I read this book [1] a couple years ago and realized I could turn my thoughts on it into a short blog post.
About what I anticipated - essentially a manifesto for traditional green-growth, technocratic climate solutionism. I do admire what Saul has done with Otherlab, building practical solutions outside academia and trying to implement them. Their lab is a model of how to do public-facing applied research outside of a university. But he seems stuck in a Bay Area mindset.
The book’s clearest sentence: “It means that instead of changing our energy supply or demand, we need to transform our infrastructure—both individually and collectively—rather than our habits.”
I couldn’t agree less.
He has read Graeber on debt though!
Assorted notes:
Book is entirely US-focused.
Written for a general audience.
Half of residential energy use is space heating.
Highway transport uses 10x energy vs. air travel sector.
Advocates ditching 70’s-style “efficiency/sacrifice” rhetoric for one of clean energy abundance (I also embrace a rhetoric of abundance, but under degrowth).
Electrification > efficiency
Very soft/lacking on discussion of mineral requirements (cobalt, neodymium), very car-centric, yet realizes the urgency of climate and related issues.
Promotes 100% electrification of US economy without any degrowth, which leads to a staggering estimate of material requirements, like tripling electricity generation. He and his lab have done much work on these estimates and energy/carbon accounting though, which is valuable work
He is doubtful on thermodynamics of carbon capture, which is realistic IMO. Very big on heat pumps.
Suggests ramping production of goods in line with availability of clean energy, and increasing physical goods storage capacity appropriately.
Acknowledges wood can be good for heating in depths of winter for those with the right local sustainabile supplies. (I agree!)
Against geoengineering. (same!)
Pessimistic on hydrogen as energy carrier because of low round-trip efficiency (I agree).
Pushing for gov’t-backed lower interest rates on climate-related domestic tech. Lots of invoking WWII production/New Deal-era industrial /gov’t mobilization.
Admits going vegetarian is pretty impactful. Acknowledges smaller houses are helpful to reach targets.
Not anti-nuclear, thinks nuclear should stay in mix and adopt SMR’s/etc but acknowledges nuclear is way more expensive than new wind/solar.
Advocates planting trees!
Lots of cool data-rich diagrams.
Under his electric US, each person requires 4kW on average at all times, and therefore a 20 kW, 2,000 lb solar array! (across the economy, presumably).