{"id":64211,"date":"2022-11-23T10:32:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T15:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64211"},"modified":"2022-11-23T10:32:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T15:32:42","slug":"the-renewable-energy-transition-is-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64211","title":{"rendered":"The Renewable Energy Transition Is Failing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Renewable Energy Transition Is Failing<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Not sustainable<\/strong>: Vast quantities of minerals and metals are required for the renewable energy transition. (Photo credit: AleSpa\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Renewable energy isn\u2019t replacing fossil fuel energy\u2014it\u2019s adding to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite all the renewable energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That\u2019s largely due to economic growth: While renewable energy supplies have expanded in recent years, world energy usage has\u00a0ballooned even more<\/a>\u2014with the difference being supplied by fossil fuels. The more the world economy grows, the harder it is for additions of renewable energy to turn the tide by actually replacing energy from fossil fuels, rather than just adding to it.<\/p>\n

The notion of voluntarily reining in economic growth in order to minimize climate change and make it easier to replace fossil fuels is political anathema not just in the rich countries, whose people have gotten used to consuming at extraordinarily high rates, but even more so in poorer countries, which have been promised the opportunity to \u201cdevelop.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, it is the rich countries that have been responsible for the great majority of past emissions (which are driving climate change presently); indeed, these countries got rich largely by the industrial activity of which carbon emissions were a byproduct. Now it is the world\u2019s poorest nations that are experiencing the\u00a0brunt of the impacts<\/a>\u00a0of climate change caused by the world\u2019s richest. It\u2019s neither sustainable nor just to perpetuate the exploitation of land, resources, and labor in the less industrialized countries, as well as historically exploited communities in the rich countries, to maintain both the lifestyles and expectations of further growth of the wealthy minority.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of people in less-industrialized nations, it\u2019s natural to want to consume more, which only seems fair…<\/p>\n

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

The Renewable Energy Transition Is Failing Not sustainable: Vast quantities of minerals and metals are required for the renewable energy transition. (Photo credit: AleSpa\/Wikimedia Commons) Renewable energy isn\u2019t replacing fossil fuel energy\u2014it\u2019s adding to it. Despite all the renewable energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That\u2019s largely due to economic […]<\/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":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[5930,328,26407,674,1081],"class_list":["post-64211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-energy-transition","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-independent-media-institute","tag-renewable-energy","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64211","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=64211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64212,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64211\/revisions\/64212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}