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As somebody who combines a lifelong ardour for speculative fiction with rigorous experience in vitality programs and the analytical lens of an English literature pupil, I strategy Erik Rakhou’s Touching Hydrogen Future (2022) and Jeremy Rifkin’s The Hydrogen Financial system (2002) with each fascination and deep skepticism. Seen by this twin lens—as literary hypothesis relatively than credible roadmaps—their narratives develop into attention-grabbing but essentially simplistic visions of a future constructed upon hydrogen. Evaluation reveals how each authors, maybe as a result of their penchant for imaginative and fantastical storytelling, dramatically oversimplify the real-world complexities of technological transitions, neglecting essential socio-economic, moral, and geopolitical dimensions that extra refined science fiction handles explicitly.
Jeremy Rifkin’s The Hydrogen Financial system (2002) positions hydrogen as one thing akin to an alchemist’s thinker’s stone, a legendary substance that guarantees easy transformation from carbon-heavy society to hydrogen-powered abundance. Rifkin presents hydrogen not merely as a helpful vitality vector, however as an almost magical common solvent that dissolves the issues of fossil gas dependency with out significant resistance or consequence. This optimism, whereas interesting, aligns intently with the golden-age speculative fiction custom—boldly imaginative, but typically divorced from the friction-filled actuality of technological and infrastructural transitions.
As a aspect notice, I spoke at a convention final yr simply earlier than Rifkin, positing a probably scifi world of full electrification, but one rather more primarily based in actuality.
20 years later, Erik Rakhou’s Touching Hydrogen Future continues this custom of non-pragmatic techno-utopianism. Rakhou offers narratives spanning a number of sectors—transportation, trade, home heating, and worldwide vitality commerce—all powered easily and seamlessly by hydrogen. In his imagined future, hydrogen integration throughout the globe happens nearly effortlessly, with negligible consideration of the huge financial prices, complicated infrastructure calls for, and profound societal shifts required.
Exploring particular envisioned functions by the lens of science fiction, which is what each books actually are, reveals the essential limitations and simplifications in these hydrogen narratives:
Each Rifkin and Rakhou enthusiastically think about hydrogen fueling the whole lot from private vehicles to maritime ships and transcontinental airplanes, as simply as warp-drive know-how propels starships in Star Trek. In Gene Roddenberry’s universe, the Starship Enterprise effortlessly travels huge distances powered by dilithium crystals and warp cores, not often encountering useful resource or infrastructural friction. But, even inside this optimistic future, Star Trek addresses the complexities of technological development explicitly, acknowledging useful resource shortage, diplomatic challenges, and moral dilemmas surrounding know-how use. Rifkin and Rakhou, conversely, disregard these nuanced realities. They current hydrogen-powered transport as universally viable with out addressing the immense challenges and inefficiencies related to hydrogen infrastructure—storage tanks, fueling stations, and distribution logistics—points that intently parallel the monumental, costly, and resource-intensive effort required to construct the Galactic Empire’s Demise Star in Star Wars. Just like the Demise Star, hydrogen infrastructure requires huge investments, central management, and comes with inherent vulnerabilities, but Rifkin and Rakhou neglect these realities.
Rifkin and Rakhou equally painting hydrogen as effortlessly revolutionizing heavy industries, corresponding to metal and chemical manufacturing, akin to the easy materials transformations made doable by the replicators in Star Trek. Replicators provide immediate abundance with out seen financial or societal disruption—but, crucially, Star Trek usually explores the socio-economic penalties of technological abundance, discussing potential impacts on labor markets, human function, and moral frameworks. Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s portrayal misses these essential dimensions fully, suggesting that industrial transitions happen with out financial dislocation, workforce retraining, or vital infrastructure improvement. The imagined industrial hydrogen transition is portrayed like Starfleet’s replicator know-how: immediate, flawless, friction-free—however with out the wealthy narrative consideration Star Trek constantly offers round such highly effective know-how.
Each authors current hydrogen as a easy, universally obtainable buffer for intermittent renewable vitality, a seamless storage medium akin to the near-infinite, easy management depicted by the magical Pressure in Star Wars. Nevertheless, in actuality, managing energy era by hydrogen storage includes vital vitality losses, sophisticated distribution networks, and appreciable financial prices. The Pressure, as depicted in Star Wars, seems limitless and common but requires self-discipline, coaching, and steadiness—classes Rifkin and Rakhou neglect fully of their portrayal of hydrogen as a simple answer to renewable intermittency. Their simplified eventualities overlook the essential intricacies of constructing and managing environment friendly, dependable vitality programs, inadvertently implying that hydrogen can magically steadiness renewables with out financial or infrastructural friction.
Hydrogen’s use for residence heating and home vitality consumption in Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s visions mirrors the plentiful vitality availability aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek, the place vitality appears endlessly obtainable at minimal price and most comfort. Nevertheless, constructing hydrogen infrastructure into properties includes substantial retrofitting, vital prices, and raises essential security issues ignored by each authors. In distinction, renewables like rooftop photo voltaic and localized vitality options embody the scrappy resilience and decentralized adaptability of the Insurgent Alliance—inexpensive, versatile, and attentive to native wants, creating a much more resilient, community-driven vitality future.
A considerably deeper literary perspective reveals the distinction between Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s simplified utopian narratives and the subtle, complicated vitality explorations present in Iain M. Banks’ acclaimed sequence, The Tradition. Banks’ fictional civilization depends on hyper-intelligent synthetic intelligences (Minds) to handle complicated socio-economic programs, moral questions, and governance. These Minds, analogous to clever grid administration and adaptive infrastructure, embody the kind of considerate complexity fully absent in Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s simplistic depictions. Banks demonstrates that real technological development requires clever, adaptable governance—issues hydrogen proponents too typically neglect.
Likewise, Star Trek’s humanist strategy constantly questions the societal affect and moral penalties of know-how. In contrast to Rifkin and Rakhou, who not often handle societal disruption, Star Trek explicitly highlights how technological developments necessitate cautious consideration of fairness, moral governance, and inclusive societal restructuring.
Star Wars additional amplifies this critique, highlighting how centralized technological tasks—such because the Empire’s Demise Star—typically symbolize vulnerability, dominance, and oppression. Hydrogen’s huge infrastructure calls for, centralized management, and susceptibility to catastrophic failure intently parallel the Empire’s mannequin. Renewables, represented metaphorically by the Insurgent Alliance, emphasize decentralization, resilience, adaptability, and native management—qualities that foster equitable and sustainable vitality programs.
Rifkin’s The Hydrogen Financial system and Rakhou’s Touching Hydrogen Future successfully perform as imaginative, speculative narratives however essentially fail as real looking blueprints for precise vitality transitions. Actual-world vitality transformations require nuanced understanding, clever governance, socio-economic adaptability, and moral foresight—components central to stylish speculative fiction from Banks and Roddenberry. Readers and policymakers alike ought to strategy Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s hydrogen utopias critically, maybe having fun with their imaginative worth whereas sustaining a clear-eyed recognition of the profound complexity inherent in real vitality transitions.
Essentially Rifkin’s and Rakhou’s books are dangerous science fiction, however sadly each have develop into influential within the try and create their simplistic and inefficient visions. They need to be handled like L. Ron Hubbard’s science fiction, with disdain and ten foot poles.
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