When my father was born, European and American homes were heated with coal, horses were still a common means of transportation, and there was no such thing as nuclear power. My children may well make it into the 22nd century when I hope today’s energy systems will seem as antiquated.
In an attempt to overcome our natural short-termism, residents of the Japanese town of Yahaba imagined themselves as their grandchildren when making public decisions. That is a recipe for choosing wisely in energy and climate. Major pieces of energy infrastructure – hydroelectric dams, nuclear plants, pipelines – may operate for 80 years or more if maintained well.
Researching a new energy technology and bringing it into widespread commercial use takes decades.
The first photovoltaic panel was invented in 1883, solar-powered components were widely used on satellites by Nasa in the 1960s, but only in the last few years has solar power become ubiquitous in regular electricity generation.
Climate works on an even longer timescale. Thirty-six years after the major US congressional hearings that brought attention to global warming were held, half of the American political establishment still refuses to take the issue seriously.
Melting of much of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets now appears inevitable. This could cause more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100, compared to about 23cm globally since 1880. But we’re already dangerously close to warming of 2ºC – which over centuries could irreversibly increase water levels by more than 12 metres.
Even the best and costliest sea defences would not stop the drowning of all the world’s great coastal cities, and the densely-populated, fertile deltas and floodplains of the Mississippi, Rhine, Nile, Niger, Ganges and Yangtze. What would we think today of unthinking Tudor, Ming or Moghul rulers who had yoked us to such a dismal destiny?
By contrast, politicians in most countries work on a four or five-year cycle.
Since 2015, the UK has had five prime ministers, and nine energy ministers, under three different job descriptions. Some of these ministers were tasked to drum up business, some to protect the environment, some to lead scientific innovation and some to safeguard energy security and cut inflation – whatever the political imperative of the week.
Today’s energy and climate plans have several weaknesses that reflect short-term thinking. They stick too closely to today’s technologies. Tomorrow’s innovations, by definition, cannot be predicted; at best, some can be dimly anticipated.
In the 1960s, Stanford computer scientist Roy Amara said: “We overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
The media is full of miraculous discoveries that never turn into practical or commercial devices. But others, like hydraulic fracturing or the internet, emerge from decades of quiet work to become overnight successes.
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