This ClimateGenn episode with Professor Mark Maslin from University College London in the UK, was recorded on the 2nd June following the World Meteorological...
The techno-optimists would say that we can replace all of those “oil slaves” with “green energy slaves” (probably a combination of renewables and nuclear, fusion or otherwise). The optimists would say that the full transition to zero emissions energy is inevitable. I’m skeptical, myself. I think those optimists are oversimplifying at best and outright delusional at worst.
Renewable technology has come down in price significantly and more and more renewable electricity is being generated every year, but we’re still quite a ways away from green energy beginning to replace fossil fuels. Currently, zero emissions energy is just being added on top of fossil fuels, and it’s probably going to stay that way as long as we are operating within an infinite growth paradigm. Infinite growth requires infinite energy, so no energy source can go unutilized.
But I agree that we will likely hit some hard, physical limit to growth at some point, and when that happens the global economic system will experience an unprecedented crash. I don’t know when that will be, but when it does it will be a major inflection point for our species.
Agree. The other part I didn’t mention in the previous comment, is that on average, “people” aren’t really much better off because we tend to ignore the extraction of wealth from the Global South: and those people certainly aren’t better off on average, the bottom 50% of which have the same carbon budget as the top 1% of global population.
The techno-optimists would say that we can replace all of those “oil slaves” with “green energy slaves” (probably a combination of renewables and nuclear, fusion or otherwise). The optimists would say that the full transition to zero emissions energy is inevitable. I’m skeptical, myself. I think those optimists are oversimplifying at best and outright delusional at worst.
Renewable technology has come down in price significantly and more and more renewable electricity is being generated every year, but we’re still quite a ways away from green energy beginning to replace fossil fuels. Currently, zero emissions energy is just being added on top of fossil fuels, and it’s probably going to stay that way as long as we are operating within an infinite growth paradigm. Infinite growth requires infinite energy, so no energy source can go unutilized.
But I agree that we will likely hit some hard, physical limit to growth at some point, and when that happens the global economic system will experience an unprecedented crash. I don’t know when that will be, but when it does it will be a major inflection point for our species.
Agree. The other part I didn’t mention in the previous comment, is that on average, “people” aren’t really much better off because we tend to ignore the extraction of wealth from the Global South: and those people certainly aren’t better off on average, the bottom 50% of which have the same carbon budget as the top 1% of global population.