Renewables: the Reverse French Revolution

 

The French Revolution came when coal replaced agriculture as the main source of wealth in society. Today, we face a repetition of those events with renewable energy replacing fossil fuels. Several details are returning, including the three estates (nobles, clergy, and commoners) who fought for power at the time of the revolution. The modern nobility is the fossil fuel lobby, the bourgeoisie is the growing renewable-based economy, and the clergy is represented by the "catastrophist" movement. 

(Image of Robespierre and wind towers made with Dezgo.com)

The best way to interpret the French Revolution is by using the lens of Biophysical Economics. All systems, including social ones, are dissipative structures that generate complexity by processing energy and creating entropy. No energy, no complex society. Then, when an energy source runs out, it is collapse. When it is replaced by another source, it is a transition to a different structure which may be larger and more complex. 

This is what happened with the French Revolution, which took place when coal replaced agriculture. Coal was extracted and burned in Europe already during the Middle Ages, but production started becoming important only during the 18th century. Up to then, European society relied on agriculture to provide metabolic energy ("food"). Coal couldn't directly provide metabolic energy, but it could be transformed into food by a process that included smelting steel, using it to make weapons, conquering large swats of land overseas, enslaving the local population, and setting them to work in plantations that provided food for Europeans. 

The transition led the landed nobles and the new mercantile bourgeoisie to be set on a collision course for dominance. The fight went on for about two centuries. In some cases, the transition was smooth, as in England; in others, it involved much bloodshed, as in France in 1789, in the US in 1861, and in Russia in 1917. In all cases, the final result was the same. It is not surprising that the term "King Coal" became commonplace. 

The switch from farming to coal deeply changed the structure of European society. The power was not anymore in the hand of regional nobles, but came to be concentrated in the hands of powerful national elites who could control coal production and, with it, everything else. Lenin understood the reasons for the process when he claimed that the Bolshevik revolution was all about the control of the means of production. He didn't say that there could be no production without coal, but it was implicit in the concept. 

The power of the new elites was immense, but they still needed commoners as soldiers and workers. So, the structure of the new national states was managed in such a way as to give the illusion that "the people" were in charge. In practice, the power was in the hand of entrenched lobbies in Western Europe and bureaucratic structures such as the communist party in the Soviet Union. Moving from coal to oil changed little to the power structure; the main difference was that oil could be more easily transformed into food by chemical processes that produce fertilizers. It led to a further step onward in dominance, with the elites becoming global. 

Today, renewables in the form of photovoltaics and wind have the capability of changing everything. Their low cost makes them able to break the grip of the global elites on production and bring back an economy that looks close to the old agricultural world, where land was the main source of wealth. A true "reverse French Revolution," bringing back the means of production into the hands of regional centers instead of global ones. Don't expect Capitalism to vanish in a puff of smoke as the result of renewable energy, but the capability of global elites to control energy production, yes, that will vanish or, at least, it will be much diminished.  

No wonder, then, that the rapid growth of renewable energy production is generating a strong negative backlash from the sections of society that see themselves threatened. Here, we see parallels with the historical French Revolution. You may remember that before the attack on the Bastille in 1789, King Louis XVI convened the three "États Généraux," the general estates, to manage the response to growing financial and political crises in France in the late 1700s. They were formed of the nobles, the clergy, and the commoners. It was a clash from the very beginning between the two entrenched estates; the nobles and clergy representing agriculture, and the third state; the commoners representing coal. The commoners decided to create their own National Assembly, and then, as they say, it was history. 

Today, we don't have a king convening the three estates of society in an assembly, but the presence of similar entities is detectable. The modern nobles are the oil lobbies that control the functioning of the state by means of their financial power. Their adversary is the "renewable-based bourgeoisie" (*), a new social class that derives its wealth from the growing power of renewables. And who are the modern equivalent of the clergy? At the time of the French Revolution, their role was to provide ideological support for the nobles by scaring the commoners into submission. The method used was the threat of eternal punishment if they dared to try to raise their status to something more than mere survival. 

There is now an equivalent of the old religious clergy in the "catastrophist" movement. They share an apocalyptic vision of divine punishment for human sins, and their current role is to keep the fossil economy alive by convincing the commoners that renewables are a pipe dream, that becoming poor and destitute is a virtue, and that they should be happy with "de-growing." That will allow the fossil lobbies to maintain their grip on fossil energy production while they try to switch to nuclear energy, another centralized source that can be controlled at the global level. In the process, commoners will be left in the cold to fend for themselves the best they can. If they can.  

The new clergy of the catastrophist movement is having some success. Western propaganda is a powerful weapon, and the new, Web-based social networks are being used in full to denigrate renewable energy. But renewables are growing fast, they are creating wealth, and they are racing upward at such speed that it is hard to think they can be stopped. The battle for energy is being fought. There will be no need to behead anyone, but the next few years will decide the destiny of humankind. 

(*) I discovered the concept of "renewable-based bourgeoise" in a recent book by Mauro Romanelli, "The Answer." A good book that explains the basics of renewable energy. Alas, it is available only in Italian.