System blindness, or have we just lost our senses?
How our obsession with fossil fuels is killing people, planet and future.
While fossil fuels have certainly grown our economies and help many out of poverty, our addiction to fossil fuels is doing more harm than good. Many nations are responding to the Ukraine and Iran conflicts by feeding this addiction. In this article I highlight why we need a different response.
This Substack series is informed by the research for my upcoming book, Changing Stories, which looks at the way negative – and flawed - narratives shape our perception of the world we live in and our ability to imagine and create a more positive future. For more background please read my introductory Substack.
I am very fortunate to live close to nature and enjoy the sound of birdsong, the wind rushing through the trees, swim in the freshest water you could imagine while enjoying the most amazing sunsets. But with such a rural setting come some more practical challenges, such as access to clean energy. Our home is dependent on oil for heating and the UK grid for electricity, which can be challenging. Oil prices have risen 77% since the start of the Iran war, while electricity – largely from wind - is prone to cuts when those ‘once a decade’ extreme storms now pass through the North of Scotland a few times a year.
For these reasons, and the wish to reduce our carbon footprint, we have been exploring energy self-sufficiency. In case you’re interested, we are looking for an array of solar panels with battery storage. But I’m not here to give you home energy advice.
My quest for a low-carbon, resilient source of home energy did make me think about what has been happening in the Middle-East in the last few weeks, its origins and repercussions.
I don’t want to be dependent on fossil fuels. I don’t want to be at the mercy of price hikes, for a commodity whose price is determined more by geopolitics than supply and demand, nor do I want to contribute to rising carbon emissions any more than I have to.
Simply put, I want as much energy independence and self-sufficiency as I can, and I am willing to invest today to achieve this. To me that seems to make both financial and environmental sense while ensuring greater energy security.
So why are most governments doing the opposite?
The illogical story
And as we all know by now, the war in Iran and its impact on the Middle-East has had repercussions across the globe, causing many countries to rethink their approach to energy security. But in so doing any logic seems to have gone out the window.
Take the UK as an example. The story preferred by the political right goes something like this: The country has become too reliant on importing oil and gas which puts it at the mercy of geopolitical crises. To avoid this happening in the future, new licenses to explore the North Sea should be issued so the UK can produce its own energy and become energy independent.
So far, the UK government’s position has been ambivalent, but a more proactive approach is much needed, because this narrative pretty much falls at the first hurdle for three reasons. First, oil and gas prices are set through the global markets, so they won’t impact what people in the UK pay at the pump or to heat their homes. Second, 93% of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas reserves have already been exploited, so whatever relief this might offer, it will be short-lived. Finally, and probably most relevant, it will take at least 5-10 years before any new licenses result in actual production, so this will do nothing to avert the current crisis.
Real and present dangers
There is no doubt that energy self-sufficiency and independence in a fractured world are worthwhile aims, but relying on fossil fuels to achieve this is as short-sighted as it is dangerous. I’ve just explained why it is short-sighted, but the reasons it is dangerous go far deeper.
First, the climate crisis, caused by our addiction to fossil fuels is a real and present danger. As Will Day, one of my Cambridge colleagues articulates so powerfully, because of climate change we are already seeing ‘wetter wets, dryer drys, hotter hots and colder colds’. And it’s only getting worse, impacting our ability to grow food, threatening critical infrastructure and leading to greater inequalities. Recent analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that the number of countries falling into critical food insecurity could almost triple to 24 if global temperatures increase by 2oC, disproportionately affecting poorer nations.
Which leads me to the second real and present danger: As resources become scarcer due to our never-ending demand to meet the needs of our consumer society, economies are fighting for access, with economic policy, with tariffs and now with weapons, taking many lives in the process.
The logical alternative
It doesn’t have to be that way. There is an alternative and it is staring us in the face: renewables. I suspect this seems obvious to all of you, but for some reason not to our elected officials.
In 2025, 44% of the UK’s electricity demand was sourced from renewable sources, with wind responsible for more than half of this. The technologies are already available to achieve close to 100%: residential solar, offshore wind, smart grids, heat pumps, transport electrification and battery storage to name a few.
But surely that’s too expensive you may think? Not really. The total cost of achieving Net Zero has been estimated by Policy Exchange to be just over £100Bn if achieved by 2035 and just over £115Bn by 2030. That might seem like a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the alternative. The UK’s Climate Change Committee estimates that achieving Net Zero by 2050 will cost less than one fossil fuel price shock. That is a staggering statistic.
And while we’re in the midst of a fossil fuel centred war, it’s worth looking at cost of war to secure energy security. Harvard Kennedy School research led by Nobel Prize Economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the Iraq war cost the US $3Tn.
And yet here we are again, arguing for the ‘quick fix’ of renewed fossil fuel exploration when the UK solutions are readily available. Somehow our political leaders completely fail to see the system dynamics at play, and it’s hurting us all.
A rethink is urgently needed, this time with science and logic at its core.
This week’s picture makes me wish I was a crow.
