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Right, I'm talking about technically feasible solutions. And it is entirely feasible to power the world with clean, renewable energy. We have the solar capacity

Right, I'm talking about technically feasible solutions. And it is entirely feasible to power the world with clean, renewable energy. We have the solar capacity to meet hundreds of times our current energy capacity (using less land space than our existing roads). And over 530,000 potential pumped-hydro sites worldwide to store that energy (of which we'd only need a tiny fraction). For example, there are 22,000 sites in Australia, of which we'd only need 20. The research shows that cost will be a non-issue. http://energy.anu.edu.au/news-events/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide http://energy.anu.edu.au/news-events/anu-finds-530000-potent... Everything else comes down to barriers in the economic and political domains.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Yup. The way I see it, we need to optimize our energy use and ecosystem damage output, until we can switch over completely to surplus clean energy. After that, a lot of ecology talk stops to matter. For instance, with surplus energy put to use in collecting, recycling & emission capture, we could use disposable plastics to our hearts' content. Unfortunately, as you say, widespread deployment of clean & sustainable energy sources comes down to barriers in the economic and political domains. That's why I feel modern ecology needs to optimize for reducing energy use, even if it might mean preferring some locally suboptimal-looking solutions that turn out to be globally more efficient.
jdietrich 7y ago
But we don't currently live in a world that's powered by renewable energy, we live in a world where the vast majority of energy is generated from fossil sources. Making that transition will require decades, billions in investment and a lot of challenging trade-offs. Here in the real world of 2019, energy is the dominant factor. If we need to dig up landfills to recover materials in 2100, so be it - right now, we have a ticking clock to mitigate the worst effects of the impending climate crisis. We simply cannot afford to waste time on wishful thinking and idealism, we need to cut our carbon emissions hard and fast.
- benj111 7y ago
  "If we need to dig up landfills to recover materials in 2100, so be it" You were talking about burning plastic bottles a minute ago??? Agreed we need to minimise energy usage and move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, plastic usage risks creating a market for fossil fuels, where petrol/gas become cheap byproducts, so it isn't a straight forward trade off.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Yup. The way I see it, we need to optimize our energy use and ecosystem damage output, until we can switch over completely to surplus clean energy. After that, a lot of ecology talk stops to matter. For instance, with surplus energy put to use in collecting, recycling & emission capture, we could use disposable plastics to our hearts' content. Unfortunately, as you say, widespread deployment of clean & sustainable energy sources comes down to barriers in the economic and political domains. That's why I feel modern ecology needs to optimize for reducing energy use, even if it might mean preferring some locally suboptimal-looking solutions that turn out to be globally more efficient.

jdietrich 7y ago

But we don't currently live in a world that's powered by renewable energy, we live in a world where the vast majority of energy is generated from fossil sources. Making that transition will require decades, billions in investment and a lot of challenging trade-offs. Here in the real world of 2019, energy is the dominant factor. If we need to dig up landfills to recover materials in 2100, so be it - right now, we have a ticking clock to mitigate the worst effects of the impending climate crisis. We simply cannot afford to waste time on wishful thinking and idealism, we need to cut our carbon emissions hard and fast.

benj111 7y ago
"If we need to dig up landfills to recover materials in 2100, so be it" You were talking about burning plastic bottles a minute ago??? Agreed we need to minimise energy usage and move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, plastic usage risks creating a market for fossil fuels, where petrol/gas become cheap byproducts, so it isn't a straight forward trade off.