John Mortell’s blog

Reading Scottish Science Fiction writer Ken MacLeod’s blog I came across this passage that I thought was quite insightful:

For me, a highlight of a very engaging and informative weekend was a talk by Prof Colin McInnes, DSc FRAes FInstP FRSE FREng, titled ‘Random Thoughts of a Techno-Utopist Running Dog’. The usual conception of sustainability, Prof McInnes argued, was a dangerous idea. Technological stagnation only means slower resource depletion. We need continuous technological progress to make new resources available. The idea that we should use less energy is outrageously inhumane and regressive. Most of humanity gets its energy from burning wood and dung. We need a vast increase in energy production. That means nuclear power, including new kinds of nuclear plant such as the Thorium Energy Amplifier. Nuclear waste is just inadequately burned nuclear fuel. We need to find ways of burning it all. Most reycling schemes are feel-good rather than do-good, condemning us to pre-industrial, manual rooting about in rubbish. We need plasma torches and mass spectrometers to really recover all the useful stuff in our waste. ‘Humanity is the singularity. We are self-replicating smart matter.’ To campaign against cheap flights to Prague while jetting across the world for eco-holidays in the Galapagos is naked class warfare. With synthetic genomics we can have carbon-neutral aviation even cheaper than today’s travel.

While the end of the post goes a bit into slightly interesting, if perhaps very far off thinking, the two points I have in bold are pretty insightful and point to something that has always bugged me about ‘green’ thought. Namely that, for most green thinkers, the simple reality that their desire to ‘reset’ the clock back to some ‘better’ time is completely at odds with the reality that most human beings want their lives to become easier, not harder. Given this, surely green thinkers should adopt to the idea that things like carbon taxes and other such regressive ideas are just not going to happen and instead move their focus towards either tax-breaks and grants for technology and ideas that may make a difference rather than trying to get people to change quite entrenched behaviour?