The Nuclear Option

proponents acknowledge. Humankind, The Nuclear Smil recounts, has experienced three major energy transitions: from wood Option and dung to coal, then to oil, and then to natural gas. Each took an extremely long time, and none is yet complete. Renewables Can’t Save the Nearly two billion people still rely on Planet—but Uranium Can wood and dung for heating and cooking. “Although the sequence of the three Michael Shellenberger substitutions does not mean that the fourth transition, now in its earliest stage (with fossil fuels being replaced by new conversions of renewable energy Energy and Civilization: A History flows), will proceed at a similar pace,” BY VACLAV SMIL. MIT Press, 2017, Smil writes, “the odds are highly in 552 pp. favor of another protracted process.” In 2015, even after decades of heavy round the world, the transition government subsidies, solar and wind from fossil fuels to renewable power provided only 1.8 percent of global A sources of energy appears to energy. To complete the transition, finally be under way. Renewables were renewables would need to both supply first promoted in the 1960s and 1970s as the world’s electricity and replace fossil a way for people to get closer to nature and fuels used in transportation and in the for countries to achieve energy indepen- manu facture of common materials, such dence. Only recently have people come as cement, plastics, and ammonia. Smil to see adopting them as crucial to pre- expresses his exasperation at “techno- venting global warming. And only in the optimists [who] see a future of unlimited last ten years has the proliferation of energy, whether from superefficient solar and wind farms persuaded much [photovoltaic] cells or from nuclear fusion.” of the public that such a transition is Such a vision, he says, is “nothing but possible. In December 2014, 78 percent a fairy tale.” On that point, the public of respondents to a large global survey is closer to Smil than to the techno- by Ipsos agreed with the statement “In optimists. In the same 2014 Ipsos survey, the future, renewable energy sources 66 percent agreed that “renewable sources will be able to fully replace fossil fuels.” of energy such as hydroelectricity, solar Toward the end of his sweeping new and wind cannot on [their] own meet history, Energy and Civilization, Vaclav the rising global demand for energy.” Smil appears to agree. But Smil, one of Smil is right about the slow pace of the world’s foremost experts on energy, energy transitions, but his skepticism stresses that any transition to renewables of renewables does not go far enough. would take far longer than its most ardent Solar and wind power are unlikely to ever provide more than a small fraction MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER is President and Founder of Environmental Progress. Follow of the world’s energy; they are too diffuse him on Twitter @ShellenbergerMD. and unreliable. Nor can hydroelectric September/October 2017 159 Michael Shellenberger power, which currently produces just complex. “To generalize, across millennia, 2.4 percent of global energy, replace fossil that higher socioeconomic complexity fuels, as most of the world’s rivers have requires higher and more efficiently used already been dammed. Yet if humanity inputs of energy is to describe indisput- is to avoid ecological catastrophe, it must able reality,” Smil writes. That striving find a way to wean itself off fossil fuels. for more energy began with prehuman Smil suggests that the world should foragers, who craved energy-dense foods, achieve this by sharply cutting energy such as oils and animal fats, which contain consumption per capita, something two to five times as much energy by mass environmental groups have advocated as protein and ten to 40 times as much for the last 40 years. But over that period, as fruits and vegetables. The harness- per capita energy consumption has risen ing of fire let prehumans consume more in developed and developing countries animal fats and proteins, allowing their alike. And for good reason: greater energy intestinal tracts to shrink (since cooked consumption allows vastly improved food requires less digestion) and their standards of living. Attempting to reverse brains to grow. The final outcome was that trend would guarantee misery for the human brain, which demands twice much of the world. The solution lies as much energy by mass as the brains in nuclear power, which Smil addresses of other primates. only briefly and inadequately. Nuclear Around 10,000 years ago, humans power is far more efficient than renew- gradually started to shift from foraging able sources of energy and far safer and for food to farming and began to tap cleaner than burning fossil fuels. As a new forms of energy, including domes- result, it offers the only way for humanity ticated animals for plowing, wind for to both significantly reduce its environ- powering mills, and human and animal mental impact and lift every country waste for fertilization. Permanent farms out of poverty. allowed human societies to grow in size and power. “Even an ordinary staple ENERGY’S HISTORY grain harvest could feed, on the average, Few scholars dominate a field of inter- ten times as many people as the same disciplinary study the way Smil does area used by shifting farmers,” Smil notes. that of energy, on which he has published Yet those societies’ individual members over 20 books. Energy and Civilization saw little benefit. Smil records the remark- synthesizes his canon, offering a broad able fact that “there is no clear upward picture of the evolution of Homo sapiens, trend in per capita food supply across the rise of agriculture, and the very recent the millennia of traditional farming.” emergence of a high-energy industrial A Chinese peasant ate about as much civilization. in 1950, before the arrival of synthetic The core of Smil’s argument is that fertilizers and pumped irrigation, as his the history of human evolution and fourth-century ancestor. development is one of converting ever- That’s in part because for most of larger amounts of energy into ever human history, societies increased their more wealth and power, allowing food and energy production only when human societies to grow ever more they were forced to, by factors such as 160 foreign affairs The Nuclear Option Death panels: a solar farm in Yinchuan, China, April 2017 rising population or worsening soils. fossil fuels is not yet complete. In India, Even in the face of recurrent famines, 75 percent of the rural population still farmers consistently postponed attempts relies on dung for cooking, despite a push to increase production, because doing by the Indian government and interna- so would have required greater exertion tional agencies to replace it with liquefied and longer hours. petroleum gas. And as Smil points out, Then, as farming became more thanks to population growth, humans productive in England in the seventeenth today use more wood for fuel that at and eighteenth centuries, farmers were any other time in history. freed up to move to the city and work The transition from a low-energy, in manufacturing. Urbanization and biomass-dependent agricultural life to CHINA STRINGER REUTERSCHINA NETWORK/ industrialization required a far larger a high-energy, fossil-fuel-dependent leap in energy consumption than the industrial one came at a high human and one involved in moving from foraging environmental cost but also delivered to agriculture. The shift was made possible significant progress. As terrible as indus- by a rapid increase in coal mining. Coal trial capitalism, particularly in its early offered roughly twice as much energy forms, could be for factory workers, it was by weight as wood and by the mid- to usually an improvement over what came late nineteenth century provided half before it, as Smil documents in a series of all the fuel consumed in Europe and of delightful boxes peppered throughout the United States. Despite the obvious the book that feature obscure old texts benefits, the transition from biomass to reminding the reader of the brutality of September/October 2017 161 Michael Shellenberger daily life before and during the Industrial Many advocates of renewables argue Revolution. “Ye gods, what a set of men that hydroelectric power can solve this I saw!” wrote the second-century Roman problem. They suggest that upgraded scholar Lucius Apuleius, describing Roman dams could supplement the unreliable mill slaves. “Their skins were seamed all electricity from solar and wind power, over with marks of the lash, their scarred yet there are not nearly enough dams in backs were shaded rather than covered the world to hold the necessary energy. with tattered frocks.” In a study published in June in the The shift from wood to coal was, Proceedings of the National Academy of especially in its early years, painful for Sciences, a team of energy and climate many workers. In another box, Smil researchers found that the most promi- quotes from “An Inquiry Into the Condi- nent proposal for shifting the United tion of the Women Who Carry Coals States to completely renewable energy Under Ground in Scotland,” published in had inflated estimates of U.S. hydro- 1812. “The mother sets out first, carrying electric capacity tenfold. Without the a lighted candle in her teeth; the girls exaggerated numbers, there is no renew- follow . with weary steps and slow, able energy source to replace the power ascend the stairs, halting occasionally to generated from the sun and the wind draw breath. It is no uncommon thing during the long stretches of time when to see them . weeping most bitterly, the sun doesn’t shine and the wind from the excessive severity of labor.” doesn’t blow.

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