For just about the
whole of my life, mankind has been on the brink of creating controlled nuclear
fusion; it’s always been just ‘thirty
years away’. There is no doubt that the technology offers the potential to
generate huge amounts of electricity, with fewer of the problems (such as
radioactive waste) associated with nuclear fission, although the link between ‘peaceful’
research and the development of ever more powerful weapons remains. Similarly,
there is no doubt that progress has been made in many of the technologies involved
in building a working reactor, and that some of that progress
has benefits in itself, apart from energy generation. Most experts in the field
believe, however, that there is still another thirty years or so before remaining
problems can be resolved, and the process scaled up and commercialised.
None of that is to
suggest that work shouldn’t continue, but using the ‘imminence’ of a breakthrough
as an excuse to avoid taking other actions would be folly. Which brings us to
the recent words
of the US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. Not only is he considerably more
optimistic ("The technology, it'll be on the electric grid, you know,
in eight to 15 years") than people actually working in the field, he
also sees that as an opportunity to continue to pursue maximal exploitation of fossil
fuels in the meantime. By coincidence (?), he happens to have founded and run fracking
companies, and believes that the fracking process will "bring back
manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and drive down not just electricity prices,
but home-heating prices and industrial energy prices".
He doesn’t seem to
believe that anthropogenic climate change is as complete a hoax as some
opponents of the concept of aiming at net zero do, but he clearly does believe
that it’s not as imminent as the scientific consensus suggests, and that we
have generations in which to do something, so we can continue to use, and
profit from, fossil fuels in the meantime. However improbable it might seem, it’s
not entirely impossible that he’s right – scientific consensus has been proved
wrong in the past in the light of new discoveries. It’s a gamble, though, and
the stakes are incredibly high. Neither he nor I will be around to see the full
outcome of decisions being taken today, although he and his mates probably will
be around long enough to enjoy the profits they make from oil and gas. That, I
suspect, rather than any real concern for the planet or the people living on
it, is the real driver of his selective take on climate science.
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