We join with the growing movement of people who conclude that green technology is no answer to the challenges humanity faces. Worse, it allows citizens of affluent nations to maintain the dangerous illusion that our modern standard of living can continue perpetually, more-or-less intact.
Renewable energy relies on industrial technology, and industrialism is based on fossil fuels, the prime driver of accellerating human-caused global warming. Since its beginnings in coal and its expansion through oil, The Age of Fossil Fuels has been completely dependent upon the powerful equipment and high temperatures required to extract, smelt, process, and transport raw materials, manufactured components, and finished products. Green tech, as well as being a product of industrialism, by definition cannot produce the temperatures and BTUs to accomplish these kinds of activities.
You may not know your feelings about this topic but we’d like to invite people who are open to learning more. All current founders have lived in Hawai`i for years on off-grid photovoltaic systems so we are still working on transitioning away from green tech. But, bearing these conclusions about green tech in mind does impact so many of our choices about everything from cooking to appliances to transportation.
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
BRIGHT GREEN LIES
The book and film Bright Green Lies by authors Derrick Jensen, Liere Keith, and Max Wilbert, along with filmmaker Julia Barnes, presents as of 2021 the most up-to-date analysis of this particular issue.
REAL Green New Deal
Another excellent resource to explore this topic is the REAL Green New Deal, which advocates to change the story about our unsustainability crisis from one of technology-based false hopes to one of clear-eyed ecological realism. We encourage you to thoroughly explore this website, particularly their Overview page. If you’d like to go more in-depth, read the white-paper, Pulling Back the Curtain on the Energy Transition Tale.
PLANET OF THE HUMANS
Finally, there is the feature documentary Planet of the Humans by Jeff Gibbs (executive production by Michael Moore), which created controversy among many professional climate activists. (See analysis by Max Blumenthal here.)
It is important for you to know that we’re not a bunch of gloomers and doomers – we absorb factual, specific information about the current trajectory of collapse; experience outrage and anguish over these difficult realities; and find inspired meaning and hope in solutions. Our unflinching apprehension of the world-the-way-it-is fuels our innovation, imagination, and determination to shape a world in recovery. One way of moving forward is explained in our page on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, or Lo-TEK.