The probably irreparable damage social media is doing to societies. Through the lens of renewable energy…
The probably irreparable damage social media is doing to societies. Through the lens of renewable energy development. Take the current objection to just about every pumped hydro project proposed. Lake Lyell, as an example. /1 https://t.co/geVvmEKdl0
Energy Australia, owner of both the lake and the nearby two coal-fired power stations (Wallerawang - now closed - and Mt Piper), have proposed the lake be used as a pumped hydro facility. It’s brilliantly positioned, near the major grid infrastructure of the power stations. /2 https://t.co/ufUuq5zFmJ
There’s significant community push-back. First complaints were about the appearance of the new higher dam that will need to be built (now addressed). Then the complaints shifted to possible danger to local platypus habitat. That one is interesting. /3 https://t.co/w1st2j3hUl
Many pumped hydro projects use the same complaint, it’s an obviously shared activist strategy. The hilarious irony of this is that the lake was *built* 40 years ago to BE a pumped energy facility. It pumps vast quantities of water to the nearby coal-fired power stations. /4 https://t.co/hbUW4eFm6u
It’s what the lake was built for, to be a pumping facility for energy generation. I can’t find that there has ever been a local objection to that usage, in the past 40 years. Until now, when the pumping is for a renewables project. This is a common pattern. /5 https://t.co/rJiuD1WBnT
Whether it’s solar or wind farms, or pumped hydro, or transmission lines, or batteries, local activists suddenly discover a whole range of concerns they’ve never had in their lives, until now. Social media feeds the concerns, to them. It’s weaponised, monetised bullshit. /6
Directly or indirectly funded and propagated by fossil fuel interests and their subsidiaries. Basic things that for generations nobody gave any thought to at all, are now the subject of exhausting and endless debates. It blocks progress on critical projects, which is the aim. /7
It’s not that the world is getting dumber, though that’s probably happening too. It’s not that people have stupid ideas, though that’s also true. It’s that they have and are encouraged to have ideas about things they previously never thought about at all. That’s social media. /8
The mobilisation of mass ignorance, but more than that, mass attention and outrage, over the basic operating system of societies. Society is eating itself, and these platforms are enabling and accelerating that process. /end