The materiality and morality of Net Zero should go hand in hand

Ed Conways The Material World’ makes us think about the costs of unrealistic climate goals that we have chosen to ignore

- V. ANANTHA NAGESWARAN

In recent times, one of the better books I read is The Material World by Ed Conway, the economics editor of Sky Broadcasting. It is a world that we have not even been aware of, let alone cross its path. It is unseen for us although the materials that lie behind many of the stuff we use or places we inhabit are all too real. Ed Conway takes us along in his often-breathtaking journey to the remotest corners of the earth, or below it, for us to understand the energy that we expend in getting these materials out of the earth, beating them and cajoling and melting them into shape and then finally getting them inside our smart devices. Conway writes, “There is no way of mass producing either wind turbines or silicon substrates of solar panels without the use of fossil fuels….On the basis of one calculation, we will need to mine more copper in the next 22 years than we have in the entirety of the past 5,000 years of human history."

In the process, he forces us to contemplate many questions that we have conveniently chosen to ignore. Not only that, but we have also created a justification in our heads for our hostility to such questions by positing tackling climate change and global warming as moral imperatives. Morality brooks no trade-offs. It is as it should be. But, dealing with climate change is an economic imperative.