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Chris Smaje's avatar

Thanks for those comments Elisabeth & Bob. I took the liberty of pasting them into the comments section of my home website, and replying to them briefly there: https://chrissmaje.com/2024/08/off-grid-further-thoughts-on-the-failing-renewables-transition/#comment-263971

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Elisabeth Robson's avatar

One thing that people who compare fossil fuels mined to other metals and minerals mined for so-called renewables (actually rebuildables) do to obfuscate the devastating impacts of moving from a fossil fuel-intensive energy system to a materials-intensive energy system is to compare the end product of metals and minerals and not the total amount of ore moved or the areas devastated by tailings.

While steel can indeed be recycled, for a full build out of rebuildables to fully replace fossil fuel used for electricity generation, it would require massive amounts of new steel (since most steel remains in use for a long time), which requires a Carbon atom from somewhere, usually coal. Plus of course tremendous heat.

Same with silicon, and solar panels are MUCH harder to recycle. Silica to silicon requires not just high heat, multiple times at various steps in the process, but also a Carbon atom, usually supplied by wood and coal.

And of course the machines that mine the materials that go into wind turbines, solar panels, grid lines, substations; the machines to build these things, install them, and maintain them; the factories; the tailings dams; the biodiversity loss and carbon loss from overburden destruction, etc. rarely get acknowledged much less factored into the impacts of these industrial technologies.

Batteries are a toxic destructive nightmare from start to finish.

I like your "banoffees" but I think "bright greens" is the best descriptor I've seen so far (from the book Bright Green Lies). No matter what we call them, the bright green utopia promised by these people is just a fantasy.

And as Bill Rees (Ecological Overshoot guy) says: "The only thing worse than the failure of the energy transition would be the success of the energy transition ... Business as usual is destroying the planet. Business as usual by alternative means is still destroying the planet."

Low energy and local are the future. We are unlikely to get there easily as you point out here; the geopolitical impediments are just too great, as is human addiction to high-energy lifestyles. I'd prefer the entirety of humanity to recognize the value in nature and the right of non-humans and ecosystems to exist for their own sake and not just FOR US, and follow a plan for 2. I am 99.99999% sure that won't happen, and thus we'll get 1. Probably sooner than later.

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