Green growth is the dominant perspective on climate mitigation. Governments, international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, corporations, and most people in their role as consumers operate within this consensus. Its bold claim is that countries can combine perpetual growth and prosperity with safeguarding ecological conditions for later generations. The claim, however, is dubious.

The positive outcome depends, of course, on following the right policies and maintaining support for technological development. The right policies include market-corrective and price-based policies, together with occasional green stimulus programs, such as the Inflation Control Act under President Joe Biden in the USA. Regulation, such as fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, are also part of this approach. Technological optimism pervades this viewpoint. Green growth thus focuses on making growth resource-efficient and cleaner, not reducing it.

Green growth entails a struggle without an enemy. Or rather, as Pogo observes in the famous cartoon, “I have seen the enemy, and he is us.” Greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of global warming, and we are all responsible, via our consumption, for these emissions. Neither neoliberalism nor capitalism is identified as problematical from an environmental perspective. To the contrary, the academic school of “ecological modernization” holds that continuing economic growth yields both the resources for climate mitigation and the middle-class demand to invest them in a green future.

But here is the rub. A green growth program is politically possible; yet it is inadequate to the challenge of climate change. Green growth is a risky gamble for three reasons.

Absolute versus Relative Decoupling

We need global CO2 emissions to peak and substantially decline in this decade to have a chance to keep average temperatures below 2̊ C. Yet this is not the trend. Global emissions grew by 56 percent between 1990 and 2019. (They dipped in 2020, during the depths of the pandemic, but have risen continuously since 2021). To achieve a prosperous world with net zero emissions, green growth must attain the absolute decoupling of growth from CO2 emissions. Decoupling has spawned a lively, even acrimonious, academic debate. I have space only to touch on that debate.

Although the relative decoupling of economic from emission levels (and other ecological harms) is common, absolute decoupling is rarer and appears insufficient to hold global warming below 2̊ C. Relative decoupling means that economic growth continues, but emissions remain constant or increase less than the rate of growth. Many countries have achieved this goal. Thirty-two countries have also achieved absolute decoupling over a period of 14 years, whereby growth continues while total emissions decline in absolute terms. It should be noted that this decoupling reportedly includes “consumption emissions” – emissions embedded in the goods consumed in a country, though produced abroad. The 32 cases include mainly rich countries that depend on a low-emissions service sector for their well-being. However, how one tallies “consumption emissions,” where polluting manufacturing industries are located offshore and export their goods, is subject to controversy. Also, some countries achieving absolute decoupling are major oil exporters, especially the United States, and the emissions resulting from these exports are not part of that exporter’s carbon tally. And the absolute decline in emissions is only gradual.

In any event, heavy emitters such as China and India have not attained absolute decoupling. Unless their emissions peak and then decline in the next few years, we are unlikely to limit global; warming to 2°C – the upper limit proposed in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

Saving the World in One Way by Destroying It in Another

Converting the energy system from fossil fuels to green sources (solar, wind, hydro and perhaps nuclear), at the current level of consumption, will cause widespread eco-system damage, especially in the global South. This damage will arise from the exponential growth of mining for critical minerals. To build the batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, electrical infrastructure, electric vehicles and so on will require a massive increase in the production of lithium, graphite, cobalt, copper, nickel and rare earths. Global demand for critical minerals doubled between 2017 and 2022, and demand is still on a sharply upward trend. A World Bank study forecasts that, to limit global temperature rise to 2̊ C by 2100, demand for critical minerals – lithium, cobalt and graphite, for instance – would need to increase by 500 percent between 2020 and 2050.

Mining of these minerals exacts high environmental costs. More than half of the reserves of lithium, cobalt and nickel are currently located in the global South. This fact raises the question of whether energy transitions in the global North will occur at the expense of the people in areas of the global South. One of the most dire examples is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country rich in mineral resources. Vast reserves of coltan, copper, and cobalt feed the electronic revolution. “As global finance gears up for ‘green growth’, the DRC’s resource wealth has again brought violence, robbery and ecological destruction.” A local mining activist trenchantly observed that “inside every phone is the blood of a Congolese person.” World-wide, as demand (for lithium, for example) exceeds supply, new mines are opening in ecologically sensitive areas such as rainforests, tundra, deserts, and, before long, the seabed. Ecological damage arises from some combination of violent gangs, open-pit mining, chemicals that pollute groundwater, tailings that remain contaminated, and dependence on copious supplies of fresh water.

Cleanup and maintenance costs are already astronomical. Many abandoned mines require continuing maintenance and even indefinite water treatment to prevent the pollution of waterways. Taxpayers are often left paying the bill. For example, the Faro Mine in the Yukon, abandoned in 1998, may end up costing the government $C2 billion for cleanup and continuous maintenance Such costs may be affordable in a rich country like Canada, but are not so in less developed countries.

This destructiveness, not surprisingly, has instigated local opposition movements, especially when indigenous land rights are also at issue. For example, where lithium mining moves globally, protest follows – whether the mine is located or proposed in Chile, Bolivia, Serbia or Portugal, protests delay or block lithium mines. Environmental damage, actual or predicted, will inspire widespread protests and delay the massive expansion of mining entailed in the energy transition.

The conclusion is obvious: we can’t make a global transition from fossil fuels to green energy at the current level of consumption. Hydro-electricity cannot fill the gap owing to the falling water levels of rivers world-wide as temperatures climb. Nuclear energy takes a long time to build, is very expensive, and has a reputation for danger. There is thus no alternative to reducing demand; for example, instead of thinking we can just shift to electrical vehicles of the same size as we now drive, we will need smaller and fewer vehicles on the road.

Pushing also in the direction of reducing consumption is the issue of land. It appears that we will depend heavily on solar and wind power. If that is the case, we will need to set aside thousands of square kilometers of land and sea for solar and wind farms. Such massive installations will have undesirable social and ecological effects. These include the displacement and dispossession of indigenous peoples and rural communities, together with the potential loss of agricultural land and bio-diversity.

In the energy transition, it is not only displaced workers in the fossil fuel industry that deserve justice; so too do rural communities whose land is sacrificed for clear power.

We must guard against saving the earth in one way by destroying or despoiling it in another.

The Lure of Technological Fixes

The third reason for skepticism about green growth is its technological optimism. It is certainly important to continue to invest heavily in promising technologies to reduce emissions. A technological breakthrough may happen. But can we count on it? Many highly touted green technologies are either ineffective, too expensive, or too dangerous:

• Carbon Capture and Storage: requires an expensive and carbon-intensive infrastructure and confronts the dangers of leakage from underground CO2 storage and the contamination of groundwater.

• Direct Air Capture: exorbitantly expensive to capture carbon from the atmosphere, though some project costs will fall to $US100/tCO2.

• Nuclear Fusion: has been touted for decades as a carbon-free energy source but it has never proven viable; it uses more energy to create fusion than it produces.

• Small Modular Reactors: their design, financial viability and dangers are in question.

• Nuclear Energy: Can new designs overcome the problems: it is expensive and carbon-intensive to build reactors, takes years to construct, and carries dangers in the proliferation of nuclear wastes and nuclear weapons.

• Green Hydrogen: Perhaps the best bet, but it will take immense hydro, wind or solar energy to produce green hydrogen on a large scale.

Betting on a technological fix to arrive in time is risky. And geoengineering will not ride to the rescue. Even if it works, it is not a cure for global warming, but rather a stop-gap measure. There is no alternative to reducing emissions and drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

∞   ∞   ∞

In sum, green growth is not the answer to the challenge of climate heating. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

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