Coal produces about 33% of global electricitySolar and wind produce 8–9% eachElectricity meets about 20% of total energy demandhttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/coal-still-powers-more-electricity/
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Then they need more fuel. Fuel that will displace people (coal), or impact their immediate (fracking) or wider (extreme weather) environment. Producing this energy with renewables removes this "more".
By now solar panels and batteries can be 100% recycled. Sodium batteries use little exotic materials, etc.
So my point is not one of "more" but of "instead". And that implies installing solar and wind harvesting, and shutting down burning facilities.
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@knud
There is no such thing as 100% recycling. The true recycling rate for modern electronics is probably about 5%, and every year electronics become less and less recyclable.You always hear about sodium batteries replacing lithium--always a solution just around the corner. Meanwhile, in the USA alone 100 new lithium mines are planned.
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@knud nevertheless, I don’t think we are strategically in control of what we’re doing and the incentives pretty much ensure that we are not capable of becoming so.
Oil and gas will become radically less affordable in the coming years and the lived experience of being on the enforced downslope of power consumption will help us forge new ways of being
@urlyman
Consumption is out of control, for sure, and we have found the easiest and cheapest oil, gas and metals. But if history is a teacher, then our civilizations will double down on the worst behaviors of the Growth Death Cult.I can only see environmental and civilizational collapse coming. The question is: What comes after? How do we be good ancestors so that everything is not destroyed.
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@knud The actual solution is to use less energy, period. Transitions have always been a smokescreen to, in fact, use more. @gerrymcgovern
@dnkboston @knud @gerrymcgovern we could start by closing the hospitals at the weekends, so we could save energy and kill off the unproductive at the same time! Look, I'm all for blowing up the AI business, etc, but blanket use less energy comes with real costs. Life was not very fun, or long, before electrification.
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@urlyman
Consumption is out of control, for sure, and we have found the easiest and cheapest oil, gas and metals. But if history is a teacher, then our civilizations will double down on the worst behaviors of the Growth Death Cult.I can only see environmental and civilizational collapse coming. The question is: What comes after? How do we be good ancestors so that everything is not destroyed.
@gerrymcgovern every tree does what it can to be a forest, and Luke Kemp’s ‘Goliath’s Curse’ shows that collapse is not unidirectional
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@dnkboston @knud @gerrymcgovern we could start by closing the hospitals at the weekends, so we could save energy and kill off the unproductive at the same time! Look, I'm all for blowing up the AI business, etc, but blanket use less energy comes with real costs. Life was not very fun, or long, before electrification.
@quinn
We ca either have managed degrowth or forced degrowth. Forced degrowth is going to much, much more horrible. Some believe our population will drop to 1 billion or even 100 million. We have so overshot and done so much damage to all the key pillars of life. -
@knud @gerrymcgovern @dnkboston
My point is that scope 3 emissions don't include all the emissions that I think should be included. The way we calculate footprint is biased in favour of the global north.
@tschenkel
As has always been the case. What truly struck me as I researched for my last book was how deeply manipulative and manipulated the science was. How most scientists work in the service of government and industry and will say whatever needs to be said to justify continued economic growth and environmental exploitation. -
@quinn
We ca either have managed degrowth or forced degrowth. Forced degrowth is going to much, much more horrible. Some believe our population will drop to 1 billion or even 100 million. We have so overshot and done so much damage to all the key pillars of life.@gerrymcgovern @dnkboston @knud more than 10,000 times the energy we need falls on the earth every day. Even more energy is available if we dig a hole and literally just drop a liquid in it. Yes there are more problems than energy availability, but we're starting to turn the corner on many of those too. And we're heading for natural population drop so fast that it's a big problem on its own. Look I get hating all humans, I was doing it before it was cool, but renewables are real, here, and good.
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@gerrymcgovern @dnkboston @knud more than 10,000 times the energy we need falls on the earth every day. Even more energy is available if we dig a hole and literally just drop a liquid in it. Yes there are more problems than energy availability, but we're starting to turn the corner on many of those too. And we're heading for natural population drop so fast that it's a big problem on its own. Look I get hating all humans, I was doing it before it was cool, but renewables are real, here, and good.
@gerrymcgovern @dnkboston @knud as for some people believe, hell some people believe the moon is made of cheese. Most of the rest of the non American world is moving forward into sustainable transition away from fossil fuels, and there's a global fertility crisis anyway. No one is having kids outside of Africa. (But I tell ya, when I say the future is African I have to hide in a bomb shelter for a week.) Renewables are real, and good, and happening in most of the world
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@dnkboston @knud @gerrymcgovern Jean-Baptiste Fressoz «Sans transition: une nouvelle histoire de l'énergie» thoroughly documents how historically, energy transitions have been primarily additive as opposed to replacing legacy energy resources, although to some extent new energy resources are used to enhance the extraction of legacy energy resources.
@nyc I loved that book. "He came with receipts" doesn't do him justice--but he did. @knud @gerrymcgovern
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@dnkboston the Vietnam War was extremely popular among white people for years. It wasn't until the US was clearly losing in 1968 under LBJ that the war became unpopular. Even then, Nixon was extremely popular in the early 70s among white voters for prolonging the war and bombing Cambodia. Nixon won the biggest electoral college victory ever in 1972 for this.
@jonesmurphy "Bread and circus" perfected--now you can do it far away.
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I have literally no idea what you are talking about.
The only alternative to producing energy via solar and wind is fossil. Do you want that?
@knud The fact that you don't understand makes this conversation difficult. You can read @gerrymcgovern 's book. Or Fressoz or Zehner. Or the archives at Cultural Survival.
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@nyc @dnkboston @gerrymcgovern
Germany is phasing out coal while having phased out nuclear, and while reducing primary energy use. All this driven towards lower carbon intensity of energy by a strong push to renewables:
So the "historic" perspective doesn't extrapolate to the present, bc ending the 500,000 year epoch of burning stuff is fundamentally new.
@knud Is this still with the accounting that includes Germany using "biomass"? @nyc @gerrymcgovern
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@jonesmurphy "Bread and circus" perfected--now you can do it far away.
@dnkboston LBJ faced fierce opposition from Goldwater Republicans and right wing Democrats for insufficient warfare in Vietnam. Nixon gave them enormous warfare all over the world as well as nuclear proliferation to apartheid South Africa and Israel. Nixon called the War on Poverty "a new tyranny ". White supremacists agreed.
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@gerrymcgovern @knud @dnkboston this is bullshit. There are numerous other forms of renewable energy besides solar. The principal obstacle to them is not China. It's your Nazi relatives, friends, neighbors and tribesme. You're bashing China which is a far lower emitter per capita than Europe and its evil Diaspora. You are racist as hell. Western conservatives are the worst people in the world on this and many other topics.
@jonesmurphy That's not true. @gerrymcgovern is not racist. In fact, his thesis concerns how racist, white, toxic masculinity leads to the extractive capitalism that's killing all of us. @knud
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@knud nevertheless, I don’t think we are strategically in control of what we’re doing and the incentives pretty much ensure that we are not capable of becoming so.
Oil and gas will become radically less affordable in the coming years and the lived experience of being on the enforced downslope of power consumption will help us forge new ways of being
@urlyman Maybe. But from what I've seen, normal price signals aren't enough. @knud @gerrymcgovern
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@jonesmurphy That's not true. @gerrymcgovern is not racist. In fact, his thesis concerns how racist, white, toxic masculinity leads to the extractive capitalism that's killing all of us. @knud
@dnkboston @gerrymcgovern @knud I'm not threatened by capitalism. I'm threatened by racism, something much bigger and older. There's a lot of racism in Communist countries that isn't produced by capitalism at all. The most capitalist parts of the USA are the most sensible environmentally. Suicidal stupidity on the environment is maximal in the least capitalist parts of the country, starting with the Confederate South and allied areas.
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@urlyman Maybe. But from what I've seen, normal price signals aren't enough. @knud @gerrymcgovern
@dnkboston hence my use of the word “enforced”. The lived experience of relative absence will drive change. And perhaps, out of a deficit of technological ubiquity will come a reconnection with forms of abundance that have always been there and still are, just
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@knud
There is no such thing as 100% recycling. The true recycling rate for modern electronics is probably about 5%, and every year electronics become less and less recyclable.You always hear about sodium batteries replacing lithium--always a solution just around the corner. Meanwhile, in the USA alone 100 new lithium mines are planned.
@gerrymcgovern I rolled my eyes when I saw that a few weeks ago. But I remember also reading that they were rejected as a nuclear reactor solution because sodium is so unstable (*Nuclear Is Not The Solution*, Ramana). That's really not a concern for batteries? @knud
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@gerrymcgovern I rolled my eyes when I saw that a few weeks ago. But I remember also reading that they were rejected as a nuclear reactor solution because sodium is so unstable (*Nuclear Is Not The Solution*, Ramana). That's really not a concern for batteries? @knud
@dnkboston
And it's not a little itonic that batteries are being sold as clean and green. You would struggle to think of anything more toxic, with long lasting damage, than batteries. But then, the tech optimists were AI long before AI; all full of hallucinations.
@knud -
@gerrymcgovern @dnkboston @knud as for some people believe, hell some people believe the moon is made of cheese. Most of the rest of the non American world is moving forward into sustainable transition away from fossil fuels, and there's a global fertility crisis anyway. No one is having kids outside of Africa. (But I tell ya, when I say the future is African I have to hide in a bomb shelter for a week.) Renewables are real, and good, and happening in most of the world
@quinn The future is African, and it's about damn time.
We do get a lot of sun, but photovoltaic tech currently depends on elements that require devastating extraction. People seem unimpressed when I point out damage to ecosystems or human health, but hopefully they will be paused by how often these wastes can be radioactive.
Many people in native nations lived long lives without electricity. The big things seemed to be 1) clean surroundings and 2) adequate food.
