{"id":58381,"date":"2021-06-25T10:43:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T15:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58381"},"modified":"2021-06-25T10:43:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T15:43:46","slug":"mere-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58381","title":{"rendered":"Mere statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

Mere statistics<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
In the current political climate, fossil fuels are deemed to have no redeeming features.\u00a0 The fact that everything we take for granted, from abundant food to high life expectancy and from clean drinking water to an absence of slavery, is based on fossil fuels is entirely overlooked.\u00a0 The transition to\u00a0non-renewable<\/a>\u00a0renewable energy-harvesting technologies \u2013 NRREHTs \u2013 is a matter of quasi-religious faith rather than science and data.\u00a0 And so we can delude ourselves into believing in a green, hi-tech future in which we \u201cown nothing and are happy<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The reality, of course, is that peak energy arrived sometime back in 2018<\/a>\u00a0and was already trending down long before SARS-CoV-2 began prematurely ending the lives of millions worldwide.\u00a0 Less obviously, since the 1970s, the energy cost of energy had been rising remorselessly; so that less\u00a0surplus\u00a0<\/em>energy has been available to power the wider economy ever since.\u00a0 That may sound technical, but in common sense terms, the lack of available energy translated into falling living standards and rising precariarity for an increasing part of the population.In the current political climate, fossil fuels are deemed to have no redeeming features.\u00a0 The fact that everything we take for granted, from abundant food to high life expectancy and from clean drinking water to an absence of slavery, is based on fossil fuels is entirely overlooked.\u00a0 The transition to\u00a0non-renewable<\/a>\u00a0renewable energy-harvesting technologies \u2013 NRREHTs \u2013 is a matter of quasi-religious faith rather than science and data.\u00a0 And so we can delude ourselves into believing in a green, hi-tech future in which we \u201cown nothing and are happy<\/a>.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

For the last half-century, then, we have experienced what might be called \u201crelative energy poverty.\u201d\u00a0 This is evident in this recollection from\u00a0Guardian<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>columnist Ian Jack:<\/p>\n

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

Mere statistics In the current political climate, fossil fuels are deemed to have no redeeming features.\u00a0 The fact that everything we take for granted, from abundant food to high life expectancy and from clean drinking water to an absence of slavery, is based on fossil fuels is entirely overlooked.\u00a0 The transition to\u00a0non-renewable\u00a0renewable energy-harvesting technologies \u2013 […]<\/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":[31147,328,674,2084],"class_list":["post-58381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-renewable-energy","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58381","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=58381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58382,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58381\/revisions\/58382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}