Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWhat’s wrong with renewable energy?
I don't agree with all of this article, but I do agree with much of it.
1. Solar panels and wind turbines arent made out of nothing. They are made out of metals, plastics, chemicals. These products have been mined out of the ground, transported, processed, manufactured. Each stage leaves behind a trail of devastation: habitat destruction, water contamination, colonization, toxic waste, slave labour, greenhouse gas emissions, wars, and corporate profits. Renewables can never replace fossil fuel infrastructure, as they are entirely dependent on it for their existence.
2. The majority of electricity that is generated by renewables is used in manufacturing, mining, and other industries that are destroying the planet. Even if the generation of electricity were harmless, the consumption certainly isnt. Every electrical device, in the process of production, leaves behind the same trail of devastation. Living communitiesforests, rivers, oceansbecome dead commodities.
3. The aim of converting from conventional power generation to renewables is to maintain the very system that is killing the living world, killing us all, at a rate of 200 species per day. Taking carbon emissions out of the equation doesnt make it sustainable. This system needs to not be sustained, but stopped.
7. More renewables doesnt mean less conventional power, or less carbon emissions. The amount of energy being generated by renewables has been increasing, but so has the amount of energy generated by fossil fuels.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)sitting in the dark, freezing to death, and starving for lack of agriculture.
One less useless eater.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and the only organization of its kind. As an analysis, it reveals civilization as the institution that is destroying life on Earth. As a strategy, it offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction. As an organization, Deep Green Resistance is implementing that strategy.
The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.
DGR is an aboveground organization that uses direct action in the fight to save our planet. We also argue for the necessity of an underground that can target the strategic infrastructure of industrialization. But these actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. Any strategy aiming for a livable future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures.
I don't support DGR, because I don't think that our global industrial civilization can be slowed, stopped or destroyed by deliberate action. IMO the only forces strong enough to accomplish that are exogenous: climate change, resource shortages, ecological collapse and disease.
djean111
(14,255 posts)While nuclear plants and coal-fired plants are made of gossamer silk, transported by elves and fairies.
I see what the author is saying, but just stopping the use of solar and wind and continuing the use of fossil fuels and nukes is not the answer.
Unless, of course, one profits by that.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)My impression is that he's tired of the relentless cheerleading, and of being asked to buy into a "solution" that is manifestly nothing of the sort.
All energy use by human beings is either directly or indirectly damaging to the biosphere to some degree, no matter what the source.
In point #3 he says, "This system needs to not be sustained, but stopped." The implication is that the system can in fact be stopped. I disagree - the system of modern globalized techno-industrial civilization cannot be stopped, and its growth will be maintained at all costs. That's why we're not a sustainable species, and are destined for the dustbin of evolutionary history sooner rather than later.
djean111
(14,255 posts)Reminds me of a sci-fi book I read a long time ago that posited a future where mankind was forced to live in a way that harmed no other living thing - everyone shuffled around in white, with gas masks, sort of a Jain thing.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Did you choose the parts you agree with, or the parts you don't?
Humans in the first world use electricity. Heck, they even waste a lot of it. And they want 'things', things created by 'industries that are destroying the planet'. They'll continue to do so no matter the source of the energy used to do so.
The parts you're quoting aren't an argument against renewable energy. They're an argument for negative population growth, couched in a way that tries to suggest that switching over to renewables is pointless.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)If the point is to "solve" the ecological crisis of modern civilization, then switching over to renewables is indeed pointless, as the crisis goes far beyond the simple question of energy sources. The usefulness of renewable energy gets conflated with "solving the problem", which it will not do.
Solving the larger problem would require us to reduce both human numbers and activity to pre-agricultural levels. Since such a reduction is neither possible nor desirable, we won't do it. That simple fact makes collapse inevitable - no matter how many whirligigs we build.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Post-agricultural humans won't willingly retreat to pre-agricultural standards of living. They will have to be forced to do so by collapse. The sources of energy don't even matter.
At any rate, I think those in power see it coming already, hence the militarization of police forces across the nation to deal with 'crowd control' when the same sorts of riots that happen overseas hit US shores as resources become ever more expensive. Barring some incredible technological advance, there will be a massive human die-off as a result of the ways in which we've already screwed up the climate.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)"The emissions reductions that renewables intend to achieve could be easily accomplished by improving the efficiency of existing coal plants, at a much lower cost. "
Instead of investing in renewable energy, we just make coal more efficient and keep digging coal out of the earth and creating coal ash and massive carbon emissions.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)Good catch. That is one monumentally stupid conclusion to come to.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)No proof, of course.
After going on at length about how damaging renewables are in their creation and their development, it comes to a conclusion that the answer is to burn more coal.
It smells like coal dust to me.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,411 posts)You can find the same author making this point more explicitly, but including most of these points, here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112771334
'Kim' is just saying that renewables are just as despicable in their view as coal.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)I hope, at least, it will be painless.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)The planet-wide physical, environmental, ecological and social fabric is what makes continued human existence possible. If/when that fabric tears, the human race will be either diminished or extinguished, depending on how severe the damage turns out to be. It's not a question of anyone planning our demise.
Humanity is collectively ignoring or misinterpreting the converging existential threats. I think of us as back-country skiers. Whether through hubris, ignorance or short-sightedness we have entered the avalanche zone. Once we hear the rumble it will be too late.
No death - whether individual or collective, planned or unplanned - is ever entirely painless. That's life.