{"id":10084,"date":"2015-07-15T07:14:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T12:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10084"},"modified":"2015-07-15T07:14:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T12:14:18","slug":"dont-be-fossil-fooled-its-time-to-say-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10084","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t be Fossil Fooled \u2013 It\u2019s time to say goodbye."},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"item_detail\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2015-07-14\/don-t-be-fossil-fooled-it-s-time-to-say-goodbye\" target=\"_blank\">Don\u2019t be Fossil Fooled \u2013 It\u2019s time to say goodbye.<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.resilience.org\/articles\/General\/2015\/01_Jan\/640px-Olaus_Magnus_-_On_the_Art_of_Prophecy.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time to make the call \u2013 fossil fuels are finished. The rest is detail.<\/p>\n<p>The detail is interesting and important, as I expand on below. But unless we recognise the central proposition: that the fossil fuel age is coming to an end, and within 15 to 30 years \u2013 not 50 to 100 \u2013 we risk making serious and damaging mistakes in climate and economic policy, in investment strategy and in geopolitics and defence.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve written previously about 2015 being the year\u00a0<a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/paulgilding.com\/2015\/02\/23\/the-year-the-dam-of-denial-breaks-ready-for-the-flood\/\" target=\"_blank\">the \u201cDam of Denial\u201d breaks,<\/a>referring to the end of denial that climate change requires urgent, transformational economic change. While related, this is different. It is now becoming clear we\u2019ve reached a tipping point where fossil fuels will enter terminal decline,\u00a0<em>independently of climate policy action.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Given climate policy action is also now accelerating, fossil fuels are double dead. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, \u201cSo long and thanks for all the energy\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I understand this is a very big call, especially in regards to timing. There are many drivers that lead me to this conclusion but it\u2019s their integrated impact that makes me so confident.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thinking of energy like you think about an iPhone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The first and most important one is the argument I first made early in 2014 in\u00a0<a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dpac.tas.gov.au\/divisions\/climatechange\/what_the_government_has_done\/?a=225931\" target=\"_blank\">a paper with Giles Parkinson<\/a>\u00a0from RenewEconomy.com.au. For over a hundred years, energy markets have been defined by physical resources, supplied in large volumes by large, slow moving companies developing long life assets in the context of slow moving shifts in markets.<\/p>\n<p>The new emerging energy system of renewables and storage is a \u201ctechnology\u201d business, more akin to information and communications technology, where prices keep falling, quality keeps rising, change is rapid and market disruption is normal and constant. There is a familiar process that unfolds in markets with technology driven disruptions.\u00a0<a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.2052.info\/glimpse-91\/\" target=\"_blank\">I expand on that here<\/a>\u00a0in a 2012 piece I wrote in a contribution to Jorgen Randers book \u201c2052 \u2013 A Global Forecast\u201d (arguing the inevitability of the point we have now arrived at).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don\u2019t be Fossil Fooled \u2013 It\u2019s time to say goodbye. It\u2019s time to make the call \u2013 fossil fuels are finished. The rest is detail. The detail is interesting and important, as I expand on below. But unless we recognise the central proposition: that the fossil fuel age is coming to an end, and within [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[286,328,7306,6665,1564,7307,5426],"class_list":["post-10084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-exponential-growth","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-photovoltaic","tag-resilience-org","tag-solar-energy","tag-solar-photovoltaic","tag-solar-pv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10085,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10084\/revisions\/10085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}