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> What’s the downside of getting off fossil fuels anyway, Poverty?

ckw 4y ago
The sooner we transition, the sooner we’ll be able to become vastly wealthier: the GDP growth rate is highly correlated with the growth rate of energy consumption. The growth rate of energy consumption has been declining since around 1970, hence the decline in the GDP growth rate. This is because it’s ever more difficult to extract ever more energy from fossil sources. Once we transition to renewables, the GDP growth rate will rise as our ability to increase energy consumption rises, until some point of saturation far in the future. One way to think about this is to consider that a hypothetical objector might ask the same question of an advocate of a planned, civilization wide transition from wood burning to coal burning. And the coal advocate would be right to make the same argument as above.
- deleted 4y ago
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- sbdncuvh 4y ago
  Getting off fossil fuels is a necessity. Don't kid yourself what the result of that really means. "Transitioning to renewables" what does that even mean? Like it's so simple? Solar panels aren't going to ship you cheap iPhones and mountains of plastic trash from china for pennies, nor will it fertalize your crops or maintain USD as the reserve currency. Look I don't mean to be rude. I'm not a climate denier. I'm not even arguing against transitioning off fossil fuels. I'm just not naive about it. Poverty, starvation and mass death is the only way we transition off fossil fuels. That's if we're lucky.
  - lukevp 4y ago
    Is your argument that renewables aren’t usable for liquid fuels in ocean shipping, therefore we can’t use purely renewable energy sources? Because solar panels (or wind turbines, or geothermal, or hydro, etc.) can generate electricity to use for electrolysis to generate hydrogen (or better, ammonia). The options aren’t only oil or batteries… there are many use cases where fuel energy density doesn’t matter that much, but where it does (transport), hydrogen is a viable option that we can do today. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201127-how-hydrogen-fuel-could-decarbonise-shipping https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201127-how-hydrogen-fue...
  - ckw 4y ago
    Yes, it is that simple, and yes, solar panels can be used to ship iPhones from China and fertilize crops and so on. And no, poverty, starvation, and mass death are not required to transition.

ckw 4y ago

The sooner we transition, the sooner we’ll be able to become vastly wealthier: the GDP growth rate is highly correlated with the growth rate of energy consumption. The growth rate of energy consumption has been declining since around 1970, hence the decline in the GDP growth rate. This is because it’s ever more difficult to extract ever more energy from fossil sources. Once we transition to renewables, the GDP growth rate will rise as our ability to increase energy consumption rises, until some point of saturation far in the future. One way to think about this is to consider that a hypothetical objector might ask the same question of an advocate of a planned, civilization wide transition from wood burning to coal burning. And the coal advocate would be right to make the same argument as above.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sbdncuvh 4y ago
Getting off fossil fuels is a necessity. Don't kid yourself what the result of that really means. "Transitioning to renewables" what does that even mean? Like it's so simple? Solar panels aren't going to ship you cheap iPhones and mountains of plastic trash from china for pennies, nor will it fertalize your crops or maintain USD as the reserve currency. Look I don't mean to be rude. I'm not a climate denier. I'm not even arguing against transitioning off fossil fuels. I'm just not naive about it. Poverty, starvation and mass death is the only way we transition off fossil fuels. That's if we're lucky.
- lukevp 4y ago
  Is your argument that renewables aren’t usable for liquid fuels in ocean shipping, therefore we can’t use purely renewable energy sources? Because solar panels (or wind turbines, or geothermal, or hydro, etc.) can generate electricity to use for electrolysis to generate hydrogen (or better, ammonia). The options aren’t only oil or batteries… there are many use cases where fuel energy density doesn’t matter that much, but where it does (transport), hydrogen is a viable option that we can do today. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201127-how-hydrogen-fuel-could-decarbonise-shipping https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201127-how-hydrogen-fue...
- ckw 4y ago
  Yes, it is that simple, and yes, solar panels can be used to ship iPhones from China and fertilize crops and so on. And no, poverty, starvation, and mass death are not required to transition.