Sorry if I end up writing a bible, but I really need to vent. I'm relatively young (23) and here in my country the number of college students has been falling for a few years now, the reason for this being easy to understand: Since childhood, our parents teach us that you should go to college only if it is to study something profitable (which in their eyes is law, medical school and some specific sectors of engineering). What this has caused is a gigantic number of young adults that hate the degree they got, hate their careers, and most times realize that the difference in pay isn't big enough to justify their sacrifices (that's if they manage to find a job). Now their younger siblings have noticed that and are opting out of college.
I, as many my age, would love to work with conservation, the energy transition or anything else related with the environment, but jobs in this sector are sparse and pay extremely little. This causes the young adults that are stuck with a degree they dislike and in a career they hate, such as me, to feel completely lost, the general thinking being: Is it really worth it to pursue a second degree, as expensive as the first, only to end up in a job that barely pays enough to survive?
If the government truly incentivized a Green New Deal, not merely with words but with actions, such as granting free university to those who want to make the transition (free university in general), opening up many job posts in the sector, and stop treating judges and doctors as being so more importantly than the rest of us, there would be no lack of workers to fill in the openings. Instead, they keep access to university prohibited, pay judges up to 15x times more than most other professions, and doctor up to 8x times more.
All this leads to an overall sense of defeat that many of my peers already have, aswell as an increasing number of people with depression and that commit suicide.
One of the things that worries me the most is that even experts don't agree on the topic of renewables. The most worrisome is that the professor who claimed we could run right now on 100% of renewables, Mark Jacobson filed a 10 million defamation lawsuit(which he later withdrew) against a paper that critiqued his claims on the PNAS. Even academia cannot be trusted, I think that they've become the most desperate and they are dellusioning themselves with the gravity of the situation. Climate scientists are also part of that group.
I'm afraid it's too late for a coordinated plan and it will cause more harm than good, and when they take renewables seriously, we will be fucked. Ecological economists made the calculus and moving to a renewable infrastructure would require 5 years of carbon emissions.
Also, coincidentally all of those minerals are located in critical ecosystems for the planet, which of course are mostly located in indigenous lands, so pretty much another genocide is coming if we keep consuming energy. And guess who process all of those minerals needed for renewables? China.
I would like to be optimistic, but given the time we have, and that the challenge is to replace a 100 year old system that was built in a period of economic prosperity and resource abundance, that replacement has to come in the next 10 years in a crippling economy in an ever deteriorating climate and environment, with geopolitical tensions so high and constant disruptions to the supply chains and loss of industrial capabilities that we already seeing now, and only will be exacerbated by El Niño.
And given the 1.5°C target is dead, and 2°C means a likely 3°C(and if we consider Hansen's paper seriously then it's much worse).
It's going to end in a massive failure and by the time they try to do that on the mass scale that is needed, supposing all world governments agree, it's going to do more harm than good, of course suppossing we still have the enough fossil fuels and the industrial capabilities to make the transition, and if we somehow still have them Global North will just plunder Global South and we will have Colonialism reloaded 3.0.
The most laughable part, it is easier to transition to a less energy intensive renewable grid. It was the PhD thesis from the guy that calculated how many emissions a transition to renewables would need.
But as John Kenneth Galbraith said: People of Privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. The same applies to oppulent countries or civilizations
Wow, GREAT comment. Clearly you are informed and have been following the issue. Which makes it easy for us to cut to the chase when discussing things.
RE: Academia or "Climate Science" and it's "MASSIVE FAIL" in modeling the Climate.
I have written about this in detail on Medium.
Living in Bomb Time — 25 : Let’s talk about Climate Science. Specifically, let’s talk about why “Climate Science” was 30–40 years off on how fast the planet would warm up.
In a nutshell, what I am arguing is that we in a moment of "paradigm shift" in Climate Science.
If you are familiar with "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn the implications of that statement are fully clear. The Moderate faction of Climate Science came to power in the 80's and their "paradigm" of "gradual warming over centuries" has dominated the discussion since then.
Observable reality says they are WRONG. We will not be able to deny that much longer.
As for the rest of your comment.
I tend to agree with you on every point. BUT....
Have you read the book, "The Wizard and the Prophet"? If not, you should. It's becoming significant in the discussion because it speaks to the moment we are in. More and more people are referring to it on both sides of the debate.
Because we have been here before. In the 70's, overpopulation was going to bring COLLAPSE by 2020. Remember the movie "Soylant Green"? That was the fear.
There were dire predictions in the Club of Rome Report, "The Limits of Growth". People were looking at the rapidly growing population and were saying "Malthus was right". There were predictions of doom.
Then it didn't happen. Borlaug's "Green Revolution" fed the world and the global population has almost quadrupled since then.
The "Optimists" think that's going to happen again. They argue that "human ingenuity is an INFINITE resource" and that, "just like last time", we will solve this. Probably with cheap FUSION. Which will give us INFINITE energy and allow us to create a "techno utopia".
If you want to convince people they are wrong, you need a convincing argument. Because people will want to believe they are right.
Well, I'm informed thanks to you and OK Doomer. Limits to Growth predicted catastrophe by 2030, and we are well on track to it, there have been several revisions to the report which have validated his accuracy. It was supposed to be a warning but now it's becoming more kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy
The Wizard and the Prophet is a great book, it's pretty much the Duel of Fates of our civilization, and I would rather prefer the notion of having Limits
There are more articles on it, but essentially, even if they did a breakthrough, it's pretty hyped, it's still another 20 years away. Still, I hope we never discover fusion. We are not mature enough to handle that power.
And the technoutopia thing, they have said it since the past century, I mean Keynes believed that by now we should have been working 3 hours a day and devoting our lives to leisure thanks to technology. That has not happened. Have you read Lean Logic and Surviving the Future by David Fleming?
And a techno-utopia, well I have my doubts, all technology has unintended consequences that we cannot foresee, even in centuries, such as fossil fuels.
More than less, it generates more problems than it fixes, and to solve the problems that technology creates you need an ever increasing level of complexity and counter mechanisms, so it's a rat race. As Rousseau said: “Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” In the end it becomes a control overload
But also, I must recognize I'm biased towards the limits side, I support degrowth, and that's what I would like the future to be, having limits and simpler, slower, but more rewarding lives, but I can be wrong.
Sorry if I end up writing a bible, but I really need to vent. I'm relatively young (23) and here in my country the number of college students has been falling for a few years now, the reason for this being easy to understand: Since childhood, our parents teach us that you should go to college only if it is to study something profitable (which in their eyes is law, medical school and some specific sectors of engineering). What this has caused is a gigantic number of young adults that hate the degree they got, hate their careers, and most times realize that the difference in pay isn't big enough to justify their sacrifices (that's if they manage to find a job). Now their younger siblings have noticed that and are opting out of college.
I, as many my age, would love to work with conservation, the energy transition or anything else related with the environment, but jobs in this sector are sparse and pay extremely little. This causes the young adults that are stuck with a degree they dislike and in a career they hate, such as me, to feel completely lost, the general thinking being: Is it really worth it to pursue a second degree, as expensive as the first, only to end up in a job that barely pays enough to survive?
If the government truly incentivized a Green New Deal, not merely with words but with actions, such as granting free university to those who want to make the transition (free university in general), opening up many job posts in the sector, and stop treating judges and doctors as being so more importantly than the rest of us, there would be no lack of workers to fill in the openings. Instead, they keep access to university prohibited, pay judges up to 15x times more than most other professions, and doctor up to 8x times more.
All this leads to an overall sense of defeat that many of my peers already have, aswell as an increasing number of people with depression and that commit suicide.
You explained it perfectly. A lot of people has been sounding the alarm on the renewables and energy use with the same concerns that you have stated.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-26375-5
https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/life-after-fossil-fuels-a-reality-check-on-alternative-energy/
https://www.brightgreenlies.com/book
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/19-simon-michaux
http://www.greenillusions.org/
One of the things that worries me the most is that even experts don't agree on the topic of renewables. The most worrisome is that the professor who claimed we could run right now on 100% of renewables, Mark Jacobson filed a 10 million defamation lawsuit(which he later withdrew) against a paper that critiqued his claims on the PNAS. Even academia cannot be trusted, I think that they've become the most desperate and they are dellusioning themselves with the gravity of the situation. Climate scientists are also part of that group.
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-jacobson-lawsuit-20180223-story.html
Even the concept of net zero is complete bullshit
https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368
I'm afraid it's too late for a coordinated plan and it will cause more harm than good, and when they take renewables seriously, we will be fucked. Ecological economists made the calculus and moving to a renewable infrastructure would require 5 years of carbon emissions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36376312/
Also, coincidentally all of those minerals are located in critical ecosystems for the planet, which of course are mostly located in indigenous lands, so pretty much another genocide is coming if we keep consuming energy. And guess who process all of those minerals needed for renewables? China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za6dE5JrNB0
I would like to be optimistic, but given the time we have, and that the challenge is to replace a 100 year old system that was built in a period of economic prosperity and resource abundance, that replacement has to come in the next 10 years in a crippling economy in an ever deteriorating climate and environment, with geopolitical tensions so high and constant disruptions to the supply chains and loss of industrial capabilities that we already seeing now, and only will be exacerbated by El Niño.
And given the 1.5°C target is dead, and 2°C means a likely 3°C(and if we consider Hansen's paper seriously then it's much worse).
It's going to end in a massive failure and by the time they try to do that on the mass scale that is needed, supposing all world governments agree, it's going to do more harm than good, of course suppossing we still have the enough fossil fuels and the industrial capabilities to make the transition, and if we somehow still have them Global North will just plunder Global South and we will have Colonialism reloaded 3.0.
The most laughable part, it is easier to transition to a less energy intensive renewable grid. It was the PhD thesis from the guy that calculated how many emissions a transition to renewables would need.
https://twitter.com/ICTA_UAB/status/1625865547605852160
But as John Kenneth Galbraith said: People of Privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. The same applies to oppulent countries or civilizations
Wow, GREAT comment. Clearly you are informed and have been following the issue. Which makes it easy for us to cut to the chase when discussing things.
RE: Academia or "Climate Science" and it's "MASSIVE FAIL" in modeling the Climate.
I have written about this in detail on Medium.
Living in Bomb Time — 25 : Let’s talk about Climate Science. Specifically, let’s talk about why “Climate Science” was 30–40 years off on how fast the planet would warm up.
https://smokingtyger.medium.com/living-in-bomb-time-25-c73bb52cf499
In a nutshell, what I am arguing is that we in a moment of "paradigm shift" in Climate Science.
If you are familiar with "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn the implications of that statement are fully clear. The Moderate faction of Climate Science came to power in the 80's and their "paradigm" of "gradual warming over centuries" has dominated the discussion since then.
Observable reality says they are WRONG. We will not be able to deny that much longer.
As for the rest of your comment.
I tend to agree with you on every point. BUT....
Have you read the book, "The Wizard and the Prophet"? If not, you should. It's becoming significant in the discussion because it speaks to the moment we are in. More and more people are referring to it on both sides of the debate.
Because we have been here before. In the 70's, overpopulation was going to bring COLLAPSE by 2020. Remember the movie "Soylant Green"? That was the fear.
There were dire predictions in the Club of Rome Report, "The Limits of Growth". People were looking at the rapidly growing population and were saying "Malthus was right". There were predictions of doom.
Then it didn't happen. Borlaug's "Green Revolution" fed the world and the global population has almost quadrupled since then.
The "Optimists" think that's going to happen again. They argue that "human ingenuity is an INFINITE resource" and that, "just like last time", we will solve this. Probably with cheap FUSION. Which will give us INFINITE energy and allow us to create a "techno utopia".
If you want to convince people they are wrong, you need a convincing argument. Because people will want to believe they are right.
Well, I'm informed thanks to you and OK Doomer. Limits to Growth predicted catastrophe by 2030, and we are well on track to it, there have been several revisions to the report which have validated his accuracy. It was supposed to be a warning but now it's becoming more kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy
https://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4419-9416-5
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332655753_Limits_Revisited-A_review_of_the_limits_to_growth_debate_A_report_to_the_All-Party_Parliamentary_Group_on_LImits_to_Growth
https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yale-publication-1.pdf
The Wizard and the Prophet is a great book, it's pretty much the Duel of Fates of our civilization, and I would rather prefer the notion of having Limits
With respect to fusion:
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1605967891928596481?lang=es
There are more articles on it, but essentially, even if they did a breakthrough, it's pretty hyped, it's still another 20 years away. Still, I hope we never discover fusion. We are not mature enough to handle that power.
And the technoutopia thing, they have said it since the past century, I mean Keynes believed that by now we should have been working 3 hours a day and devoting our lives to leisure thanks to technology. That has not happened. Have you read Lean Logic and Surviving the Future by David Fleming?
https://leanlogic.online/
Pretty much this meme summarizes the situation
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2500506-ai-art
And a techno-utopia, well I have my doubts, all technology has unintended consequences that we cannot foresee, even in centuries, such as fossil fuels.
https://newsociety.com/books/t/techno-fix
More than less, it generates more problems than it fixes, and to solve the problems that technology creates you need an ever increasing level of complexity and counter mechanisms, so it's a rat race. As Rousseau said: “Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.” In the end it becomes a control overload
https://leanlogic.online/glossary/control-overload/
As Paul Ehrlich said: Fusion energy would be like to giving a machine gun to an idiot child
https://donellameadows.org/archives/when-were-ready-for-fusion-energy-its-ready-for-us/
But also, I must recognize I'm biased towards the limits side, I support degrowth, and that's what I would like the future to be, having limits and simpler, slower, but more rewarding lives, but I can be wrong.
Thanks for writing this.