the planet” requires magical thinking at its finest. Corporate PR departments are expert at hiding the dirty details of mining and manufacturing, and great at throwing out big numbers like “enough lithium for one million EV batteries” and claiming this will somehow solve climate change. If you believe them, then you’ve successfully ignored reality in favor of your delusion, and you’ve completed Step 2.

The terrible realities of what’s required to meet global demand for batteries, DACs, and other so-called clean technologies are difficult to ignore, but that’s what is required to believe in the delusion of “clean.” So practice, because ignoring reality is critical if you want to be delusional.

Step 3: Pretend the Earth is infinitely f*ck-with-able.

If you’ve successfully completed Steps 1 and 2, then Step 3 should be a breeze. To complete Step 3 you must believe that the Earth is infinitely f*ck-with-able. By that I mean you must believe that we can keep pretending we humans are separate from nature and exempt from natural law. We’ve already dissociated ourselves as a species almost entirely from nature (i.e. the real world) with our advanced technologies, both personal and industrial, and almost destroyed nature as a result. How many people can name the trees they see outside their window (if they see any at all)? How many people know that industrial culture has destroyed 90% of old growth forests here in North America? How many people know that deforestation alone threatens ecological catastrophe for our species and many others? Destroying nature means destroying ourselves, since we are part of nature, and without nature, we humans will not exist.

One example of infinitely f*ck-with-able thinking in the recent news is deep sea mining. As of this writing, deep sea mining looks like it will go ahead, despite many warnings from scientists that it could destroy the oceans, and the marine life who live there (including the marine life that is the primary food source for more than 3 billion people). The oceans are the lifeblood of planet Earth, and destroying them would surely mean destroying ourselves, too. 

The mining companies say we “need” the materials that can be extracted from the deep ocean — materials like cobalt and manganese for batteries and “clean technologies”— to address climate change. Even if it were true that mining these materials to make so-called clean technologies could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, if we obliterate thousands of species in the process, species critical to maintaining the web of life on Earth, then have we really solved the problem? We’ve already obliterated thousands of species in the process of industrializing the world with fossil fuels; isn’t mining more non-renewable materials just making the same mistake we made with fossil fuels all over again?

Mining the land and the oceans for lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite, and more to keep industrial civilization going just a little bit longer requires believing Earth is infinitely f*ck-with-able. It is short-sighted at best and ecocidal at worst, and yet this is what you must believe if you want to believe in the delusion of “clean technologies” and you want to be successful in Step 3.

Geoengineering is another example of infinitely f*ck-with-able thinking that regularly shows up in the news. Each year, governments and corporations inch further along in their plans for solar geoengineering — spraying the atmosphere with particles that will reflect sunlight in hopes of reducing the impacts of global warming. We are already participating — by no choice of our own — in global geoengineering (see CO2 emissions, mining, chemical pollution, industrial agriculture, deforestation, urbanization, species destruction, etc.). “What’s a little more going to hurt?” you must convince yourself for Step 3, despite decades of warnings from scientists that solar geoengineering could alter weather patterns all around the world and cause crops to fail. 

Convincing yourself that the Earth is infinitely f*ck-with-able is just a matter of degree, right? After all, who needs nature when we’ve got Netflix and virtual reality and online drug stores with 1 hour delivery to f*ck with our consciousness? And, after all, burning fossil fuels has almost doubled pre-industrial levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so why not f*ck with the atmosphere some more? And, after all, we are already driving thousands of species into extinction, far faster than normal extinction rates, so why not say, “F*ck the rest of the species; I want my “clean” technology”?

If you can convince yourself that just a bit more destruction or even a lot more destruction is just fine, because for you, it’s been fine so far — you have your iPhone in your hand after all (and soon, in your brain), so it must be fine — then you have successfully completed Step 3. You’ve convinced yourself that the Earth is infinitely f*ck-with-able, so we might as well keep going. 

Congratulations, you are delusional.

Enjoy the fantasy; it won’t last much longer.