- Re: I think the accurate fact about fossil hydrocarbons subsidising 'renewables' is that the entire Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on May 10, 2020, 12:18 pm, in reply to "I think the accurate fact about fossil hydrocarbons subsidising 'renewables' is that the entire"
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Thanks Rhis, you say: 'the entire panoply of 'renewable' energy systems, in their modern forms, can't be built and maintained without energy inputs from elsewhere. They can't provide the energy to make and repair themselves without that subsidy.' Indeed, the impossibility of large scale battery storage required to regulate output was noted in the film, as I recall. Lithium wars, anybody? At least Monbiot acknowledges there are some 'problems' with mining the resources. That sequence of the film showing all the huge operations required to access the 'necessary materials' was especially powerful (watch from 36:50): Mass expansion of renewables (sic) would require equally massive expansion of these associated extractive industries, and many of the resources would hit peak before coming anywhere near the amounts required by a transition away from fossil fuels (not to mention the environmental calamities caused by such an effort), see: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/the-path-to-clean-energy-will-be-very-dirty-climate-change-renewables/ The only way it could be feasible was if it went hand-in-hand with massive reductions in total energy usage, and we all know how likely that is operating under a capitalist system... Jesus, they're already starting to mine the ocean floor for the rare earth metals, again necessary for most renewable (sic) tech (unless there are some new miracles I'm unaware of): https://www.greenpeace.org/international/publication/22578/deep-sea-mining-in-deep-water/ On population, I watched the segment again and it turns out Gibbs explicitly mentions western consumption! 'It took modern humans tens of thousands of years to reach a population of 7oo million. And then we tapped into millions of years of stored energy known as fossil fuels. Our human population exploded. It increased by ten times in a mere 200 years. Our consumption has also exploded, on average ten times per person, and many times more in the western world. You put the two together, the result is a total human impact 100 times greater than only 200 years ago. And that is the most terrifying realisation that I've ever had.' (from 47:40) So that's a total misrepresentation from Monbiot. The graph used in the film only stretches back to 10,000BC, roughly the beginning of agriculture & civilisation. I've noticed this happens a lot when the subject of population turns up. If you stretched the timescale back for the full human history of 3 million years, or even the 200,000 years of anatomically modern Homo Sapiens it would not only appear to be a much smaller flash in the pan, but you'd also see that the massive, unsustainable expansion of population began in the neolithic, more or less exactly at this 10,000BC marker. The domestication of plants & animals is what raised the human carrying capacity above what a functioning ecology could support because it was (and continues to be) based on the theft of habitat, water, sunlight, minerals etc from all those other species to feed solely the (civilised) human and domesticate populations. The 'necrophagy' of the fossil fuel boom which converts petrochemicals into around half of global agricultural production is merely an outgrowth of this basic process, albeit an explosive one. See: https://www.wesjones.com/oilweeat.htm and https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/05/fertilized-world/ Otherwise, I finally got a copy of Limits to Growth which I'll get round to reading shortly. Only, what, 40 years behind! cheers, I |