Societies live inside narratives. We tell ourselves stories about progress, solutions, and technological ingenuity. We pass legislation, set targets, and assume that the arc of innovation will bend toward progress and prosperity for humanity. Crisis has a way of stripping those narratives away. It forces a confrontation with the physical systems that underpin modern life: energy and materials.
Recent geopolitical shocks have reminded many countries that energy and materials are not simply an environmental issue or a technological challenge. They are the foundation of industrial civilization. Every modern institution, including food production, transportation networks, hospitals, digital infrastructure, construction, and manufacturing, rests on abundant and reliable energy and materials flows. When those flows become uncertain or expensive, the fragility of the system becomes visible.
At the same time, many societies have embraced a powerful idea: that replacing fossil fuels with “clean” energy technologies will allow industrial civilization to continue largely as it is while avoiding ecological catastrophe. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, large-scale battery systems, and even nuclear energy are widely presented as a pathway to decarbonization (as if that’s our only problem) without fundamental disruption to economic growth.
The appeal of this idea is obvious. It promises continuity. We can keep expanding cities, flying across continents, manufacturing consumer goods, and growing the global economy, only now the energy powering these activities and the technologies we do them with will be “clean.” Particularly appealing to politicians at times like these is that it promises reduced dependence on volatile regions for fossil fuels.
But the concept of “clean” energy rests on a profound simplification.
The material reality of energy and technology
No energy system is immaterial. All forms of energy production require extraction, processing, manufacturing, infrastructure, maintenance, and eventual disposal.
Wind turbines require large quantities of steel, concrete, copper, and rare earth elements. Solar panels require mined minerals and energy-intensive manufacturing processes. Electric vehicles require lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and vast quantities of copper for motors and electrical systems. Batteries require complex global supply chains for mining, refining, and fabrication. Nuclear power plants require radioactive materials like uranium, massive quantities of steel and concrete, and 24/7 electricity supply.
These materials do not appear without consequence. Mining destroys landscapes, contaminates air and water, and generates enormous volumes of waste rock and tailings. Refining and smelting are energy-intensive industrial processes. Manufacturing depends on complex supply chains that span continents, relying on transport networks powered largely by fossil fuels.
Once installed, energy infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance and eventual replacement. Turbine blades wear out. Solar panels degrade. Batteries must be replaced. Nuclear waste must be stored (forever, on human time scales). At the end of their life cycles, many of these components pose recycling challenges that are only partially solved and have their own waste streams.
Of course so-called “renewable technologies” are not identical in impact to fossil fuel systems. But the label “clean” energy obscures the reality that all energy technologies are embedded within industrial systems that transform landscapes, consume resources, and generate waste.
The distinction is not between clean and dirty. It is between different kinds of industrial impacts occurring at different points in the system.
In addition to the often-dismissed environmental consequences of so-called “clean” technologies, many countries have also recently discovered that the materials and components used to build these technologies relies on … you guessed it … mining and transportation in and through volatile regions of the world.
The limits of the emissions frame
Much of the public conversation about energy and transportation technologies (like cars) focuses almost exclusively on carbon emissions. This framing simplifies an enormously complex set of ecological questions into a single metric: greenhouse gases.
Reducing emissions is an important goal. But the narrow focus on carbon can obscure other dimensions of environmental impact: habitat destruction, water contamination, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and the sheer scale of material extraction required to sustain industrial economies.
Even the claim that so-called “renewable technologies” significantly reduce emissions across their full lifecycles remains difficult to evaluate with precision. Life-cycle analyses attempt to account for emissions associated with mining, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and disposal. But global supply chains are complex, and data is often incomplete or uncertain.
The emphasis on emissions per unit of energy also risks ignoring a deeper dynamic: total energy use.
If global energy consumption continues to grow—and historically it has grown consistently—then improvements in emissions intensity per unit of energy are likely to be offset by increases in overall energy throughput. For instance, some energy technologies may reduce emissions per kilowatt-hour while the total environmental impact continues to expand because the total number of kilowatt-hours keeps rising.
This dynamic is related to the rebound effect (or Jevons’ paradox). Improvements in efficiency or reductions in cost often lead to increased use rather than decreased consumption.
The deeper issue, then, is not simply what type of energy we use, but industrial civilization itself.
Energy and ecological overshoot
The concept of ecological overshoot describes a situation in which a population’s activity exceeds the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In our human case, it means forests are logged faster than they regrow, and without any understanding of what a forest is and how old growth forests contribute to overall ecological health. Fish are killed far faster than populations can recover, and with little thought to the implications on the broader marine web of life. Carbon emissions accumulate faster than ecosystems can absorb them, even as we destroy the very natural communities doing the absorbing in the first place.
For much of human history, energy availability constrained economic activity. Agricultural societies were limited by sunlight captured through crops, trees cut down for fuel, and the muscle power of humans and animals. Even so, we managed to do massive amounts of harm to ecosystems world-wide from the moment we began slaughtering the megafauna; to stripping soil of life with agriculture; to turning forests into deserts; to burning coal, oil, and gas; and finally to ripping materials from the Earth to build a materials-intensive energy system in a bid to maintain industrial civilization and economic growth just a little bit longer.
The widespread use of fossil fuels accelerated our capacity to devastate the natural world. Coal, oil, and natural gas provided extraordinarily dense and concentrated sources of energy that allowed human societies to expand far beyond the limits imposed by local ecosystems. Industrial agriculture, global transportation networks, mass manufacturing, and large-scale urbanization all became possible because abundant fossil energy allowed humanity to mobilize vast flows of materials and resources.
In this sense, cheap energy has been an outsized engine of overshoot.
While many believe that replacing fossil fuels with so-called “renewable energy” technologies fundamentally changes that relationship, the truth is it simply allows industrial civilization to continue expanding under a different energy regime.
If these technologies add new sources of energy to the global system without significantly reducing total fossil fuel use, the net result is an increase in total energy available for industrial activity. That additional energy drives further growth in manufacturing, construction, transport, and resource extraction, and accelerates ecological overshoot.
From the perspective of ecological limits, the critical variable is not the carbon intensity of energy, but the total scale of energy throughput supporting human economies.
The comfort of technological narratives and beliefs
Given these complexities, why does the idea of “clean” energy retain such powerful appeal?
Part of the answer lies in narrative simplicity. The story that fossil fuels are the problem and renewable energy is the solution is easy to communicate. It fits neatly into political messaging and public campaigns. Modern humans have become so dissociated from the natural world that it’s easy for us to forget that it is flourishing natural communities that are fundamental to all life on Earth, including our own. As eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen has pointed out numerous times, when our water comes from the tap and our food comes from the grocery store, we are more susceptible to the propaganda that “clean” energy exists and will somehow save the planet.
Technological solutions offer reassurance. If innovation can solve the climate problem without requiring significant changes to economic growth or consumption patterns, then societies can avoid confronting uncomfortable questions about limits and trade-offs.
Our technological optimism has deep roots in modern culture. Over the past three centuries, scientific and industrial advances have repeatedly expanded the boundaries of what seemed possible. It is perhaps understandable that many people today assume the next wave of technology will resolve ecological challenges as well.
Institutional incentives reinforce this belief. Governments prefer policies that promise environmental improvement alongside economic expansion. Subsidies for electric vehicles, battery factories, and renewable infrastructure can be framed as both climate action and industrial policy. They create jobs, attract investment, and signal leadership in emerging technologies.
My inbox this morning included this email from the Washington State Department of Commerce illustrating just how far governments go to affirm this belief that “clean” technology is deserving of special consideration and tax breaks (and aligns with the state’s climate legislation that reinforces this same belief):
Financial markets have also embraced the narrative of a massive energy transition. Entire sectors, from mining to manufacturing to venture capital, now depend on the expectation of large-scale deployment of so-called “renewable” technologies. As I discovered when fighting a lithium mine in Nevada, mining companies can even call what they do “green” mining if they mine materials for EVs or power their extraction machines using “clean” energy.
Once such narratives become embedded in political institutions and economic systems, they acquire momentum of their own.
This belief that “clean” energy and technologies exist and that they will somehow “save the planet” is an example of an extreme over-valued belief. It is a belief that is rigid (reducing carbon emissions will save us), non-delusional (it’s shared by others, as an ideology), and it can come to dominate society (see “clean” energy legislation enacted by states and at the federal level). A person—or in this case, society—relishes, defends, and amplifies this belief, integrating it into society’s identity, such as the identity of Washington State being a “leader on climate.”
So what can we do? We must question the premise of this belief and be willing to confront reality by admitting that we were wrong.
Question the premise
The debate over energy often focuses on technology and materials: which sources are “cleaner” based on the extremely narrow framing of carbon emissions, which are more efficient, and which can be deployed fastest. The debate feels real, but the reality is the debate is based on a flawed premise, a premise which invalidates the entire conversation.
The question is not which technologies and materials we human animals should rely on to sustain industrial civilization, but why we think it was ever a good plan to destroy the natural world, prioritize one species above all others, and sacrifice the future for our temporary prosperity (measured by numbers in a computer or bits of green paper or gold nuggets).
Framing the energy transition solely as a technological substitution aligns with the extreme over-valued belief that there is such a thing as “clean” energy and “clean” technology, and that sustaining industrial civilization is what we should be doing.
It allows us to avoid questioning the premise of that belief.
Confronting Reality
The idea that “clean” energy will allow industrial civilization to continue indefinitely without confronting ecological limits is a powerful and comforting narrative. But narratives are not the same as physical systems.
Energy and technology always has material foundations. Industrial economies always have ecological consequences. And growth is (and has been for a long time) colliding with the finite capacities of the biosphere.
The challenge facing modern societies and each of us individually is not to simply replace one energy technology with another. It requires confronting the more difficult truth that we’ve staked the future of the entire living planet on a set of extreme over-valued beliefs: that we are more important than all other life on Earth, that industrial civilization is “progress” in our way of life, and that “clean” energy and technologies exist and will “save the planet.”
There is perhaps little that confronts our human cognitive limitations more than finding out we are wrong and admitting it. But unless we can face up to the reality that the fundamental beliefs we hold about ourselves and our societies are wrong, we are simply building our future on a false foundation and accelerating the consequences of our false beliefs.
I've long felt that "clean" energy narrative is fed by a combination of greed/entitlement and fear/denial mixed with a large quantity of voluntary ignorance. People are terrified of the changes that their lives and the lives of their offspring will have to undergo.
Brilliant. Thank you. I hope this blog stimulates many important (essential) conversations…