No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*:
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The renewables transition is now a self-licking ice-cream cone, a flywheel that only spins faster and faster. As Solnit writes, this is true notwithstanding the concerns by some climate advocates about the materials needed for the transition. Sure, there will be *some* extraction involved in mass electrification, and if that's done badly, it will involve stealing and destroying more land from poor and indigenous people. But we don't have to do it badly!
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Meanwhile, *not* transitioning to renewables *absolutely* requires an endless cycle of incredibly destructive and genocidal extraction. Remember, fossil fuels are *fuels*, while renewables are *infrastructure*. Fuels need to be dug up and destroyed every year for so long as we insist on setting old dead shit on fire to survive. We dig up a *lot* of fossil fuels.
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Meanwhile, *not* transitioning to renewables *absolutely* requires an endless cycle of incredibly destructive and genocidal extraction. Remember, fossil fuels are *fuels*, while renewables are *infrastructure*. Fuels need to be dug up and destroyed every year for so long as we insist on setting old dead shit on fire to survive. We dig up a *lot* of fossil fuels.
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The world consumes *seventeen times* more fossil fuels in a year than we will require to electrify the planet *forever*:
The infrastructure of renewables - panels, batteries, transmission lines - requires materials that are often scarce and whose processing involves extremely harmful and polluting processes.
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The world consumes *seventeen times* more fossil fuels in a year than we will require to electrify the planet *forever*:
The infrastructure of renewables - panels, batteries, transmission lines - requires materials that are often scarce and whose processing involves extremely harmful and polluting processes.
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But those materials are all recyclable: we don't recycle them today because we haven't prioritized doing so, not because it it technologically beyond our reach. In 2024, America saw its first all-solar powered solar panel recycling factory, which reclaimed 99% of the materials in a panel that was 20% efficient, and then used those materials to make *two* panels that were each *40%* efficient:
New plant plans to recycle 30% of US' retired solar panels in 2030
SOLARCYCLE's new solar recycling plant in Cedartown, Georgia, aims to process 10 million solar panels each year, starting with an initial capacity of 2 million panels annually.
Interesting Engineering (interestingengineering.com)
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But those materials are all recyclable: we don't recycle them today because we haven't prioritized doing so, not because it it technologically beyond our reach. In 2024, America saw its first all-solar powered solar panel recycling factory, which reclaimed 99% of the materials in a panel that was 20% efficient, and then used those materials to make *two* panels that were each *40%* efficient:
New plant plans to recycle 30% of US' retired solar panels in 2030
SOLARCYCLE's new solar recycling plant in Cedartown, Georgia, aims to process 10 million solar panels each year, starting with an initial capacity of 2 million panels annually.
Interesting Engineering (interestingengineering.com)
27/
Trump shut that plant down, which means that other countries will get to recycle America's superannuated panels into modern, efficient ones and sell them back to America. America may have blocked any climate reparations for the poor world, but thanks to Comrade Trump, America's still going to end up paying them, in the form of windfall profits for countries whose cleantech economy is racing ahead of America's.
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Trump shut that plant down, which means that other countries will get to recycle America's superannuated panels into modern, efficient ones and sell them back to America. America may have blocked any climate reparations for the poor world, but thanks to Comrade Trump, America's still going to end up paying them, in the form of windfall profits for countries whose cleantech economy is racing ahead of America's.
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Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:
Sodium-ion batteries: Should we believe the hype?
They are getting cheaper and better, but so are those made with lithium
Chemical & Engineering News (cen.acs.org)
29/
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Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:
Sodium-ion batteries: Should we believe the hype?
They are getting cheaper and better, but so are those made with lithium
Chemical & Engineering News (cen.acs.org)
29/
Lithium is set to join cobalt, a notorious conflict mineral, in the cleantech revolution's rear-view mirror as a transitional material used in early, primitive batteries and no longer required.
A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world.
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Lithium is set to join cobalt, a notorious conflict mineral, in the cleantech revolution's rear-view mirror as a transitional material used in early, primitive batteries and no longer required.
A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world.
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It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil).
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It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil).
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Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years *after* some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.
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Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years *after* some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.
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I'm coming to #Guelph, Ontario this Friday (May
to deliver the Musagetes Lecture:
Guelph Lecture—On Being
Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.
River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)
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Image:
Stefan Müller (climate stuff) (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Thunberg_spricht_beim_Klimastreik_vor_dem_Reichstag_(51512266778).jpgCC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.eneof/
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As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable, cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.
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@pluralistic Gretacene - term (coined by @pluralistic last month) for the large scale shift to renewables. "Greta" refers to climate activist Greta Thurnberg.
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I'm coming to #Guelph, Ontario this Friday (May
to deliver the Musagetes Lecture:
Guelph Lecture—On Being
Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.
River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)
--
Image:
Stefan Müller (climate stuff) (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Thunberg_spricht_beim_Klimastreik_vor_dem_Reichstag_(51512266778).jpgCC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.eneof/
Excellent & wonderful thread!!!
Here's another benefit of the switch to renewables.
Six dynasties funded Project 2025 to convert American democracy into oligarchy.
Bradley, Koch, Coors, Scaife Mellon, Seid, Uihlein.
The move to renewables impoverishes those interests & they'll have less money available to buy Supreme Court Justices & coup attempts.
The GOP's foreign donors like #PrinceBonesaw, Qatar, UAE, and Putin aren't going to be too happy with Trump either
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Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years *after* some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.
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@pluralistic Moreover, the LCOE of solar recently dropped below nuclear for the first time. For electric utilities that necessarily plan long term, there's no incentive to build out nuclear, even with a ready supply of nuclear fuel.
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No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*:
A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit: 9780143118077 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
A New York Times Notable Book Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington...
PenguinRandomhouse.com (www.penguinrandomhouse.com)
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic You can use Friendica instead of creating such long threads. Reads way better! -
Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:
Sodium-ion batteries: Should we believe the hype?
They are getting cheaper and better, but so are those made with lithium
Chemical & Engineering News (cen.acs.org)
29/
@pluralistic sodium-ion probably wins the long race, but lithium-ion won't go down fast. Lithium is about as common as lead and just as easy to recycle. Once we get to some volume in use, recycling will become the biggest lithium source, like steel (40%-70% from scrap) or asphalt (99% from recycled pavement)
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@pluralistic You can use Friendica instead of creating such long threads. Reads way better!
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No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*:
A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit: 9780143118077 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
A New York Times Notable Book Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington...
PenguinRandomhouse.com (www.penguinrandomhouse.com)
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
1/
@pluralistic Although, that image is not as powerful and optimistic as the creator probably thinks it is, even of orange lenin is amusing. The high iq lawyer from the best schools
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@pluralistic Although, that image is not as powerful and optimistic as the creator probably thinks it is, even of orange lenin is amusing. The high iq lawyer from the best schools
@Kierkegaanks Lucky for you the image is CC BY and you are free to remix it if you would like a different one. Here's the hi-rez, please do show me yours when you've finished it:
Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure
pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/#hormuzed-int... Alexander Rodchenko's classic Russian constructivist 'books' advertising poster; Lilya Brik's face has been replaced with Greta Thunberg's, and instead of shouting the word 'books,' a spray of geometric sunbeams are emanating from her mouth. Superimposed and beneath her is a Soviet propaganda poster of a furiously pointing Lenin. Lenin's skin is Cheeto orange and he wears a straw-yellow Trump wig. Image: Stefan Müller (climate stuff) (modified) commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Thunberg_spricht_be...(51512266778).jpg CC BY 2.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Flickr (www.flickr.com)
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No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*:
A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit: 9780143118077 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
A New York Times Notable Book Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington...
PenguinRandomhouse.com (www.penguinrandomhouse.com)
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
1/
@pluralistic I can tell you from anecdotal evidence here in Germany...a LOT of people seem to have invested in private photovoltaic installations in Q1/Q2 of 2026.
One of the big online solar retailers here currently has shipping dispatch times of 24 - 29 workdays (massive increase from previous dispatch times of ~5-7 days).
When people buy these installations, especially the bigger, non-balcony systems they are planned for a lifetime of ~15 years.
That's roughly 8,000-10,000kWh of external energy demand destroyed per household per year!And honestly I'd say forever, because it seems very unlikely that after 15 years of getting used to free solar energy you'd go back. Especially considering future technological improvements and falling unit prices for both solar panels and battery storage.
I think Rebecca Solnit is absolutely right here.
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@NewtonMark @wall_e @pluralistic it's doing that in midwinter? What's it going to be like next summer?
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@NewtonMark @wall_e @pluralistic Welcome to the solarpunk era
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