{"id":65843,"date":"2023-10-04T05:48:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T10:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65843"},"modified":"2023-10-04T05:48:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T10:48:09","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-v-electrify-everything-the-wrong-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65843","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V–Electrify Everything: The Wrong \u2018Solution\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V<\/h3>\n
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Oct 2, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pompeii, Italy (1993) Photo by author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Electrify Everything: The Wrong \u2018Solution\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\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

_____<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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><\/p>\n

To 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, renewable 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.<\/p>\n

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

Then there is the issue of absolute government tyranny\/authoritarianism being proposed here. The political class, being what it is \u2014 a caste in society whose primary motive is to control, protect, and expand the wealth-generating systems that provide their revenue stream \u2014 will jump at this kind of power grab and most certainly market it as the best thing since sliced bread for society; and look, it\u2019s been proposed by \u2018expert\u2019 academics, so, \u2018Science!\u2019 And, of course, nothing could ever go wrong with a government that has such power.<\/p>\n

We cannot, nor should we, be trying to \u2018electrify everything\u2019 and forcing such a misguided solution down the throats of people. What we need to be doing is having a very frank discussion about what is ‘needed’ in our world (not ‘wanted’) and how we can support a calm and equitable ‘degrowth’ of it.<\/p>\n

Attempting to maintain our current iteration of society is not only a fool\u2019s errand but one that will simply speed the exploitation of finite resources and bring about all the negative consequences of such a flurry of activity.<\/p>\n

An energy descent is in our future whether we wish it or not. We can go through the \u2018collapse\u2019 that always accompanies a species that has overshot its environmental carrying capacity in a relatively dignified way by addressing the dilemma head on, or we can spend our last breath attempting to sustain the unsustainable and go out with a bang.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to believe we could do the former but my bet is on the latter for humans very much engage in behaviour that reduces their cognitive dissonance to avoid reality and, unfortunately, the foxes are firmly in charge of the henhouse and seldom, if ever, allow a good crisis to go to waste\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh V Oct 2, 2020 Pompeii, Italy (1993) Photo by author Electrify Everything: The Wrong \u2018Solution\u2019 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 […]<\/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":[2,3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[2675,203,17972,379,5833,30370,33947],"class_list":["post-65843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-cognitive-dissonance","tag-degrowth","tag-electrification","tag-government","tag-steve-bull","tag-todays-contemplation","tag-todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65843","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=65843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65844,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65843\/revisions\/65844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}