Political/Economic Interests around non-renewable energy
In a paper written by Burke and Stephens (2018), they theorised connections between democratic political powers and energy systems. They found that even though renewables as sources of energy creates opportunities for the development of democratic energy, there are tensions surrounding energy governance, competing agendas and technologies. These individuals say that in today’s era of fossil-fuelled economies, civilisations and societies are experiencing dangerous moments and anomalous for contemporary humanity. The researchers highlight the increasing trends with regard to global warming evidenced through increased migration, unrest, hunger, droughts, ice melts and storms which are calling for countries to end the use of fossil fuels. However, despite the increasing concerns about the dangers associated with the use of fossil fuels, the deployment of technologies of renewable energy is still slow and is being frustrated. These individuals say that the main frustrations on the adoption of renewables are through democratic procedures. The frustrations also come from local conflicts concerning the installation of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind facilities, which have delayed the adoption of technologies for producing renewable energy.
According to Burke and Stephens (2018), there is what is referred to as distributed energy-politics which is associated with technologies and energy sources organise and enable a distributed political power. These individuals say that there are efforts in major countries and economies to find methods of re-organising energy flows into concentrated and aggregated energy stocks as sources of political power. Like it is argued by (Meadowcroft, 2009), there is a pervasive grip which industries producing fossil fuel as well as by other political and financial allies have and command over the modern political life in the UK and other parts of the world. These individuals say that because of the politics surrounding energy, politicising renewables creates an opportunity for countries to shift from fossil fuel to renewables. According to Szeman (2014), this grip has led to what is referred to as energopolitics and energopower which are concepts that are used, for instance, energopolitics is used with notions such as biopolitics which refers to the governance overpopulations and life, which becomes the government’s objects of political strategy. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Critical Alternatives to Government Policy
According to Pettifor (2019), for the US and the UK and the other OECD states, tackling and overcoming climate change will require reducing carbon dioxide emission by at least 80% by not far than 2030 as well as hitting the net Zero carbon economy by, not far than 2040. She says that doing so will allow all the OECD countries, including the UK to cut their carbon dioxide emission in a shared manner across the globe. This researcher says that to protect our earth and to give it a continued ability to support life, a radical shift in policies must be done. For example, the UK and all OECD states must get rid of the globalised capitalism’s, and they must avoid the carbon-belching financial systems which are engineered and designed to consume trillions of dollars and pounds to fund the limitless use and the furious and toxic fossil fuel emissions. The researcher proposes the Green New Deal as an alternative to the existing government energy policies which are already hurting the planet, a deal she believes can both change the economy as well as safeguard the planet. The argument in support of the Green New deal is based on the fact the world economy is facing a financial crisis that is credit-fuelled, increasing climate change and soaring prices of energy which are accompanied with encroaching peaks in the production of oil. It was argued that with the Green New Deal, these issues can, not only be treated but can also be avoided in future. It was highlighted that through the Green New Deal, the UK and other OECD states could achieve enormous environmental, social and economic benefits such as new green employment opportunities, clean energy, clean technologies, sustainable agriculture, conservation-based enterprises and healthy living (Pettifor, 2019).
In her work, Securitization for Sustainability, Gabor (2013), she says that the UN’S sustainable development goals are exciting passion and interests as overarching governance, social and environmental approach which can guide countries through investments to get returns but also deliver desirable societal impacts. Gabor (2013) says that some of the main challenges which limit achieving sustainability or sustainable development are; one, the imperfect approaches being followed by the government, for instance, the imperfect fit for securitization trenches and fixed incomes which are bigger than the equities. She says that some of the sustainability approaches are also too complex to be implemented. Additionally, Gabor (2013) states that one other main challenge to achieving sustainability is the issue of lack of universality in some of the scrutiny processes put in place, that is, the screening processes for the governance, social and environmental approaches that are meant to deliver desirable societal impacts. These issues, in addition to the conflict of interest by organisational owners, who are more profit-oriented and are reluctant because adopting safer energy with reduced carbon dioxide emission might mean huge losses or even a shut-down of some of the companies, and thus adopt unscrupulous means, such as undertaking covert operations, to avoid being affected by carbon pricing policies, continue to pollute the environment as they make more profits (Baranzini et al., 2017).