Occam’s Razor for the Planet
The simplest environmental solutions are often the best. They’re proven. They’re ready now. They can help us avert disaster. So why do many prefer complicated, high-tech, faraway gadgets instead?
It never fails. Whenever you get into a discussion about environmental solutions, you hit a fork in the road.
On one side, there is a simple, clear, and effective solution that can help address environmental problems. It works. It could make a big difference. And it’s ready to go today. But it may require a little adjustment on our part — perhaps consuming less stuff, wasting less, being more respectful of nature, or otherwise shifting our behavior.
On the other side, there is a more complicated, technologically-aggressive solution that is years or decades away from practical use. But it doesn’t require us to change our ways. In fact, it usually allows us to consume more.
Guess which one many people favor? You guessed it: The more complicated, technologically-aggressive path.
Why? I don’t know exactly.
Maybe some people think we are unable to change — that we cannot be less wasteful or less damaging? Or maybe some just like cool, new technologies, swooping in like Captain Kirk with phasers set to decarbonize?
In the inevitable debates that follow, I often wonder if there is a guiding principle we can observe. How do we know which solutions might be best for a given problem? How can we weigh the relative merit of different approaches?
To me, simpler solutions usually seem best. They’re available today, and they’re more likely to work quickly. And time is the critical factor in climate change, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of natural resources. More complicated, high-tech solutions may eventually be game-changers, but they require long periods of research and development, along with facing significant economic and deployment hurdles. And many never arrive at all. And in a race to avoid planetary calamities, now is better than new.
Perhaps environmental solutions should follow a kind of “Occam’s Razor” principle? In science, the notion of Occam’s Razor is that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Maybe that applies to environmental solutions too, especially when time is the most important factor?
Let’s consider a few examples.
How we reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector is a classic.
We can do simple things — like dramatically improving energy efficiency and replacing coal and natural gas with affordable renewables — today. This “Soft Energy Path” has been around since the 1970s, but somehow we still resist parts of it, especially the call for big efficiency gains. We’re often told that energy efficiency doesn’t really work and that Americans won’t go for it, all while homes in Germany and Sweden use less than half the electricity of a typical U.S. family — while enjoying a higher overall standard of living.
Or we could dream about high-tech energy sources. For example, we have heard about the promise of nuclear fusion and advanced fission reactors for decades. Yet, after spending billions of dollars, they never seem to arrive. (The joke is: “Fusion! It’s twenty years away, and always will be.”)
Or we hear about adding carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to fossil fuel power plants, which used to be pitched under the banner of “Clean Coal”. Yet those never materialized either.
The high-tech answers focus on big engineering breakthroughs to generate more carbon-free power. But there’s no focus on the incredible waste in our current energy system and how renewable energy sources can already get a lot of the job done — cheaper and faster.
One is a “softer” approach, using a mixture of demand- and supply-side solutions with existing, cheap technology. The other is a “harder” approach, betting on long-term — and never guaranteed — technological breakthroughs to produce as much as we could ever want.
But when we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately, what is the most prudent path to start with?
Reducing the environmental impacts of the global food system is another good example.
We can largely address the environmental impacts of the food system today by protecting tropical rainforests, addressing food waste (since ~30–40% of food on the planet is wasted), trimming back the meat consumption of richer countries to healthier and more sustainable levels, and embracing the best ideas of agroecology and regenerative agriculture.
Protect nature. Waste less. Shift to healthier diets. Farm better. These solutions are simple, effective, and available today.
Or we could focus on high-tech concepts.
For example, there is a lot of publicity around “vertical farms” — which grow food in artificial indoor environments. While some people think these will help feed the world (spoiler: they won’t), they use enormous amounts of resources and money to produce fairly-expensive crops, mostly herbs and salad greens. Most worrying, vertical farms use vast amounts of energy. Unless they are powered by renewables (ironically, using solar panels to power indoor lights is using the sun to replace…the sun), this will lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, it’s not clear whether vertical farms actually save land when you include the space required for their tremendous energy demands.
Another interesting technology is cellular agriculture — or growing “meat” (as actual animal cells) in a lab, skipping the messy raising-the-animal bit. That sounds great until you realize cells still need energy and nutrients to grow. What will we feed these cells, and what resources will this take? Also, growing cells in a lab is still a far cry from creating something that can compete with the look, taste, texture, and cost of a steak. This will take many more years, I suspect, to be a viable alternative.
There are fascinating technologies on the horizon in agriculture, and some of them could be a game-changer. But I fear they are a long way off, and won’t live up to the hype. In the meantime, we have abundant, real-world solutions today. Let’s use them now and fold in new technologies later.
Then there is the recent fascination with carbon removal technology. It’s become very sexy in Silicon Valley lately. But you won’t see many climate scientists excited about it.
The idea is that we can build machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and either bury it someplace, use it to help extract more oil and gas out of the ground, or use it to make useful things like carbon-neutral jet fuel or plastics.
Sure, we could do that. But we are very, very far from scaling this up to anything the atmosphere would notice. Even the best technologies available today are stretching to absorb a few thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide. The problem is we currently emit about 50 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, and most climate scenarios call on us to cut this in half by 2030.
Even if removal technology can scale 1,000x to the million-tonne range, which is still years away, it would still need to grow by another 1,000-fold to even be a tiny percentage of the solution we need.
Plus, this technology does nothing to address the massive air quality and health impact fossil fuels have on disenfranchised communities today. Today, ~8 million people a year die because of fossil fuel air pollution. Would carbon removal simply allow us to keep burning coal, gas, and oil, with tremendous harm to poor communities, and suck out the carbon dioxide later? Wouldn’t this help perpetuate the enormous inequities and injustices caused by extracting and burning fossil fuels?
Long-term, some limited forms of carbon removal might be useful to have in the 2040s and 2050s to abate the last, difficult-to-decarbonize parts of the economy. But one has to wonder how machines would compare with already-proven nature-based carbon removal projects, which rely on trees and soil to take carbon out of the atmosphere. Time will tell.
However, if we’re not very clear-headed about this, it could prove to be a distraction — diverting time, capital, and attention — to the hard work of reducing emissions right now. And I worry that it could be used as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels — as kind of a “Clean Coal 2.0” on steroids.
Let’s be very careful here.
The fact is we already have a lot of simple, effective tools to address our biggest environmental problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and the decline of natural resources. They are here today, ready to go. We just need to scale them up.
And the “Occam’s Razor for the Planet” reminds us of the virtue of simpler solutions, especially when time is the most critical factor.
“If your house is on fire, you don’t focus on disrupting the fire suppression business. Not now. You grab a hose.”
— Ibrahim AlHusseini
We can cut emissions today by improving energy efficiency and deploying renewables. Let’s also electrify cars and heating systems, powered by renewables, and make them more efficient. Later on, if high-tech energy sources come along, great, we’ll fold them in too.
We can address the biggest environmental problems of food and agriculture by protecting rainforests, reducing waste, eating plant-rich diets, and using the best ideas from agroecology and regenerative agriculture. And if cellular agriculture, vertical farming, and other new technologies work out, that’s fantastic; we can add them to the solutions menu later.
And while we will likely need some carbon removal, whether using nature or industrial technology, in the 2040s and 2050s, we need to be sure these technologies do not distract us from the job of reducing emissions. Our number one climate priority for the next two decades is a massive reduction in emissions — at the source. If we fail at that, fancy carbon removal technology will do little to help.
Naturally, we will ultimately need a mix of low-tech, simple solutions and high-tech, complicated ones to address environmental challenges. We shouldn’t automatically exclude either kind of solution.
But we need to ask hard questions about high-tech solutions. Are they practical? Do they help us now, when we need them most? How do they address long-standing issues of equity and justice? Would they help us avert as much damage as simpler, low-tech solutions? Or might they become a fanciful distraction?
Yes, some high-tech solutions will be necessary. But let’s not let them cause unnecessary delays or distractions.
As my friend Ibrahim AlHusseini (a sophisticated tech investor) likes to say, “If your house is on fire, you don’t focus on disrupting the fire suppression business. Not now. You grab a hose.”
Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) is a climate & environmental scientist, writer, and speaker. He is also the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions.
These views are his own.
Copyright © 2021, Jonathan Foley. All rights reserved.
I want to thank my friend and colleague Peggy Liu for suggesting the use of the term “Occam’s Razor” when applied to environmental solutions.
