Everything is not getting worse

Discuss the evolution of human culture, economics and politics in the decades and centuries ahead
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erowind
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Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 5:42 am

Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by erowind »

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Vakanai wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 2:15 am I somehow really doubt that, considering how much better educated people on the subject than me discusses renewables, but this isn't something that I understand the technical aspects of. I will let people with more understanding debate those points. What I do know is that many people and communities already live with their homes entirely powered by renewables. People with homes and technology and gadgets like we have. They spend hours on their smartphones and laptops, they watch tv, they have lights, they have electric fans and heaters, they have air fryers and microwaves, they have every modern convenience. All run on renewables. Maybe it's an issue of scale, of providing enough for everyone, but I somehow doubt it. Renewables are working now, they provide millions of homes with energy now. I have no reason to believe that somehow when we move off of gas we'll have to live like people did centuries ago.
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How are the renewables made? How are all of the household objects from the microwaves to the air fryers to the lights to the computers made?Question the logistical source and there won't be any need for "debate." Examine the supply chains and our collective crises becomes clear. At near every point in the supply chain, at near every node of industrial manufacture or mining, at near every place of transport, storage and consumption which includes waste disposal, one will find and wittiness a use of fossil fuels. Now, can those fossil fuels be replaced with renewables at every node in the economy where they're used? Ideally yes, engines can be replaced with motors powered by batteries and turbines can churn on heated water vapor from geothermal or hydrogen just as much as they can from coal or oil. Plastics can be synthesized out of plants and more abundant resources can be researched and developed to replace fossil fuels in the supply chain.

The issue is that there are not enough rare earths to convert even our existing infrastructure from fossil fuels into renewables let alone the infrastructure of a planet with billions more people who all desire the same wasteful consumer "quality" of lives that we pursue in the "developed" countries. There isn't enough accessible lithium on Earth to replace every internal combustion engine with a battery. The use of alternative liquid fuels encounters issues with high energy costs in refining (hydrogen fuel) and or land use issues in competing with agriculture and wildlands (biofuels.) Plant based plastics still require land usage. What may not use petroleum in the future often still requires rare earths, which are by definition, rare. We can't build something like a microwave out of hemp for example. There is a genuine calculus to the statements that degrowthers are making, this isn't just ideology or rhetoric, it is physics.

The thing I always maintain is that with efficient planning, regenerative economics (as opposed to consumer economics,) and patience our species could eventually find an equilibrium where there is a high quality of life globally and in the far future move our heavy industry off world. But it is abundantly clear to anyone who isn't just consuming the dominant culture's ideology and who is paying attention to the work done by ecologists and economists who analyze resource usage and ecological impact of industrial civilization that our global civilization is completely unsustainable and will remain unsustainable even in the face of attempted widespread renewables usage should our civilization continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite world.

How can all these educated people you're listening to be so unaware? Because when it comes to questions that are ideological in nature, as the ecological crises is, the people and cultures who hold the dominant ideology that is threatened by the truth, "liberal capitalism" are incentivized to remain willfully ignorant and even spend their whole lives spreading lies, disinformation and otherwise muddying the discussion whether they are even aware of what they're doing or not. There is a concerted cultural inertia to deny the reality of the situation, because to confront it would mean the end of capitalism.





Vakanai
Posts: 313
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2022 10:23 pm

Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by Vakanai »

erowind wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 7:27 amThe issue is that there are not enough rare earths to convert even our existing infrastructure from fossil fuels into renewables let alone the infrastructure of a planet with billions more people who all desire the same wasteful consumer "quality" of lives that we pursue in the "developed" countries. There isn't enough accessible lithium on Earth to replace every internal combustion engine with a battery. The use of alternative liquid fuels encounters issues with high energy costs in refining (hydrogen fuel) and or land use issues in competing with agriculture and wildlands (biofuels.) Plant based plastics still require land usage. What may not use petroleum in the future often still requires rare earths, which are by definition, rare. We can't build something like a microwave out of hemp for example. There is a genuine calculus to the statements that degrowthers are making, this isn't just ideology or rhetoric, it is physics.
I think this is where we differ greatly. Remember, I said climate change is going to get bad. You're imagining a future with billions more people on it than today all wanting to live the consumer lifestyle of the west. I'm imagining a future with a billion or two fewer people alive on it than today. A crash of untold historic proportions is coming. Just because I think technology won't let society sink back into pre-industrial times doesn't mean I'm an optimist. Rare earths are rare, but we won't need to cover 10-12 billion people. More in the realm of 5-7 billion.

Hopefully I'm just a doomer and it won't get that bad. But technology is really the only part of the future I have any good feelings about.
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