We find ourselves amidst a transformative era, yet the prevalent chatter often revolves around scams rather than substantive progress.

Today marks the final opportunity to purchase my acclaimed solarpunk novel, *The Lost Cause* (2023), for just $2.99 as a DRM-free ebook!

Innovation is sorely needed in climate technology, especially as we continue to cross critical thresholds for maintaining a livable planet, with the urgency only increasing.

Silicon Valley purports to be the heart of American innovation, but much of what emerges from this hub is a mix of trivial ideas, environmentally harmful technologies, and frivolous tech that also harms our climate. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher’s concerns about “the best minds of my generation focused on making people click ads.” Nowadays, the highest-paid tech experts are often tasked with creating defective IoT devices and engaging in:

• Cryptocurrency schemes that devastate the planet
• NFT scams
• Deceptive AI technologies

If this is the pinnacle of human innovation, we’re in serious trouble.

However, as Ryan Cooper highlights in The American Prospect, a significant and impactful innovation wave is underway, fueled by robust public investments in climate technology.

This green energy movement—backed by initiatives like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Science Act—is achieving remarkable milestones that are often overshadowed by the noise of AI hype and other distractions. In a past interview about The Lost Cause, when asked about AI's role in addressing climate issues, I was initially taken aback, then responded, “Perhaps the energy used to train AI models could exacerbate the situation? What do you think?” The interviewer was left without a reply.

Let’s take a brief look at this revolution:

• In 2023, the U.S. added 32GW of solar energy, a 50% increase from the previous year.
• Wind energy capacity grew from 118GW to 141GW.
• Grid-scale battery capacity doubled in 2023 and is expected to double again in 2024.
• Electric vehicle sales surged from 20,000 to 90,000 per month.

The cost of clean energy is rapidly decreasing, leading to innovations such as using geothermal heat sources to replace fossil fuels, which account for 25% of total U.S. energy consumption.

To increase our access to affordable, clean energy, a significant amount of materials will be needed, and their production typically involves high carbon emissions. Fortunately, the availability of cheap, clean energy is enabling experiments in “green steel” production.

Additionally, clean energy is facilitating the extraction of valuable minerals from aluminum production waste, a process that also serves as site remediation.

While transitioning to electrification will necessitate grid enhancements, many improvements can be made with the existing infrastructure, such as power-line automation that boosts capacity by 40%.

There’s also exciting potential in converting decommissioned mines into massive energy storage facilities. Excess renewable energy is stored during the day by lifting heavy platforms and released at night, feeding energy back into the already established power lines.

Why do we focus so much on the Silicon Valley hype while overlooking these groundbreaking, potentially planet-saving innovations? Cooper references insights from the Apperceptive newsletter, which offers a convincing rationale:

Silicon Valley thrives on low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development demands fewer personnel than infrastructure or manufacturing, allowing for wealth generation without significant job creation. It’s an environment where investors often resist compensating workers. This is why AI captivates Silicon Valley—it allows for the fantasy of a workforce-free future. A business without employees sidesteps labor conflicts and moral responsibilities, a trend that began with misclassifying workers as “contractors” and evolved into portraying many as “independent small businesses.”

Conversely, climate technology is fundamentally physical, labor-intensive, and requires skilled workers who wield power due to their distance from direct oversight and the likelihood of unionization in publicly funded sectors. Moreover, climate tech demands substantial capital, as workers are engaged in moving tangible materials like solar panels, wiring, and batteries.

Climate technology is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra elaborates in her essential 2023 book, How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure represents a legacy for future generations. These projects seldom recoup their costs during the lifetime of those who invest in them.

Additionally, climate technology generates vast, diffuse benefits. The "social cost of carbon" attempts to quantify the collective costs borne by society from pollution, encompassing direct health effects and the indirect costs of natural disasters. The "social savings" from climate tech are immense:

For every megawatt-hour of renewable energy produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs—representing lives spared from pollution-related illnesses and property protected from environmental disasters. Over the last four years, U.S. renewables have yielded $250 billion in social carbon savings.

In essence, climate technology represents altruistic innovation, benefiting the future and the broader public while sharing its rewards with workers and necessitating collective action. In contrast, Silicon Valley embodies a greedy approach focused on maximizing short-term profits with minimal returns for labor, despite also requiring substantial public investment.

It’s no surprise that many of America’s wealthiest individuals are aligning with and funding controversial figures like Trump.

Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer’s adage that “the purpose of a system is what it does.” If it predominantly produces harmful distractions and scams, these outcomes reflect the tech sector's inherent characteristics.

As Anil Dash articulates:

> "Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system."

To shift focus to the climate tech that deserves our attention and urgency, we must recalibrate our perceptions. We need to remember the minimal engagement with cryptocurrency during its peak and apply that understanding to the current AI hype—only 2% of Britons surveyed reported using AI tools.

For tech companies to contribute positively, we must recognize their default tendency to produce harmful distractions and scams. We need to ensure these companies are manageable, accountable, and responsive.

We must hold them accountable and transform the microeconomics of corporate governance to empower tech workers focused on ethical practices to challenge the scammers and purveyors of misinformation.

Recently, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally accountable for misleading users regarding Prime subscriptions and complicating the unsubscribe process.

Such rulings could set a powerful precedent. Employees who objected to making Prime intentionally confusing could argue that their bosses could face significant personal financial penalties for these decisions.

We need to redirect our scrutiny and advocacy toward climate technology rather than Big Tech. The climate crisis is so daunting that it becomes almost unfathomable. Science fiction authors are increasingly sought to articulate this immense risk in relatable terms. A conversation between SF writer Peter Watts and evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks reveals a crucial distinction between “sustainability”—finding technological fixes to maintain current practices without repercussions—and true sustainability, which involves behavioral changes necessary for survival with existing technology.

Discussing their dialogue for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith references William Gibson’s The Peripheral:

> "With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself becomes a slaughterhouse; science had started popping. Not all at once, no big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to sequester carbon, new medications that revived old antibiotic functions… So everything, however deeply flawed, was increasingly illuminated by the new, yet the rest continued to sink deeper into the ditch—a progress accompanied by constant violence and unimaginable suffering."

Gibson doesn’t predict this will occur, and if it does, it will happen amid profound suffering.

However, the spectrum of possible technologies is vast. As Chachra highlights in How Infrastructure Works, we could meet the energy needs of every person on Earth by harnessing just 0.4% of the solar energy reaching the planet daily. Achieving this will demand immense resources and labor, particularly if we are to do so without further harming the environment.

These are the pivotal questions we should be addressing: What behavioral adjustments can help us access affordable, abundant, green energy? What innovations should society prioritize to focus on essential needs instead of the scams and distractions fueling Silicon Valley fortunes?

How can we leverage planning, solidarity, and collaborative decision-making to facilitate technologies that enable us to navigate the climate crisis with minimal loss of life and destruction? How can we employ regulatory measures, discernment, and labor rights to counteract the exploitative tendencies of Silicon Valley?

For a formatted essay version of this post, please visit my ad-free blog: [https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon](https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon)