Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Turns out those old-fashioned ways of farming were actually pretty smart [View all]kristopher
(29,798 posts)I think the difference between us could largely be that I recently spent years in an academic setting under the tutelage of a world class expert specifically studying the nature of a transition away from carbon. Consequently my view is highly structured and when a new piece of information comes in, I might have a deeper appreciation of its degree of relevance to the problem than is typical for most participants here.
I can understand pessimism and worry - in fact I share all the worry and some of the pessimism. However I see a great deal of room for optimism also. This is a massive piece of infrastructure we are tackling, and changing the direction of the inertia is consequently a massive undertaking. My pessimism crawls our from under the bed and rears its head anytime I read of attempts at addressing the problem through political cooperation. The opposition began organizing after the '92 Earth Summit and by the time Kyoto was ratified at the UN that opposition had put in place the machinery to largely thwart further coordinated political action.
But the war isn't only being fought on the political front; there is also an economic battle underway and there we are winning hands down. We haven't achieved victory yet, but the entrenched global energy system is now starting to crumble. They may be able to engage in a stalling action, but the outcome is inevitable given the dynamics on the table.
The change may therefore still be far slower than those who see the need for it yesterday are comfortable with. But what I see of our position is self-reinforcing cycle where every retrenchment of the fossil industry leads to an expansion of market position for renewables and distributed energy systems. At some point a critical mass of new economic winners will be achieved and the political wall that the fossil/nuclear industry giants have erected will crumble. After that, all bets are off as to the pace of change possible for the transition.
We are seeing a sample of that right now with the investment by China in solar. That single economic shift moved us 20 years ahead on global solar deployment.
To paraphrase a quip from the religious community*, the greatest trick the entrenched energy powers ever played was convincing the public that a renewable system can't replace them.
*The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he doesn't exist.
I'm a pastafarian, btw.