Confluence: What happens at the intersection of the Energy Trilemma, Capital & Politics?.. Part III: Politics
What is politics and why is it relevant to the energy transition ?
In this final piece on the confluence of interactions relating to the overall energy trillema, we cast our gaze towards the politics that envelopes the transition. Politics in the sense relevant to the transition discourse can loosely be defined as the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. While the word politics itself is considered to have entered our lexicon through reference to ancient Greek societal organization and philosophy, the nature of politics can sociologically be seen as something that has always been conjoined with human nature - it simply takes a form commensurate to the social dynamics applicable to the time. Given the sheer volume of human history and evolution of politics thereof, it is therefore necessary to find ways to de-clutter the history of politics that brings us to where we are today using key historical inflections periods where society has gone through fundamental shifts in how it functions and organizes itself. Even by taking these eras of step changes as a heuristic method to distill thousands of years of social history, we still have a profusion of moments and periods we can take as bookmarks of what has driven political organization to where it is today. But as mentioned, the key here is to de-clutter and use what we know retrospectively about technological revolutions in order to avoid missing the proverbial forest for the trees.
One such useful potential starting point is the proliferation of plant and animal domestication in settled agriculture about 11 000 years ago. This would have initiated a change in the dynamic of how groups of people, usually mostly related and familiar with each other, traversed the landscape from nomadic hunting and gathering to a different type of settling and clustered movement. This would subsequently and eventually birth new types of cities and micro-states requiring updated methods to manage the complexity of the emergent society including but not limited to elements like city planning, bureaucracy, public services provision and developing new forms military apparatus to protect and indeed conquer resources. A follow up step change to this is the industrial revolution of the 16th century which was the culmination and spread of significant advancements in mechanization predicated on the foundation of energy dense fossil fuels.
What is important for the discussion here regarding politics is the inescapable concept of power especially if we take a form of realpolitik perspective. This is because creating the social infrastructure to manage the complexity that comes with an ever demographically and technologically expanding society, intrinsically gives rise to an emergence of a political class with the power to make, preserve and amend the rules of society. This means there is a need to align the outcomes desired by those with political power and those without whom are theoretically represented in a classic principal-agent dynamic. We can isolate three elements worth calling out as a result of this dynamic as part of honing in on an argument of how a particular aspect of politics subsequently plays into the energy transition:
How do people in the society get access to political power and what are the constituency seeking actions required to get this access e.g promising reform in areas deemed pertinent by voters; using financial muscle; using force or corruption, a combination of the three aforementioned etc
How does the society change those with political power when unsatisfied with how they are managing the society’s interests.
What is the relationship between the prevailing economic system of the time and political power e.g. access to power in feudal system via bloodline/birthright vs access to power in a capitalist system via capital itself vs access to power in a socialist system via central party apparatus etc. It’s also worth noting here that the economic system would also have intertwined social aspects that feedback into political power e.g. religion, gender and race dynamics.
Having the above context, the question now is how does the principal-agent dynamic play into the transition and what risks does it present to achieving a practical and realistic energy transition that recognizes different society needs in the face of political expediency.
Can single issue voting affect the energy transition?
2016 marked a year were arguably two of the worlds most mature democracies in the US and UK had voting outcomes that shocked the general public particularly outside of the respective countries. This is not a value judgement on whether this shock is justified or not given that ones reaction being one of shock is predicated on what already constitutes an expected outcome for them. Political views are by definition a spectrum therefore both sides of divides can be entrenched in their positions from reliance on an echo-chamber that frames and supports their perspective but even before that, there are general overall normal differences in opinion based on different life journeys and lived experiences.
The more important aspect of this is the dynamic at play where voting outcomes are potentially increasingly driven on a small number or even a single core issue. This is no slight on voters as at times there is a tendency to infantilise the electorate and demean the rationality of their conclusions based on differing positions on the political spectrum. What has to be accepted , as uncomfortable as it may be, is that voting outcomes (assuming high participation and a free and fair platform) reflect how the society feels on issues whether misguided or not as as these conclusion are derived from lived experiences or perceptions or both which in itself is not a new phenomenon to human nature. The main thing is whether people remain open to dialogue, listening and receiving alternative views.
We have discussed here before the role of cognitive biases in how they affect the framing of the energy transition discussion and here again , we invoke the idea of the focusing illusion - the bias of over-weighting a particular aspect in formulating a view or conclusion. There is reason to believe the current political landscape lends itself to intensifying focused framing of problem statements on which voters decide on. As mentioned before, this is not an issue of reproaching voter logic - infact, voters are more than capable of voting on a net consideration of a multiplicity of issues and in addition, civil society and reliable media are also capable of driving awareness on multiple issues as well. However, what is argued here is that the post 2016 political climate together with algorithmically funneling technology (which now includes accelerating AI) and the post Covid global economy waters fertile grounds to drive focused attention on specific issues as the core issues constituencies care about. This therefore implies that political expediency increasingly also has to focus in order to access political power. Topical issues with strong gravitational pull include economic performance, immigration , foreign policy, health care , climate change, religiosity, weapons control, inclusion & right to life to name some main recurring ones.
This means that shaping policy around the transition potentially plays into which of these issues are considered “primary” in voting minds and how neatly can it be packaged together with higher ranking causes when not the priority. It may even be a fallacy to refer to neat packaging of issues together because that also forces a boxing-in of people and their political views in a way that says if you believe x, then one can infer you believe y - however, people are more complicated than this simplification. It is also no secret that there are natural conflicts within prioritization of these aspects to evaluate especially as the sense of tangible urgency may not be at the same time scale e.g. the tough post Covid economic climate on interest rates and cost of living presents as a more immediate threat to livelihoods therefore voters can consider this their priority issue with other issues being subservient or out of focus.
The risk presented is therefore that political expediency drives a motivation that fails to align with policy towards a direction for a practical, realistic and orderly energy transition which is what is needed the most. We must also consider the outcome that if indeed single issue voting is on the rise, maybe at some point climate risk occupies the top issue for an increasing number of people in proportionality and absolute terms especially given demographic shifts in different societies e.g. ageing vs younger populations.
It is worth noting here as well that care needs to be taken not to conflate climate change with the concept and matter of executing the energy transition. The two are invariably strongly linked however, it is arguably more pragmatic to see them separately as this may allow for a more robust sourcing of solutions. And by doing so we in turn reduce the risk of over-promising and/or underplaying the nature of sacrifices required to successfully tackle both. This is because we have to acknowledge the practicality of how our society has randomly stumbled its way to arrive at how it’s structured today without casting retrospective moral judgement but using lessons learnt as leverage to derive robust and inclusive solutions.
How does this risk shape up in alternative political systems ?
The discussion so far has centered on a particular archetype of democratic system so the next question is how this changes in the context of alternative political systems.
At this level, the question shifts to what the political class of that regime prioritize in terms of for instance; deterrent military power, broad vs elite concentrated economic growth, personal intra-party relevance and survival, monarchy survival etc. The transition can either be an opportunity to leverage modernizing technology that allows step change improvements to the lives of citizens or is simply another opportunity to propagate economically extractive behaviors. This is not to say such dynamics do not exist in mature democracies as every political system will always have its elites and some level of extraction is inevitable owing to the human condition. However it’s a matter of what institutions are available on the downside i.e. when citizens are not satisfied. Also as previously highlighted in the capital discussion of part II, for reasons of practicality, priorities in well meaning emerging economies will lean towards solving for energy poverty and a just energy transition therefore the politics of the transition will take a different form for them.
Conclusion
The way political systems are evolving and the issues therewith hearken participants to be aware of the dynamics they introduce to matters of social importance. The issue of increasing single issue voting potentially means bundling of energy transition matters into other socio-economic matters perceived to rank higher in terms of importance depending on other issues being faced at that time. Indeed it could also be the other way round where the transition and closely linked climate change topic benefit from the dynamic. The extent of it would need further study as well as clarifying how different it is exactly to how it has always been e.g. have electorates always been single/few issue voters or is it just a matter of the scope of issues modern day electorates face being wider and more complex etc . As we get more attuned to how politics and its institutions affects us in our technology amplified environment , we can also better manage around intensifying polarization and distinguishing situations where shared ideals might be more as a result of so called negative coalitions i.e. where groups of people are brought together through what they are against as opposed to what they are for which frequently gets exposed as priorities change or when ideas /policies opposed are resolved leaving no common ground to assemble from. To quote a line from the popular post-apocalyptic TV series Fallout, “Everyone wants to save the world, they just disagree on how”.
