{"id":38412,"date":"2018-09-28T07:12:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T12:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38412"},"modified":"2018-09-28T07:12:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T12:12:19","slug":"while-economic-growth-continues-well-never-kick-our-fossil-fuels-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38412","title":{"rendered":"While economic growth continues we\u2019ll never kick our fossil fuels habit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While economic growth continues we\u2019ll never kick our fossil fuels habit<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"S\u00e9bastien<\/picture><\/div>
Illustration: S\u00e9bastien Thibault<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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W<\/span><\/span>e\u2019re getting there, aren\u2019t we? We\u2019re making the transition towards an all-electric future. We can now leave fossil fuels in the ground and thwart climate breakdown. Or so you might imagine, if you follow the technology news.<\/p>\n

So how come oil production, for the first time in history, is about to hit 100m barrels a day<\/a>? How come the oil industry expects demand to climb<\/a> until the 2030s? How is it that in Germany, whose energy transition (Energiewende<\/em><\/a>) was supposed to be a model for the world, protesters are being beaten up by police<\/a> as they try to defend the 12,000-year-old Hambacher forest<\/a> from an opencast mine extracting lignite \u2013 the dirtiest form of coal? Why have investments in Canadian tar sands \u2013 the dirtiest source of oil \u2013 doubled in a year<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The answer is, growth. There may be more electric vehicles on the world\u2019s roads, but there are also more internal combustion engines. There be more bicycles, but there are also more planes. It doesn\u2019t matter how many good things we do: preventing climate breakdown means ceasing to do bad things. Given that economic growth, in nations that are already rich enough to meet the needs of all, requires an increase in pointless consumption<\/a>, it is hard to see how it can ever be decoupled<\/a> from the assault on the living planet.<\/p>\n

When a low-carbon industry expands within a growing economy, the money it generates stimulates high-carbon industry. Anyone who works in this field knows environmental entrepreneurs, eco-consultants and green business managers who use their earnings to pay for holidays in distant parts of the world and the flights required to get there.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While economic growth continues we\u2019ll never kick our fossil fuels habit Illustration: S\u00e9bastien Thibault We\u2019re getting there, aren\u2019t we? We\u2019re making the transition towards an all-electric future. We can now leave fossil fuels in the ground and thwart climate breakdown. Or so you might imagine, if you follow the technology news. So how come oil […]<\/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":[2,3,7],"tags":[240,328,6112,6917],"class_list":["post-38412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-survival-2","tag-economic-growth","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-george-monbiot","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38412","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=38412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38413,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38412\/revisions\/38413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}