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> Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about; And my entire point, is that after 30+ years of trying to reduce emis
by baron_harkonnen 5y ago
> Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about;
And my entire point, is that after 30+ years of trying to reduce emissions by adding renewables we have failed to see this happen. There is no evidence that we are getting any closer now. If any global fossil fuel usage had decline, we could say it might be being replaced with renewables, but all evidence we have shows that renewables just supplement our existing and growing needs for energy.
To go with your metaphor, we've been asking everyone to be quiet for 30+ years and the room is getting louder. If we need that room quiet or we'll get kicked out of the house for good, it's getting time to ask people to leave.
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoIf it's this difficult to get folks to transition to lower energy-use regimes, I think it would be even more difficult to get folks to abandon growth-based economics. Unless the worst happens and our economic systems collapse due to climate events. That's what I would consider the worst case, though.
- epistasis 5y agoWhat does "growth based" economics even mean? I think it's an incoherent concept, and have never gotten the same answer from two different people on the matter. Growth of GDP? Growth of energy use? Growth of carbon emissions? Growth of population? These different types of "growth" get substituted in, silently, to move an argument forward, but if one looks at details and tries to be specific, everything falls apart.
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoI agree with you. In my last post I'm using "growth based" to represent the status quo, nothing more (I'm not trying to say anything about why it is growth based.) If I were writing more carefully I should have simply called it out as the status quo instead of calling it "growth based".
- epistasis 5y agoSorry for accidentally implying that you didn't agree, I was just kind of hoping you might have an answer!
- epistasis 5y agoWe haven't spent 30 years trying to reduce emissions with renewables, we've spent 3 years doing pilot projects to drive down their costs. And we are, today, at the point where we can deploy them. Around 2016-2018, we passed an economic inflection point for new energy deployments, and in 2023 we will have been through the five year periods over which utilities typically plan, and hopefully we will have sued enough of them to force use of accurate and up to date data in their economic planning models. Only then will we actually start to try to use renewables to decrease emissions in any sort of full force. And with the tiny trial balloons up until now, and via increased energy efficiency, we have been increasing GDP per CO2 for years, despite your refusal to believe the data. These are basic facts. If your conclusions requires rejecting basic facts, then the conclusions are not sound.