{"id":62341,"date":"2022-04-01T10:10:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T15:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62341"},"modified":"2022-04-01T10:10:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T15:10:43","slug":"false-dichotomiesin-an-age-of-a-planetary-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62341","title":{"rendered":"False Dichotomies\u2026in an age of a planetary crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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False Dichotomies\u2026in an age of a planetary crisis<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Ouch. Whoever thought that this was a good idea, haven\u2019t had a second thought. Image:\u00a0Rodolfo Clix<\/a>\u00a0via\u00a0Pexels<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Environmentalism, and thinking about our future in general has become a victim if false dichotomies (1). These deeply dividing questions are mere distractions however, steering attention away from the underlying predicaments our societies are unwilling to address.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take the following example\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Fossil fuels \u2014 or \u2014 Renewables?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A true classic. Notice how this one tries to reduce the complex question of climate change, and in a broader sense humanity\u2019s impact on a massively complex ecosystem called Earth to the simple question of how shall we produce electricity. (Feel free to replace \u2018renewables\u2019 with green hydrogen, fusion, tidal wave energy, nuclear, etc. at this point.) If there were a contest to win the title of being the textbook example of a\u00a0red herring fallacy<\/em>\u00a0(2) \u2014 this one would surely be among the finalists.<\/p>\n

In the real world electricity generation is a mere quarter of our total energy use, while the rest (high heat, transportation, chemical processes and many more) are almost exclusively coming from, or powered by fossil fuels. Not least the entire supply chain of renewables: from mining, through smelting, manufacturing, installation and maintenance. Paradoxical it may sound, but fossil fuels are essential to renewables.<\/p>\n

While in theory some of the processes can be electrified,\u00a0most of them cannot, or the proposed solutions simply do not scale<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 not even on paper. We are planning to shift completely away from fossil fuels (or turn their emissions \u2018net zero\u2019) in a couple of decades, while the globe\u2019s infrastructure took one and a half century, and the\u00a0best of our resources<\/em> to build…<\/p>\n

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

False Dichotomies\u2026in an age of a planetary crisis Ouch. Whoever thought that this was a good idea, haven\u2019t had a second thought. Image:\u00a0Rodolfo Clix\u00a0via\u00a0Pexels Environmentalism, and thinking about our future in general has become a victim if false dichotomies (1). These deeply dividing questions are mere distractions however, steering attention away from the underlying predicaments […]<\/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":[10894,328,32807,15442],"class_list":["post-62341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-false-dichotomy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-honest-sorcerer","tag-renewables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62341","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=62341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62342,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62341\/revisions\/62342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}