…or how proposed solutions only deepen the problem
For those of my readers who follow this blog for a while now it has probably become pretty much clear that this global capitalist high-tech industrial civilization is slowly over. What we are experiencing these days is nothing but an opening to a period of long slow decline — taking decades, if not a century to unfold — barring a literal Armageddon unleashed by fundamentalists seeing it as a way to redemption. The underlying dynamics, however, are common to all previously lost societies, no matter how sad it is: all civilizations rise and fall in familiar patterns and ours is by no means an exception. What can our leaders and the political class in general do about it? What are the proposed ways to avert our fate? This is going to be the topic of today’s post.
Bigger, better, greener…?
Renewable energy is what seems to get all the attention in fighting off climate change, and beating those nasty petrol states at the same time. These resources are said to bring electricity prices down (after all, these are the ‘cheapest’ sources of electricity nowadays) and give us the only hope of continuing our comfortable lifestyles in the West.
After half a century of handwaving though, touting how electricity generated by nuclear power will be too cheap to meter, or how power generated by renewables will be so abundant that it will be virtually for free, oil, gas and coal are still powering 85% of the real economy. Just like 50 years ago. As Germany’s year-ahead electricity contracts testify, after having went through a whopping 500% increase over the past year, we are not quite there yet… But will we ever reach this utopia…?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
