{"id":55195,"date":"2020-10-02T09:25:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T14:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55195"},"modified":"2020-10-02T17:47:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T22:47:57","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55195","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Image<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
Pompeii (1993) Photo by author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet another of my comments for an article on The Tyee regarding energy and how we should approach our coming dilemmas.\u00a0https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Analysis\/2020\/10\/02\/BC-Needs-Wartime-Approach-Climate-Emergency\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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While I certainly appreciate the need to \u2018correct\u2019 our global industrial civilization\u2019s path from its current trajectory there is an obvious \u2018problem\u2019 with the argument presented here: forcing the wrong \u2018solution\u2019 upon society is a recipe for an expedited collapse. As in the movie\/series Snowpiercer (where an attempt to \u2018correct\u2019 global warming ended up leading to a frozen planet), the human need to \u2018do something\u2019 often leads to negative, unintended consequences and, quite frequently, the opposite of what was desired.<\/p>\n

A great example of how the above \u2018solution\u2019 would likely bring about more quickly the opposite of what is desired is found in this statement:\u00a0\u201cWe must conduct an inventory, determining how many heat pumps, solar arrays, wind farms, electric buses, etc., we will need to electrify virtually everything and end our reliance on fossil fuels.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0To me, this shows quite clearly that the \u2018solution\u2019 is not to address the dilemmas created by chasing infinite growth, as our \u2018modern\u2019 world does, but maintaining business as usual by trying to have our cake and eat it too. It proposes maintaining all the technological, industrial, and energy-intensive baubles\/conveniences that fossil fuels have brought us without realising the price that must be paid to do this (in fact, I would argue the impossibility of doing this).<\/p>\n

As I have argued several times on these pages, renewables are NOT the panacea they are marketed as. The energy-return-on-energy-invested (EROEI) is markedly lower than fossil fuels resulting in significantly less energy available for end use. They all rely on environmentally-destructive processes for their material input. They depend upon industrial processes in their manufacture that cannot be done without fossil fuels. They use finite resources, some of which are already experience diminishing returns. They cannot replace fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V Pompeii (1993) Photo by author Yet another of my comments for an article on The Tyee regarding energy and how we should approach our coming dilemmas.\u00a0https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Analysis\/2020\/10\/02\/BC-Needs-Wartime-Approach-Climate-Emergency\/ _____ While I certainly appreciate the need to \u2018correct\u2019 our global industrial civilization\u2019s path from its current trajectory there is an obvious \u2018problem\u2019 with […]<\/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":[3,4,6],"tags":[150,30371,23450,15632,674,5833,5499,30370],"class_list":["post-55195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-collapse","tag-collapse-cometh","tag-green-new-deal","tag-medium-com","tag-renewable-energy","tag-steve-bull","tag-the-tyee","tag-todays-contemplation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55195","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=55195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55196,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55195\/revisions\/55196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}