The accelerating treadmill of fossil-fuelled practices: A transition to sustainability or to long-run downward mobility and social conflict?


Raymond Murphy, University of Ottawa

Why are fossil fuels stuck at eighty per cent of global energy despite impressive rollouts of wind and solar energy and increased efficiencies? Renewable energy has not replaced carbon polluting energy but instead is being added to it. This investigation documents that the reason is the accelerating treadmill of energy demand powering fossil-fuelled practices whose enormous scale nullifies advances in efficiency and clean energy, making mitigation of climate change exceedingly difficult. Humans are running faster innovating efficiency and green energy just to stay in the same place of emissions. The paper investigates the under-researched deep causes of human-caused climate change, namely the increasing demand for discretionary, energy-intensive practices resulting from affluence. Proportionality of greenhouse-gas emissions by emitters is central in the study. The paper constitutes an additional step in attribution by specifying how much emissions can be attributed to particular social practices and their huge growth. Since carbon dioxide pollution remains in the atmosphere over a century, layer after layer is being added to the atmosphere annually. Ever more attractive fossil fuel practices are being innovated. As countries develop and populations become more affluent, their discretionary energy demand and fossil-fuelled practices increase. China’s experience confirms affluence is driving emissions. In 1970, China was poor with relatively few fossil-fuelled activities and low emissions despite its massive population and fertility rate of 5.81. Over the next five decades its population growth slowed and fertility rate dropped to 1.30, among the world’s lowest. Now its population is decreasing but its emissions have swelled because it too constructed an accelerating treadmill of fossil-fuelled practices as affluence increased enormously. China became the world’s highest emitter with accelerating emissions despite decreasing population. Affluence does not mean only satisfying needs. It involves especially enjoyment of discretionary activities. Those related to human-caused climate change are predominantly powered by fossil fuels. Take an example of a clearly discretionary social practice. Cruising has grown massively, with 30 million people cruising in 2019. The energy these huge floating hotel-restaurants use to propel them and provide 24/7 air conditioning or heat, lighting, entertainment, meals, etc., is enormous. This comes from the cheapest, most polluting bunker fuel or diesel. A typical cruise ship carrying 2,500 passengers combusts 80,000 gallons of fuel a day. An estimate based on the carbon dioxide equivalent emitted by all cruise ships in 2017 divided by the number of passengers shows they emitted 820 kilograms per passenger (ten times average passenger weight). Passengers exit the ship after two weeks, but the carbon dioxide their cruise emitted remains in the atmosphere over a century. The wealthiest 0.54 % of the global population, 40 million people, emitted 14 % of greenhouse gases whereas the poorest 50%, 4 billion people, only emitted 10%. Eighty percent of the world’s population have been excluded from ever flying due to cost, yet 4 billion passengers fly annually. Aviation practices are monopolised by the remaining 20%, disproportionately by frequent flyers. So therefore, are emissions and monopolisation of the atmospheric emissions sink. A short return flight between London and Nice in commercial planes results in five times the average 90-kilogram passenger weight in emissions per passenger in economy class, 6 times the weight in more spacious business class, and 12 times the weight in most spacious first class. That flight in a small private jet of the wealthy emits 10,000 kgs of greenhouse gases. There were 22,000 private jets, many big ones, in operation in 2020. Demand for private jet ownership and charters is soaring, with daily flights averaging 11,500 in 2021. Superyachts of billionaires emit 7,020 tons of CO2 annually. The paper demonstrates the value of using the social practices, treadmill of production, and Weberian social closure frameworks to study energy demand and climate change and proposes more inclusive versions of each. It is an extension of my article “What is undermining climate change mitigation? How fossil-fuelled practices challenge low-carbon transitions” recently published in Energy Research and Social Science Vol 108 February 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103390 [1].

This paper will be presented at the following session: