I have experienced so many different things in so many different ways in the past three weeks that I’ve been in Iceland, but there is one experience that always prompt me to ask new questions about the current system that we are living in and the need for a fundamental paradigm shift.
Before coming here I was aware that Iceland had LOTS of clean energy – geothermal, hydro power, wind, etc. In one of the introductory lectures we had with Herdis, she mentioned that 80% of the Icelandic energy comes from hydro and geothermal (renewables). Initially this data seems very inspiring because this is the state that a lot of countries are trying to work towards. But when you start to look at per capita energy consumption, Iceland ranks at the top – even higher than USA and Qatar.
To me, even though a large part of the energy consumed in Iceland are from renewables, there is just something that doesn’t feel right. The abundance of cheap energy (regardless of fossil fuel or renewables) is what keeps the capitalist system going. People are constantly in the loop of buying things and wanting more things. The system and the way that people live in it contribute greatly to the larger climate change issue, and, despite people like Naomi Klein warning people not to hope for a technological fix, people still have the illusion that they can still live the way they do now and be green by using greener products (e.g. renewable energy). The underlying mentality is still trying to find ways to sustain the current social system rather than disrupting it completely.
The large per capita energy consumption also reminds me of Jevon’s Paradox which states that efficiency brought by technological advancements will only lead to more consumption. The same trend has been going on with coal use and the discovery of other fossil fuels (as well as nuclear) after the industrial revolution. When the technology was first developed, people were thinking maybe it will replace coal. But eventually these “new efficient” sources of energy just ended up being consumed alongside with coal. Same with computers and paper – one would assume that it’s easy to go paperless within the computer age, but we just end up using more paper because words are easier to read on paper, people love the feeling of paper, whatever.
The point is, moving towards renewables is a transition step, and it should not be our end goal. The inequalities of the world is not going to be solved by everyone living with cheap abundant renewable energy like Icelanders do. That is not the root cause of the problems we are facing. Replacing the dirty fossil fuel with cleaner energy is necessary, but it’s not sufficient enough. Change has to come, psychologically and socially, in a even larger scale.
-Jiaorui