The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once made the observation: “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”
While his comment is directed at individuals, it can certainly be expanded to whole segments of society. Political parties, social movements, religious groups, and even academics can and often do resist change. After all, change is hard while making excuses is easy.
But change we must.
We cannot keep carrying on with “business as usual”. We are exceeding the world’s carrying capacity. This is a point which has been made over and over again.
So rather than get on with the proof as to why we shouldn’t change, perhaps it is time to start envisioning what the future could look like.
Recent advances in fusion energy, for example, have been able to generate sustainable fusion reactions which have generated more energy than they consumed. If the technology keeps advancing and can be expanded to sustainable levels, we can have fusion-powered electrical generation instead of nuclear power plants.
Fusion has a distinct advantage as the by-product of the reaction is not radioactive. Indeed, the helium generated from fusion reactors could solve another problem as helium sources are drying up.
A runner-up in Science’s “2023 Breakthrough of the Year” is the discovery that natural processes deep within the earth break down water to generate hydrogen. This is not actually a new discovery; the first wells generating pure hydrogen were revealed 28 years ago. However, scientists are beginning to gain a handle on discovering where such deposits might exist and how we can utilize them.
Drilling for hydrogen, which can be used to run fusion reactors or generate electricity directly through fuel cells, holds promise for a bountiful non-polluting mechanism to power our economies. Supplementing these sources with other forms of renewable energy could wean us off fossil fuels.
Finding methods to run our present economies without fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide they emit will lead, eventually, to a reduction in our carbon dioxide output, stabilizing the planet’s climate and maybe even reversing some of the damage.
All we need is to change our minds and not get busy proving we don’t need to.
Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at the University of Northern B.C.
