También podés leer la versión en castellano.
There’ve been many notorious correspondence relationships throughout history. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung gave birth to psychology in their letters. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams hypothesized the American experiment throughout their epistolary relationship. Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger discussed the most controversial topics of their time through correspondence. And my personal favorite, which we brought up here at Writer By Technicality, are the exchanges between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt, where they bridged science with art.
In the Likocene, where pundits declaim the death of the public intellectual, exchanges between thinkers of such caliber seem like something from another era. Nowadays debate happens within 300 characters on platforms like BlueSky and X—a less-than-propitious environment for ideas to flourish. It’s a context that rapidly turns conversations into an incoherent mess of name-calling and binary political slogans with little meaning.
Despite my pessimism, I doubt we’re living through an intellectual slump. I’m certain there’s a mass of accumulated thought that isn’t absorbed by the gravitational pull of the dark hole of social media. Smart people are out there, thinking and exchanging ideas as they always have. It just doesn’t get that many clicks.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Although these platforms have lowered the standards of public behavior and debate, they have allowed more of us to participate in it. For better or worse, we all have the chance to be heard. That means you might find out that the uncle you always thought was a bit of a Nazi, is a Nazi. But my experience, particularly here on Substack, is that if you have the right attitude, interesting things happen. For example, reading Francisco Colom’s article Frustración en Manhattan led me to The light of autumn sunsets. Although this isn’t a one-to-one exchange, it’s an invaluable dialogue.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have another Substack conversation. It happened after I read Jose Maria Garcia’s article El apagón, revisited. It’s about the day-long, nationwide blackout in Spain that happened earlier this year. The article describes the unstoppable physical, economic, and geopolitical forces that drive the transition from carbon-based to renewable energy sources. This transition is described as a revolutionary change.
First, I want to make something clear. What comes after this paragraph is not about polemicizing with Jose Maria. I agree with a lot of what he wrote in his post, and the conversation we had was polite, engaging, and enriching. Although I will mention renewable energy in the following lines, that’s not what this post is about. Furthermore, whatever comes next are thoughts that were born from reading Jose Maria and exchanging ideas with him. I’m thankful for that.
With that out of the way, let’s carry on.
The discussion with Jose Maria was about nuance. I struggled to see the revolutionary qualitative change in renewable energy. I boiled it down to a new technology—a change that, although necessary, does not modify the underlying cause of our current environmental crisis. We’ll reduce CO2 emissions, and energy will be abundant. With more energy, however, we’ll also get more consumption. Although transitioning from carbon-based to renewable energy sources is a welcomed and positive change, if we only change technologies, the moral foundation of a consumer society will be reinforced. One of the assumptions of that foundation is that the externalities of our way of living can be solved with technology.
I know, talking about “the system” is a recipe for not changing anything, and it’s an easy way to criticize other people’s efforts. Energy production and how we organize society are two separate issues on different planes. If we don’t drill down to something specific, we won’t fix anything. And this is pretty much what Jose Maria, a sensible person, told me when I shared my criticism with him.
It’s hard for me to accept it, but he’s right. Fortunately, my days as the guy who always knows better are—often—in the past. We have to get to the tangibles if we want change. His criticism was valuable. It got me thinking: what would be a tangible qualitative change? What could be the revolutionary quality of renewables?
Power plants require large amounts of capital and know-how to build. Once you build the plant, you also need to distribute the power so it reaches the consumer. Most of us don’t have the resources and knowledge to build this infrastructure. Because most of us just want enough juice to turn on the TV after a day’s work, we also don’t have the need. But we’re also desperate to watch Peaky Blinders.
So we leave it to a few mega-corporations with the money to build it and cede them control of the energy market. With control comes power, literally and figuratively. These companies end up setting the prices we pay and monopolizing the natural resources needed to generate energy. Because energy is strategic, they also seek social and political control over the countries that source those natural resources.
With something like solar, that can change. Today, even a schmuck like me can generate my own energy. A quick stroll to Ikea—I know Ikea is not a B-corp—and I’m back with a few solar panels. I can slap them on the roof, plug in, and good-bye, big energy.
But what if it’s overcast? Maybe this is a problem I can’t solve on my own.
Fortunately, I’m not alone; I have neighbors. Instead of just me having solar panels, we could all have them. We’d all produce energy, and we could store it together. When we need to, we can share it—all for no cost besides an initial investment.
That’s a qualitative difference: not subjecting all aspects of our lives to market principles. Collaborating and cooperating with our neighbors. Pooling and sharing resources in more efficient and reasonable ways. A new mindset. This cooperation would train us and make us better at finding new ways of sharing the planet rather than extracting “resources” from it.
Maybe the neighborhood power plant is a rubbish idea. The solution isn’t the point. The revolutionary change comes when we decide to include in our solutions a moral shift that leads to a regenerative and enriching existence.
Love it!!!!!!
Another fantastic post. I almost wanted to argue with you about your take on renewable energy, but as I continued reading, I realized you are correct.
It’s something I haven’t thought of before: that renewable energy will encourage more consumption, leaving our world with more CO2 emissions. How will we deal with that?
Also, how it will be, or has been (?), monopolized. (don’t ask me, I live in conservative-ass Florida, US. We believe only in guns and alligators.)
I appreciate that you offered an alternative—organizing within your community. It’s obviously not an end-all-be-all solution but, to me, it’s a great start.