{"id":58724,"date":"2021-07-24T12:17:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T17:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58724"},"modified":"2021-07-24T12:17:42","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T17:17:42","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-xxvii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58724","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXVII"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXVII<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"\"Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Discussing \u2018renewable\u2019 energy and its shortcomings with those who hold on to the belief that they off<\/span>er us a \u2018solution\u2019 to the predicaments humanity faces is always \u2018challenging\u2019. Today\u2019s contemplation is based on a recent dialogue I have had with a few people who seek to hold on to the belief that we can completely abandon fossil fuels and simply shift support for society\u2019s complexities over to \u2018renewables, and my response to someone who complimented my viewpoint (an unusual occurrence on the pages of the online media site (The Tyee<\/a>) I frequent, whose writers\/editors\/commenters mostly support \u2018renewables\u2019 and the promises the proponents of them make). The story is not so straightforward and most don\u2019t want to hear that. You can check out the conversation\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Thank you. The root cause of our problem appears to be\u00a0ecological overshoot<\/a>\u00a0brought on, primarily, by our exploitation of a one-time energy cache (fossil fuels) that has helped to \u2018power\u2019 amazing technological tools and processes that, in turn, have allowed us to exploit the planet and its resources substantially. This has led to a number of\u00a0positive feedback loops<\/a>, particularly exponential increases in population, waste (including\u00a0greenhouse gases<\/a>), and the speed at which we use these finite resources.<\/p>\n

The crowd that insists \u2018renewable\u2019 energy (and it\u2019s not truly \u2018renewable\u2019 given its dependency on finite resources, and certainly not \u2018green\/clean\u2019 based on the processes necessary to produce them) can \u2018sustain\u2019 our energy-intensive complexities tend to be willfully ignorant of their negative consequences and deficiencies. In fact, my guess is that many have little experience with or knowledge of them (see Alice Friedemann\u2019s work at\u00a0Energy Skeptic<\/a>\u00a0and especially her most recent Springer Energy Series publication,\u00a0Life After Fossil Fuels<\/a>) and are grasping for solutions to our predicaments.<\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXVII Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author Discussing \u2018renewable\u2019 energy and its shortcomings with those who hold on to the belief that they offer us a \u2018solution\u2019 to the predicaments humanity faces is always \u2018challenging\u2019. Today\u2019s contemplation is based on a recent dialogue I have had with a few people who […]<\/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":[3,1],"tags":[2675,150,1101,3197,674,5833,30370],"class_list":["post-58724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-uncategorized","tag-cognitive-dissonance","tag-collapse","tag-olduvai","tag-overshoot","tag-renewable-energy","tag-steve-bull","tag-todays-contemplation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58724","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=58724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58725,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58724\/revisions\/58725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}