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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
36. The dieting analogy is a good one
Fri Dec 13, 2013, 05:45 PM
Dec 2013

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.

took them long enough niyad Dec 2013 #1
No doubt they were right for their time, and worth exploring again, but that's only half the story. Geoff R. Casavant Dec 2013 #2
Yup! ffr Dec 2013 #5
The question no one wants to answer BrotherIvan Dec 2013 #10
I'll answer it LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #11
Nations are not isolated islands in a global economy NickB79 Dec 2013 #20
Exactly LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #22
The only thing farming innovations and crop improvements have ever done truebluegreen Dec 2013 #13
K&R DeSwiss Dec 2013 #3
The main problem however, is that it's hard work and... ffr Dec 2013 #4
I read a study which disagreed - that Asian traditional methods had the highest yield bhikkhu Dec 2013 #6
If that were true LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #12
Real farmers don't, but mechanized corporations do--Better Living Through Chemistry! truebluegreen Dec 2013 #14
Source? LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #24
You can't plant a 1000 acres of wheat or corn pscot Dec 2013 #15
It is true, but it is labor intensive bhikkhu Dec 2013 #16
I've seen no evidence of reduced yields LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #23
That's not the claim at all bhikkhu Dec 2013 #25
Or - think of it in a different way and it makes more sense bhikkhu Dec 2013 #26
Sorry LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #27
I suspect that you don't actually care at all, but here's a few anyway: bhikkhu Dec 2013 #29
Thank you LouisvilleDem Dec 2013 #34
You seriously can't follow a well reasoned argument without an outside reference? kristopher Dec 2013 #30
Sustainable agriculture is the future . . . Geoff R. Casavant Dec 2013 #7
Unless sustainable agriculture doesn't exist The2ndWheel Dec 2013 #9
If the only factor was pesticide use and species extinction, then that might be a good argument jeff47 Dec 2013 #8
Again, that's just not true bhikkhu Dec 2013 #17
You are talking about rice. One crop. jeff47 Dec 2013 #18
Bio-intensive, labor intensive agriculture produces 2-6 times the yield of industrial ag bhikkhu Dec 2013 #19
No, the papers do not say that. jeff47 Dec 2013 #21
You need to spend a summer on a working farm pscot Dec 2013 #28
Have you ever worked in the terraced paddies of China? kristopher Dec 2013 #31
I'm sure I'd remember if I had pscot Dec 2013 #32
How do you think the responses to bhikkhu's posts here kristopher Dec 2013 #33
There was some pushback pscot Dec 2013 #35
The dieting analogy is a good one kristopher Dec 2013 #36
Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Environment & Energy»Turns out those old-fashi...»Reply #36