{"id":27191,"date":"2017-10-24T09:08:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T14:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27191"},"modified":"2017-10-24T09:08:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T14:08:46","slug":"100-renewables-wishful-thinking-or-an-imperative-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27191","title":{"rendered":"100% renewables: \u2018wishful thinking\u2019 or an imperative goal?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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100% renewables: \u2018wishful thinking\u2019 or an imperative goal?<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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In this essay, I was provoked to respond to Stan Cox\u2019s widely-shared article <\/span>\u201c100 Percent Wishful Thinking: The Green-Energy Cornucopia\u201d<\/a>, in which he argues that a transition to 100% renewable energy is neither technically feasible, nor desirable.<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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It is my contention, in contrast, that a 100 percent global renewable energy transition is, indeed, technically possible in a short time frame (20 to 30 years) with a capacity to supply the same level or even more energy<\/em> to civilization, than the present infrastructure dominated by fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

However, this outcome is unlikely in our present economic context:<\/p>\n

Insight 1: This renewable energy transition is not likely to bear fruition within the constraints of market capitalism as we know it. Further, a process forward for global demilitarization is a necessary condition to prevent climate catastrophe with its requirement of near future decarbonization of energy supplies.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Axiom 1: Not only is the Pentagon is the <\/strong>world\u2019s single, biggest<\/strong><\/a> insitutional consumer of fossil fuels, but global military expenditures <\/strong>now approach $2 trillion per year<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cox denies the feasibility of a 100% renewable energy transition, basing his views on very problematic critiques focusing largely on the technical aspects of the Jacobson group studies. Those studies<\/a> led by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University recently provoked controversy when their work received peer-reviewed criticisms<\/a> from a scientific paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u200a\u2014\u200athe same esteemed forum which published Jacobson\u2019s original work.<\/p>\n

I agree with Cox in his skepticism with regard to the achievability of a robust global 100% renewable transition unfolding in the next few decades\u200a\u2014\u200abut only if fossil capital and its military protectors continue to have a powerful role in determining climate and energy policy especially in the U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

100% renewables: \u2018wishful thinking\u2019 or an imperative goal? In this essay, I was provoked to respond to Stan Cox\u2019s widely-shared article \u201c100 Percent Wishful Thinking: The Green-Energy Cornucopia\u201d, in which he argues that a transition to 100% renewable energy is neither technically feasible, nor desirable. It is my contention, in contrast, that a 100 percent […]<\/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":[16654,16655,620,674,15995,12429],"class_list":["post-27191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-david-schwartzman","tag-mark-jacobson","tag-pentagon","tag-renewable-energy","tag-stan-cox","tag-wishful-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27191","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=27191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27192,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27191\/revisions\/27192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}