Meet the Scale Monster Stalking Climate-Size Clean-Energy Plans
Efforts to change energy systems at a scale the climate system might notice all seem to run up against a common foe.
A fine New York Times feature and a Louisiana Illuminator news story on carbon capture pipeline challenges - like so many others these days - have me thinking about a core foe of grand energy plans, from Joe Manchin’s favorite gas pipeline to onshore and offshore wind to community solar projects to much-needed transmission expansion.
It’s bigger and more profound than NIMBY, to my eye. It’s a giant momentum-sapping force I’ve been calling the “scale monster.” Click the hashtag for my many tweets on this:
#SCALEMONSTER
I think this concept deserves a visual reference, so I’ve made one out of a Goya painting and some USGS images (actually the painting may have been by Goya’s assistant).
Feel free to deploy this piece of art any time you see forces of opposition rising when starry-eyed technocrats plan ambitious projects to fill the many gaps in today’s energy systems in the United States - or any other free nation - claiming to be serious about clean energy adoption at a scale the climate system might someday notice.
Here are the news articles I reference above:
I’m offering this short missive because the post I was writing on today’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report vanished into the digital ether late this afternoon after I errantly had it open in two windows. Grrrrrrr… It’s not the platform’s fault.
In the meantime, you can listen to the IPCC rollout here, along with some live commentary from me (speed the cursor forward).
Andy Revkin, you never give up on what is a many-sided, big monster of a problem! And i am thankfull for that. Carolyn R.
What’s with the NIMBY
And The #scalemonster?
Are you referring to David and Goliath?
Climate justice issues facing Americans does have to do with their communities breathing toxins and being impacted by hazardous waste disproportionately. They have a right not to have industry profits trump health, safety and equity.
With my ear to the ground -- the breaking news is about “Affordable housing” and where to build it is now the hottest NIMBY issue in America. Class issues with suburbanites “do not want the projects built in their neighborhoods.” Because what low income brings with it e.g. mental heath, health issues etc.
As climate crisis displaces more people, more layoffs, and Low wages and lack of shelter that is becoming scarce because of high rents. The System is breaking down and homelessness at a crisis level. There is no plan for a social safety net for the vulnerable people that now includes The middle class. There is no plan to adapt and no plan to cut the misery of the next catastrophe that we can now predict.
Drawing down emissions now demand a feasibility studies, and adaption planning wrapped in cultural change best practices.
Every conversation to draw down emissions now must be anchored with a doctoral thesis on planning for future resiliency.
It’s getting harder and more complicated to solve this problem - that’s the #scalemonster.