If you are pinning your optimism on 'green/clean' energy, then you are badly un/misinformed of the ecological-destructiveness and unsustainability of these options. Not only do they significantly rely upon fossil fuels from the mining and processing of the mineral inputs to their production, distribution, and maintenance once established, but they rely upon finite materials themselves, have limited lifespans, and then add toxic materials to the landfills once decommissioned.
There is nothing zero- or neutral-carbon about the various plans being marketed to the world. I have come to believe such a narrative is primarily a vast marketing scheme to shift capital from one unsustainable, ecologically-destructive industry to another equally unsustainable and ecologically-destructive one. Scratch the surface even gently of these schemes and you will discover humanity is being sold, as it often is, a misleading narrative to sell stuff while leading it to believe it is making 'progress' on the environmental front. Watch Jeff Gibbs Planet of the Humans or Julia Barnes Bright Green Lies for more on this.
There is so much more to humanity's dilemmas than carbon and greenhouse gas emissions--particularly the consequences of overshoot. If we aren't talking seriously about significant degrowth, particularly in so-called 'advanced' economies, and the relocalisation of pretty well everything, then we are just weaving a story to reduce our cognitive dissonance and avoiding the necessary pain that is going to accompany our energy descent.
No energy source is without impacts. Renewables have their own. They can be managed. The critics sucks as Jensen and Gibbs ignore almost the entirety of lifecycle analysis and energy return on investment studies which quantify overall environmental impacts and show fossil fuels far worse. Continued use will affect every ecosystem and species on earth. In the article I note the return of critiques of economic growth. I believe as the new climate movement develops the focus on social and economic alternatives will increase. But as I said in the article, any level of economy we have had to be driven by clean energy. If you don’t like renewables, there’s someone who wants to sell you a nuke plant.
What I've been reading over the past few years (especially Alice Friedemann, Gail Tverberg, and a few others) leads me to disagree with respect to renewables, and conclude, as I state above, that overshoot is our primary concern. Degrowth has to be the path forward, especially for 'advanced' economies. Transitioning off of fossil fuels to some other energy source to try and sustain most of our energy-intensive society is simply substituting one problem for another. Only time, of course, will tell how this all turns out...
We are in a 10-year problem of having to dramatically reduce carbon pollution. Of course, we need energy conservation and efficiency. But we have to face the fact that developing nations are going to continue to grow, and it better be with renewables. I am all for every practical step we can take to reduce consumption in developed nations. I just think over the next 10 years the practical course for energy use everywhere is to maximize efficiency and renewables, and electrify buildings and transportation, which will reduce energy use through inherent efficiencies. Over the 50-year period, yes, let’s re-consider everything about economics. But we need to deal with the critical path situation now to keep climate from going over a cliff. FYI, the group with which I am currently active, 350 Seattle, is challenging assumptions of aviation growth in Seattle, a city with no small connection to jet travel.
Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is already doomed. So are coral reefs. As soon as next summer's El Niño, a blue Arctic will attain temperatures that (like present atmospherics and ocean acidity) have not occured here since prior mass-extinctions.
Methane eruptions are already unprecedented in the Holocene from ocean clathrates and arctic permafrost, with the still-unpredictable potential to tip the ecosphere into a rapid mass-extinction with only simple-organism survivors.
Our civilization is even more vulnerable to dire tipping-points than the ecosystem. We are a species of ever-more-horrific wars in scarcity and inequality. Even the best-case climate-emergency scenarios will be utterly unprecedented in terms of scarcity and inequality, much sooner than our governments will be appreciably reformed.
Neither personal mortality nor mass-extinction should tip us into despairing resignation. Everything respectful that we do in consideration for all Earthlings henceforth is ever more meaningful and defining. Engineering our testament, discoverable across deep space-time, will also be worthwhile in our remaining decades. It would have been very different, had we discovered such a thing a century ago here. Even if The Anthropocene is a geological instant, it is still possible to extend and improve our twilight- maybe even improve by our testament the rather depressing Fermi Paradox.
Just a little balance. Corals are gone if we go much past 1.5C heating. We still have a chance to avoid that. I don’t see a blue water Arctic next year, but likely by the 2030s. Arctic methane loss is serious, and will add to the heating. Most scientists see it happening gradually, rather than in a sudden burp. There are exceptions such as Wadhams and Shakova, but most scientists don’t agree. Thwaites an other central west Antarctic glaciers are toast, as we will see 12-18 feet of sea-level rise. It will happen over centuries. We face critical feedback loop threats, but we have time to avert or slow the worst if we act now.
We can switch from burning fossil fuels in our cars tomorrow. All cars right now can run on 50% ethanol. A download into the CPU can make it run on !00% ethanol. Every community can make its own ethanol from food waste. Eliminate the fragile fossil fuel infrastructure that has just been experienced with the Colonial pipeline failure.
I’ve done a lot of analysis on biofuels. Electrification is the way to go for most vehicles. You need heat inputs to make ethanol, and that can be an additional carbon emission. In addition, food waste reduction is probably a greater greenhouse gas reducer. Project Drawdown rates it the 2nd most important climate solution. https://drawdown.org/solutions/reduced-food-waste It might be that a better energy route for the food waste we don’t use is biogas. Here is an example of an effort aimed at that. https://www.vashonbeachcomber.com/news/island-anaerobic-digester-unveiled/
What do you have left after the sugars have been turned to ethanol? Protein, minerals, fat and fiber. There are many uses including burning, fertilizer and animal feed for the remainder. In Brazil they use the left overs to distill the ethanol and create electricity. Much of the electricity in Brazil is made from burning bagasse. They get ethanol and electricity. Very efficient. Digesters are a great idea but fermenting and distilling is a technology that is old as the hillbillys. Switching to ethanol is easier and quicker to do than to turn digested gas into electricity and then distribute it to an infrastructure that is yet built. Not to mention the extractive nature of the batteries. We do not need our transportation in the hands of Elon and his ilk as a replacement for John D. and his ilk. Musk's response to a question as to his involvement in the coup in Bolivia and immediate sale of the lithium beds to a corporation was: "We can coup anywhere."
The carbon dioxide from ethanol combustion comes from carbon dioxide that was in the air last year plus water. Any other greenhouse gas is the result of industrial agriculture. So you are right but you are also wrong because the carbon dioxide from burning gasoline was in the air millions of years ago. It is the old argument that carbon dioxide is not bad because we breathe it out. Yes but we breathe it out because we are burning fuel that as alive yesterday not a million years ago.
The point is that the greenhouse gases emitted by ethanol production have recently been removed from the air. If that cycle is continued then greenhouse gases do not build up. You can use the bagasse or distillers grains or other cellulose to produce the heat then what is left is returned to the soil for fertilizer for more plant material. A dycle that yields liquid fuel to run turbines or internal combustion engines and does not require lithium or cobalt from third world countries or China.
There is huge inertia but it can be reversed very quickly by switching from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture. It can be done by eating and growing regeneratively produced food. See the Netflix films "Kiss the Ground" and "The Biggest Little Farm" Soil can hold 3 time the carbon as the air and above ground plants combined.
If you are pinning your optimism on 'green/clean' energy, then you are badly un/misinformed of the ecological-destructiveness and unsustainability of these options. Not only do they significantly rely upon fossil fuels from the mining and processing of the mineral inputs to their production, distribution, and maintenance once established, but they rely upon finite materials themselves, have limited lifespans, and then add toxic materials to the landfills once decommissioned.
There is nothing zero- or neutral-carbon about the various plans being marketed to the world. I have come to believe such a narrative is primarily a vast marketing scheme to shift capital from one unsustainable, ecologically-destructive industry to another equally unsustainable and ecologically-destructive one. Scratch the surface even gently of these schemes and you will discover humanity is being sold, as it often is, a misleading narrative to sell stuff while leading it to believe it is making 'progress' on the environmental front. Watch Jeff Gibbs Planet of the Humans or Julia Barnes Bright Green Lies for more on this.
There is so much more to humanity's dilemmas than carbon and greenhouse gas emissions--particularly the consequences of overshoot. If we aren't talking seriously about significant degrowth, particularly in so-called 'advanced' economies, and the relocalisation of pretty well everything, then we are just weaving a story to reduce our cognitive dissonance and avoiding the necessary pain that is going to accompany our energy descent.
No energy source is without impacts. Renewables have their own. They can be managed. The critics sucks as Jensen and Gibbs ignore almost the entirety of lifecycle analysis and energy return on investment studies which quantify overall environmental impacts and show fossil fuels far worse. Continued use will affect every ecosystem and species on earth. In the article I note the return of critiques of economic growth. I believe as the new climate movement develops the focus on social and economic alternatives will increase. But as I said in the article, any level of economy we have had to be driven by clean energy. If you don’t like renewables, there’s someone who wants to sell you a nuke plant.
What I've been reading over the past few years (especially Alice Friedemann, Gail Tverberg, and a few others) leads me to disagree with respect to renewables, and conclude, as I state above, that overshoot is our primary concern. Degrowth has to be the path forward, especially for 'advanced' economies. Transitioning off of fossil fuels to some other energy source to try and sustain most of our energy-intensive society is simply substituting one problem for another. Only time, of course, will tell how this all turns out...
We are in a 10-year problem of having to dramatically reduce carbon pollution. Of course, we need energy conservation and efficiency. But we have to face the fact that developing nations are going to continue to grow, and it better be with renewables. I am all for every practical step we can take to reduce consumption in developed nations. I just think over the next 10 years the practical course for energy use everywhere is to maximize efficiency and renewables, and electrify buildings and transportation, which will reduce energy use through inherent efficiencies. Over the 50-year period, yes, let’s re-consider everything about economics. But we need to deal with the critical path situation now to keep climate from going over a cliff. FYI, the group with which I am currently active, 350 Seattle, is challenging assumptions of aviation growth in Seattle, a city with no small connection to jet travel.
Asia is not playing a low growth, no fossil white man game.
But Joe's good jobs!
People can buy more SUVs and single family homes. No pain. Joe promises.
Where is your data?
Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is already doomed. So are coral reefs. As soon as next summer's El Niño, a blue Arctic will attain temperatures that (like present atmospherics and ocean acidity) have not occured here since prior mass-extinctions.
Methane eruptions are already unprecedented in the Holocene from ocean clathrates and arctic permafrost, with the still-unpredictable potential to tip the ecosphere into a rapid mass-extinction with only simple-organism survivors.
Our civilization is even more vulnerable to dire tipping-points than the ecosystem. We are a species of ever-more-horrific wars in scarcity and inequality. Even the best-case climate-emergency scenarios will be utterly unprecedented in terms of scarcity and inequality, much sooner than our governments will be appreciably reformed.
Neither personal mortality nor mass-extinction should tip us into despairing resignation. Everything respectful that we do in consideration for all Earthlings henceforth is ever more meaningful and defining. Engineering our testament, discoverable across deep space-time, will also be worthwhile in our remaining decades. It would have been very different, had we discovered such a thing a century ago here. Even if The Anthropocene is a geological instant, it is still possible to extend and improve our twilight- maybe even improve by our testament the rather depressing Fermi Paradox.
Just a little balance. Corals are gone if we go much past 1.5C heating. We still have a chance to avoid that. I don’t see a blue water Arctic next year, but likely by the 2030s. Arctic methane loss is serious, and will add to the heating. Most scientists see it happening gradually, rather than in a sudden burp. There are exceptions such as Wadhams and Shakova, but most scientists don’t agree. Thwaites an other central west Antarctic glaciers are toast, as we will see 12-18 feet of sea-level rise. It will happen over centuries. We face critical feedback loop threats, but we have time to avert or slow the worst if we act now.
Plan for low population eco dictatorships. Democracy and sustainability are incompatible Lenin/ Mao or fascism.
We can switch from burning fossil fuels in our cars tomorrow. All cars right now can run on 50% ethanol. A download into the CPU can make it run on !00% ethanol. Every community can make its own ethanol from food waste. Eliminate the fragile fossil fuel infrastructure that has just been experienced with the Colonial pipeline failure.
I’ve done a lot of analysis on biofuels. Electrification is the way to go for most vehicles. You need heat inputs to make ethanol, and that can be an additional carbon emission. In addition, food waste reduction is probably a greater greenhouse gas reducer. Project Drawdown rates it the 2nd most important climate solution. https://drawdown.org/solutions/reduced-food-waste It might be that a better energy route for the food waste we don’t use is biogas. Here is an example of an effort aimed at that. https://www.vashonbeachcomber.com/news/island-anaerobic-digester-unveiled/
What do you have left after the sugars have been turned to ethanol? Protein, minerals, fat and fiber. There are many uses including burning, fertilizer and animal feed for the remainder. In Brazil they use the left overs to distill the ethanol and create electricity. Much of the electricity in Brazil is made from burning bagasse. They get ethanol and electricity. Very efficient. Digesters are a great idea but fermenting and distilling is a technology that is old as the hillbillys. Switching to ethanol is easier and quicker to do than to turn digested gas into electricity and then distribute it to an infrastructure that is yet built. Not to mention the extractive nature of the batteries. We do not need our transportation in the hands of Elon and his ilk as a replacement for John D. and his ilk. Musk's response to a question as to his involvement in the coup in Bolivia and immediate sale of the lithium beds to a corporation was: "We can coup anywhere."
Burning ethanol emits 60% equivalent greenhouse gases compared with gasoline. More, if fossil fuels were part of the ethanol production.
The carbon dioxide from ethanol combustion comes from carbon dioxide that was in the air last year plus water. Any other greenhouse gas is the result of industrial agriculture. So you are right but you are also wrong because the carbon dioxide from burning gasoline was in the air millions of years ago. It is the old argument that carbon dioxide is not bad because we breathe it out. Yes but we breathe it out because we are burning fuel that as alive yesterday not a million years ago.
Still putting it up- how "fresh" the greenhouse gases are is academic.
The point is that the greenhouse gases emitted by ethanol production have recently been removed from the air. If that cycle is continued then greenhouse gases do not build up. You can use the bagasse or distillers grains or other cellulose to produce the heat then what is left is returned to the soil for fertilizer for more plant material. A dycle that yields liquid fuel to run turbines or internal combustion engines and does not require lithium or cobalt from third world countries or China.
There is huge inertia but it can be reversed very quickly by switching from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture. It can be done by eating and growing regeneratively produced food. See the Netflix films "Kiss the Ground" and "The Biggest Little Farm" Soil can hold 3 time the carbon as the air and above ground plants combined.
Nothing is "quick" on a "stakeholder " world.