Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
Sure! No one is going to transform the energy market overnight.
However,if we're going to 'end' fossil fuel combustion,as climatologists recommend we do,then the sooner we get started,the better we'll be poised to be pro-active about what's going to happen to us,rather than reactive after the sky has fallen.
If Earth is unimportant,then we'll just keep on keeping on.
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Scale. Building out 17 TW of rebuildable hardware and keeping it repaired and operating with no cheap fossil fuel to build and repair it is impossible. Run the numbers. It is not just a matter of choice. Why do people think the world has failed repeatedly in living up to all of the various carbon agreements. The current socio-economic system for 7.5 billion humans was built on, and is completely reliant on cheap fossil energy to keep from crashing.
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Exponential Population explosion/ GDP/ and energy consumption have been highly correlated 1:1:1 since 1850. And have led us to overpopulate the planet beyond the carrying capacity of normal energy flows. Fossil fuels are so dense that we will have a big shortfall of energy availablilty when they leave us. And they are so cheap (we pay almost nothing for any of the actual raw materials we pull out of the Earth. Only for the cost of extraction.) that their diminishing output will force us to abandon everything we now take for granted in the way our economy works. We would need to completely revamp the distribution of wealth. And rich people are not going to give it up willingly. Like they did last time when FDR reminded them that the hungry hoards would be coming with pointy sticks to take it if they didn't. 78% of world wealth went to 1% of the population in 2016.
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100 years from now, people will have to grow their own food and firewood with muscle power and will be lucky to keep enough industry going to have an internet of knowledge running and have some lighting and e-bikes to get around on.