Renewable Energy, Circular Economy, Sobriety Citation: V
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Firenze University Press www.fupress.com/substantia Editorial Saving the planet and the human society: renewable energy, circular economy, sobriety Citation: V. Balzani (2019) Saving the planet and the human society: renew- able energy, circular economy, sobri- ety. Substantia 3(2) Suppl. 2: 9-15. doi: Vincenzo Balzani 10.13128/Substantia-696 Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, “G. Ciamician” Chemistry Department, University of Copyright: © 2019 V. Balzani. This is Bologna, Bologna, Italy an open access, peer-reviewed article E-mail: [email protected] published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress.com/substantia) and distributed under the terms of the Abstract. Planet Earth is a very special spaceship that cannot land or dock anywhere Creative Commons Attribution License, for being refueled or repaired. We can only rely on the limited resources available which permits unrestricted use, distri- on the spaceship and the energy coming from the Sun. The huge amounts of carbon bution, and reproduction in any medi- dioxide produced by using fossil fuels in affluent countries has caused global warm- um, provided the original author and ing, which is responsible for climate change. Ecological degradation of the planet is source are credited. accompanied by an increased social disparity. As Pope Francis warns, we are faced Data Availability Statement: All rel- with a complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solu- evant data are within the paper and its tion demand an integrated approach to combating poverty and protecting nature. If we Supporting Information files. want to continue living on planet Earth, we must achieve the goals of ecological and social sustainability by implementing three transitions: from fossil fuels to renewable Competing Interests: The Author(s) energies, from a linear to a circular economy, and from consumerism to sobriety. Sci- declare(s) no conflict of interest. ence, but also consciousness, responsibility, compassion and care must be the roots of a new knowledge-based society. Keywords. Sustainability, energy, materials, environment, climate crisis, social crisis, economy, efficiency, sobriety. Scientist are called to see what every one else has seen and think what no one else has thought before 1. LIVING ON SPACESHIP EARTH The image taken by the Cassini Orbiter spacecraft on September 15, 2006, at a distance of 1.5 billion kilometers, shows the Earth as a pale blue dot in the cosmic dark (Figure 1). There is no evidence of being in a privi- leged position in the Universe, no sign of our imagined self-importance. There is no hint that we can receive help from somewhere, no suggestion about places to which our species could migrate. Like it or not, planet Earth, the only place we can live on, is a kind of spaceship that travels in the infinity of the Universe. It is a very special Substantia. An International Journal of the History of Chemistry 3(2) Suppl. 2: 9-15, 2019 ISSN 1827-9643 (online) | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-696 10 Vincenzo Balzani spaceship, however, because it cannot land or dock any- 2018. They have now more wealth than ever before while where for being refueled or repaired. Any damage has to almost half of humanity have barely escaped extreme be fixed and any problem has to be solved by us passen- poverty, living on less than $5.50 a day.2 gers, without disembarking. We travel alone in the Uni- In his encyclical letter Laudato si’ Pope Francis verse, and we can only rely on the energy coming from warns:3 “The pace of consumption, waste and environ- the Sun and on the resources available in our spaceship.1 mental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that The first thing we passengers should be aware of is that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can the planet Earth has “finite” dimensions. Therefore, the only precipitate catastrophes (paragraph 161). He adds: resources we have are limited and the space for waste “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environ- disposal is also limited. This is an undeniable reality, mental and the other social, but rather with one complex even though many economists and politicians seem to crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies ignore it. for a solution demand an integrated approach to com- The views from space have allowed us to observe the bating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at entire Earth as a planet. In the Earth-at-day images from the same time protecting nature” (paragraph 139). the space, national boundaries are invisible and this may If we want to continue living on Earth, we must strengthen the consciousness of the collective human achieve the goal of ecological and social sustainability responsibility for the future of our planet. On the con- by going through three transitions: from fossil fuels to trary, the Earth-at-night images show boundaries: those renewable energies, from a linear to a circular economy, between affluent and poor areas. The passengers of and from consumerism to sobriety. spaceship Earth travel, indeed, in very different “classes”. Disparity is the most worrying feature of our society. The number of billionaires has almost doubled, with a 2. FROM FOSSIL FUELS TO RENEWABLE ENERGIES new billionaire created every two days between 2017 and Energy is the most important resource for human- ity1. In the present Anthropocene epoch4, as primary energy we use mainly fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource that in the long run is going to be exhausted. In 2018, every second in the world we have burned 250 tons of coal, 1140 barrels of oil and 105,200 cubic meters of gas,5 generating heat along with pollution and 1074 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). That the use of fossil fuels generates substances that are harmful to health has always been known, but it was only in the mid-1980s that another, more serious, prob- lem emerged: the enormous amounts of CO2 released into the atmosphere cause global warming (greenhouse effect) which is responsible for climate change.6 Since 1992, several United Nations sponsored con- ferences tried to tackle the problem of climate change without success. In 2014 the 5th IPCC (Intergovernmen- tal Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report showed that the influence of human activities on climate change is unequivocal and increasingly worrying: the Earth warms up, glaciers melt, sea level rises, drought advanc- es, extreme weather events are more and more frequent. In December 2015, after a long cycle of negotiations, the United Nations organized a conference in Paris, preced- ed by Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ in which cli- Figure 1. Photograph taken by the Cassini Orbiter spacecraft on mate change and related problems had been addressed September 15, 2006, at a distance of 1.5 billion kilometers from 3 Earth. The dot to the upper left of Saturn’s rings, indicated by the with great authority and concern . At the Paris Confer- arrow, is the Earth. Saturn was used to block the direct light from ence, 196 national delegations approved an agreement the Sun otherwise the Earth could not have been imaged. based on the following points: (i) it is absolutely neces- Saving the planet and the human society: renewable energy, circular economy, sobriety 11 Figure 3. Conversion of primary energy (fossil fuels or wind/solar Figure 2. Renewable primary energies generate electricity. energy) into electricity and mechanical energy (adapted from10). sary to reduce strongly, or better eliminate greenhouse ies or hydrogen), used as such, or converted with high gas emissions by 2050, to limit the increase in global efficiency into mechanical energy (Figure 3).9 Thus, the average temperature to less than 2 ° C (possibly, less economy based on renewable energy sources is not only than 1.5 ° C) compared to the pre-industrial level; (ii) cleaner but also much more efficient than the fossil fuel in tackling the problem of climate change, all countries based economy. must consider, respect and promote human rights; (iii) The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable it is urgent that developed nations make financial and energy is proceeding. For example, at the end of 2018 the technological resources available to enable developing installed power was 505 GW and 591 GW for photovol- countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. taic (PV) and wind energy, respectively.11 At present PV Beyond the lack of concreteness of the commitments is less developed than wind energy, but PV increases at a made, the Paris Agreement induced a strong cultural much faster rate (25% a year) and in 2050 it will become change. In spite of the withdrawal of the USA from the the most important source of energy for mankind. PV agreement, decided by President Trump in August 2017, is indeed an ideal source of energy: it converts sunlight there is a broad scientific and political consensus that into electricity with 20% efficiency (100 times more than the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies will natural photosynthesis!), it can be used everywhere, it is stop climate change, avoid the premature death of many scalable, long lasting, cheap and reliable. For some top people, increase the number of jobs, bring economic research in the field of conversion of solar energy into benefits and even advantages from the social point of electric energy, see.12, 13 view because the poorest nations, those most affected The unavoidable transition from fossil fuels to by climate change, are the richest in renewable ener- renewable energies, however, is hindered not only by gies1. However, at the Katowice conference in December commercial competition, but even more by obscure 2018 it was verified that the energy transition proceeds interests of various kinds: military, because fossil fuels, too slowly and that the objectives of the Paris Agreement with their high energy intensity, are not only the object will not be achieved without a strong acceleration6.