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What part of "Energy use is necessary to support human life" did you not understand when I said it? Do you understand that heat waves, flooding, forest fires,
by skyfaller 4y ago
What part of "Energy use is necessary to support human life" did you not understand when I said it?
Do you understand that heat waves, flooding, forest fires, and other extreme weather events will interfere with the delivery of energy? Do you understand that water shortages will interfere with the delivery of energy (e.g. nuclear power plants need water for cooling)? Do you understand that resource wars will interfere with the delivery of energy? Do you understand that climate change preventing food from growing will interfere with the survival of the people who deliver the energy?
Of course energy is vital to human existence, I recommend e.g. Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil to anyone who wants to understand this in great detail: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization But the climate crisis will interfere with energy production and delivery, just as it interferes with everything else that humans want or need to do. Refusing to reduce energy usage voluntarily will result in involuntary reduction in energy usage as systems fail.
- djschnei 4y ago> limiting energy use is vital to avoid climate catastrophe. This is what I have issue with. Energy use benefits humanity. Full stop. If you said civilization needs bananas to survive and flourish, then some good samaritan came along and said "I will always buy any leftover bananas you can't sell no matter where or when you grow them", you would get many more banana farms, people experimenting with new banana growing/harvesting technology, etc. It's an undeniable benefit if your goal is to produce more bananas.
- skyfaller 4y agoI'll try a simple analogy: imagine that your goal is to consume as much corn as possible. (A silly goal for many reasons, but that's a different discussion.) You have all of the corn that you've grown to eat, and then there's the seed corn you would need to plant in order to eat more corn in the future. If you decide to eat the seed corn as well, you will eat more corn in the immediate future, and then much less corn after that. Clearly limits to consumption are sometimes necessary in order to maximize consumption over the long term, even if you grant the premise that maximizing consumption is desirable.
- djschnei 4y agoTerrible analogy. Energy production requires large upfront investments in infrastructure. There is nothing analogous to seed in energy. There are only farms and corn that expires extremely quickly and is hard to transport.