Fighting realism with realism – how to break our reliance on fossil fuels – EUROPP

The rise of climate realism in Europe threatens to disrupt the green transition. Sakari Säynäjoki and Otto Snellman argue it is time for a different kind of realism that avoids complacency about our reliance on fossil fuels.

Climate activists regularly face charges of hypocrisy from opponents of climate action. Those who argue for phasing out fossil fuels are frequently branded naïve and hypocritical because the fossil fuel industry provides their daily comforts and necessities, including food, clothes, bicycles and smartphones.

By pointing out the extent to which we rely on fossil fuels, these “obstructionists” – led by an invigorated far right – aim to support their own “climate realism”. This is a supposedly pragmatic stance that fossil fuels are here to stay and that trying to get rid of them too quickly would mean shooting ourselves in the foot.

This view has become increasingly influential in European politics. In the foreword to a recent report on climate change, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”. In the lead-up to COP30, EU member states also decided to water down the Union’s climate target for 2040.

Although the EU’s target to cut emissions by 90% compared to 1990 levels was nominally kept alive, it was weakened by the addition of several conditions and stronger review clauses. The new approach was described by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen as being “flexible, pragmatic, and adaptable”.

A kernel of truth

Climate realists often cite the necessity of fossil fuels, even in countries that lack fossil fuel reserves. In the words of the far-right Sweden Democrats, they assert that “there are no good alternatives to fossil fuels” and that renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels entirely. The Finns Party has similarly judged that phasing out imported coal is “unrealistic”.

And although their claims about the hypocrisy of climate activists are easily refuted, they do sometimes contain a kernel of truth. As we show in a new study, these claims exploit the deep and difficult dependencies on fossil fuels that underpin modern life – what we term “fossil entanglements”.

These fossil entanglements are often not discussed as openly as they should be by climate activists, perhaps because they have been appropriated as a tool by climate obstructionists. Yet by ignoring our reliance on fossil fuels, there is a risk of what we call “fossil complacency”: namely underestimating how much we rely on fossil fuels and leaving the door open for the far right’s climate realism.

What are fossil entanglements?

Despite the recent China-led boom in renewable electricity production, the global use of fossil fuels continues to rise. We’ve essentially witnessed energy additions (renewables) without a transition away from fossil fuels.

However, fossil fuels penetrate societies much deeper than the electrical grid. The stability of vital infrastructure is fossil based. So are the production and distribution systems of food, nearly all materials, pharmaceuticals and chemicals – to list only a few.

The dependence on fossil fuels is often qualitative. Consider, for instance, synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, the backbone of industrial agriculture in the Global North. While the primary energy needs of agriculture could in many cases be electrified, natural gas is the only readily available source of hydrogen for the mass production of nitrogen fertiliser.

Non-energy purposes currently cover only 13% of total fossil fuel use. However, the energy and non-energy use of fossil fuels – as well as excessive consumption of many other materials – tends to be symbiotic. As Marianne Zanon-Zotin and colleagues have pointed out, fossil fuels and fossil-based feedstocks and chemicals are usually coproduced in highly integrated refining processes. Therefore, continuing the “marginal” non-energy use of fossil fuels might easily sustain fuel production, too.

In addition to vital infrastructures, our cultures, ways of thought and prevailing practices have coevolved with fossil fuels. Theorists have coined an array of concepts to grasp the cultural and ideological repercussions of fossil fuels, including fossil mentalities, fossil freedoms, petro-masculinity and the fossil subject.

This cultural entanglement with fossil fuels has the potential to create complacency in attempts to phase them out. For instance, fossil fuels are commonly presented as unconditioned and abstract energy – as a fuel. This can result in the use of fossil fuels being equated with “total energy demand”, creating the misleading impression that phasing out fossil fuels is mostly a question of simply increasing the use of renewables.

Fighting “realism” with realism

Indeed, agriculture and food production are being increasingly targeted by socio-ecological movements. Perhaps most spectacular has been Les Soulèvements de la Terre, which has militantly defended rural livelihoods and habitats and reclaimed the commons from capitalist agribusiness in France. Similar efforts are ongoing in Belgium and Germany. Following the lead of such struggles while systematically tackling our fossil entanglements is the kind of realism the world now needs.

For more information, see the authors’ recent study in Environmental Politics.

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.

Image credit: Bilanol provided by Shutterstock.