What alternatives are there REALLY for fossil fuel use? - Dialogue with Mark Taylor

Hint: it's not solar

John: “What alternative to carbon-based fuels do you suggest, if not solar? Since the WPP is engaging in the process of policy development, we need one for transitioning away from carbon-based fuels. Any ideas?”

Mark:”First, to set the stage...”

“Chicago...

Atlanta...

Denver...

Just contemplate the energy needed to power these scenes on a single night ... and these are just three of the 'smaller' cities. How many solar panels would it take?

Here's Mumbai...

Hey, maybe we better go nuclear ... and really accelerate the insanity.

Nobody was a bigger fan of solar and wind energy than me, when I first learned about them. It made so much sense -- hell, the planet is bathed in solar energy every day and wind blows and tides come and go. What's not to like?

Well the gap between promise and reality, panels and watts, rooftop collectors and industrial waste, the disaster of precious mineral extraction, battery and panel recycling limitations and the human rights abuses the technology depends upon turns out to be huge.

The silence by the starry-eyed Green Deal left on the devastating human rights issue of "clean" energy is a sickening example of western liberal privilege. You can find lots of information on the issue, here's a recent piece from Democracy Now!: "Cobalt Red": Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children ... 

The fact is, our urbanized high density industrial civilization rose and rides on easy availability of plentiful cheap, high density, high polluting energy. Without it we are stuck in the mud. The availability of the traditional energy sources are dwindling and all the pollution from 250 years of cheap high density dirty energy is choking us off.

Regardless of what Elon Musk or the corporate-sponsored Sierra Club might tout, the gap between our energy appetite and resource demand is flat-out insurmountable. 

A few resources from which I view things...

"Bright Green Lies: How The Environmental Movement Lost Its Way & What We Can Do About It" -- This book is by three different writers who focus in on different aspects of the green tech promise, from solar and wind to 'Green City' myths to the lie of green energy storage. It is a well-written, accessible book and well referenced. Chapter 14 "Real Solutions" lays out the gap between eco-tech promises and reality and the path of post-industrialization survival.

It looks like Apple TV has a movie based on the book, which I have not seen. The promo photo is spot on...

"Planet of the Humans" is the Michael Moore film directed by Jeff Gibbs (2019). It gives a much-needed reality check to any illusions of a snappy clean techno-fix to the crisis we confront. While some have criticized that there have been (small) improvements to the technology since the movie came out, the reality of the gap between the promised "clean green energy" utopia and the harsh reality of physics, resources and the environmental disaster of making things like solar panels at a scale that would supposedly make a difference is as bad as coal and oil. Note what they find when they visit the huge solar mirror project. There was an early prototype of that tech at the Sandia National Labs, just south of  Albuquerque when I lived there. Also note the lie of Bill McKibbin's much touted -- corporate-backed -- "green" energy alternative ... a program backed by the Sierra Club. 

Link to free video: 

I have occasionally referenced a website that looks at both the reality of what we face and what to do/how to cope with the reality of the world we are rapidly sliding into: postdoom.com

Michael Dowd and his wife, Connie, started the site, which focuses on getting past the doom and gloom and crafting lives and lifestyle within the post industrial world we are entering. Michael is a Universal Church minister who jokingly refers to himself as an eco theologian and is very much a supporter and activist of the green revolution. Connie has a program focused on helping to move tree species northward as climate zones rapidly change and degrade for existing tree species.

Michael has a powerful video library of almost 100 interviews with environmental writers, activists and researchers looking at the problem and suggesting pathways. Michael coined the term 'hopeium' to describe the green energy fantasy. I've probably watched about a third of the videos. There's a great interview with Paul Ehrlich in the collection: https://postdoom.com/conversations/

So what to do? It's as simple as it is obvious...

One: Preservation and restoration of ecosystems is the only real solution to the problem. You know, simple things like: preservation and restoration of soil, forests, grasslands and marshlands, peat bogs, streams and lakes, plant and animal species, stop soil-destroying chemical-intensive monocultural farming. And, of course, overpopulation needs to be addressed, but perhaps the rising addiction rate of Monsanto-neutered young men to online porn and anticipated AI sex partners on order from Amazon will take care of that ... at last in the industrial west.

Two: The immediate shutdown of fossil fuel use and emissions. 

Of course that won't happen and nothing of Part One will happen at anywhere near the scale required, because the current dominant economic model -- thus the dominant political model -- depends upon absolute, complete-down-to-the-last-scraped-bone consumption of virtually everything.

BURP!!!

Free images for progressive groups - DeMOCKracy.ink

Saw a headline the other day saying most of the supposed "offset" programs by the oil and gas industries and most other corporations do absolutely nothing to help the environment. Another obvious bright green lie exposed.

What should we do? In a word, readjust ... radically.

Get ready to respond to the inevitable grinding, hic-cupping, sputtering, gaseous end of industrial civilization. It will play out over a couple decades -- within the lifetimes of our kids and grandkids. The spreading world war may well accelerate the timeframe dramatically.

The "Real Solutions" chapter of "Bright Green Lies" provides a rich pile of steps that could be taken whether on the farm or the backyard to reverse the death arc we are riding. I reread it before writing this tome. They note that ending industrialized monoculture farming dependent upon seasonal doses of intense poisoning could rebuild the soil, which alone could sequester much of the CO2 in the atmosphere -- loss of soil has generated as much CO2 as coal, oil and gas. 

They note that many people say they agree with their proposals but then say it can't happen because it would "destroy the economy". They always congratulate those folks on recognizing that our economic model destroys the environment. You can have one or the other, but you can't have both.

Individually and in the small collective groups that will remain can survive if they learn the lessons of individual, familial, collective, relational and eco reciprocity Robin Wall Kimmerer describe in "Braiding Sweetgrass" -- the most important book I have read in the past couple decades.

Ten...Nine...Eight...Seven...Six...

Hey, even in the middle of a shitstorm you gotta keep your sense of humor.”