{"id":21387,"date":"2016-07-05T19:05:40","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T00:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21387"},"modified":"2016-07-05T19:05:40","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T00:05:40","slug":"climate-energy-economy-pick-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21387","title":{"rendered":"Climate, Energy, Economy: Pick Two"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Climate, Energy, Economy: Pick Two<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\nDorothea Lange\u00a0Miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, OK\u00a0<\/b>1936<\/center>We used to have this saying that if someone asks you to do a job good, fast and cheap, you\u2019d say: pick two. You can have it good and cheap, but then it won\u2019t be fast, etc. As our New Zealand correspondent Dr. Nelson Lebo III explains below, when it comes to our societies we face a similar issue with our climate, energy and the economy.<\/p>\n

Not the exact same, but similar, just a bit more complicated. You can\u2019t have your climate nice and \u2018moderate\u2019, your energy cheap and clean, and your economy humming along just fine all at the same time. You need to make choices. That\u2019s easy to understand.<\/p>\n

Where it gets harder is here: if you pick energy and economy as your focus, the climate suffers (for climate you can equally read \u2018the planet\u2019, or \u2018the ecosystem\u2019). Focus on climate and energy, and the economy plunges. So far so \u2018good\u2019.<\/p>\n

But when you emphasize climate and economy, you get stuck. There is no way the two can be \u2018saved\u2019 with our present use of fossil fuels, and our highly complex economic systems cannot run on renewables (for one thing, the EROEI is not nearly good enough).<\/p>\n

It therefore looks like focusing on climate and economy is a dead end. It\u2019s either\/or. Something will have to give, and moreover, many things already have. Better be ahead of the game if you don\u2019t want to be surprised by these things. Be resilient.<\/p>\n

But this is Nelson\u2019s piece, not mine. The core of his argument is worth remembering:<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that is not resilient to high energy prices and extreme weather events will become economically unviable\u2026<\/b><\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2026and approach worthlessness. On the other hand,\u2026<\/p>\n

Investments of time, energy, and money in resilience will become more economically valuable\u2026<\/b>\u201c<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate, Energy, Economy: Pick Two Dorothea Lange\u00a0Miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, OK\u00a01936We used to have this saying that if someone asks you to do a job good, fast and cheap, you\u2019d say: pick two. You can have it good and cheap, but then it won\u2019t be fast, etc. As our New Zealand correspondent Dr. […]<\/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":[2,3,4],"tags":[14172,140,246,263,6614,14173,13924,680,5177],"class_list":["post-21387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-catch22","tag-climate","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-equity","tag-nelson-lebo","tag-raul-ilargi-meijer","tag-resilience","tag-the-automatic-earth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387","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=21387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21388,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions\/21388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}