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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

If we care about eliminating fossil fuel usage, we need the gradient in the renewable uptake to high enough to cause a catastrophic shock to the fossil fuel technology and delivery chain. If it is too low, it renewables will drive down the price of oil, causing a jevons paradox follow on effect, where the price of oil falls, but because the infra structure is already in place, it is easy to use (infra can be useable but decay over time). Worst possible outcome is that the oil supply redirects to the developing world and millions of lawn mower style engines are put into high utilization.

Fossil fuels need a total shock to the system to end their use, otherwise we will indeed burn everything that is in the ground.

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Really? That's the worst possible outcome? I would have assumed that the worst possible outcome would be that the oil supply didn't redirect to the developing world and the developing world would be left with no cheap energy that they had the infrastructure to exploit at all.

Which would be a great way to ensure that it never reached "developed", although I suppose it would stop it from developing...

If markets would have developed the developing world, a resource rich paradise, they would have done so by now. Instead, they imperially marched in and stole everything they could for the benefit of their masters back home. Markets don't sell to poor people, they sell to middle-income and rich people. They steal from the poor to give to the rich. That's the whole idea.

I don't know if you'd noticed, but the developing world has actually gotten smaller. Take just one example: in 1957, South Korea had a lower per-capita GDP than Ghana, and no natural resources to speak of. And speaking of imperialism, the US and USSR throwing their weight around fighting proxy battles and ripping the top half of the country off hadn't exactly helped.

Now they're a trade and manufacturing powerhouse, and when South Korea blinks the entire world's supply of memory fluctuates.

Remember that one time where everybody always buys things from a market, regardless of whether you call their country “developed”? Remember how class has nothing to do with supply and demand? I do.

Perhaps it’s me, but ur comment’s anti-imperial skew makes me think you’ve gotten an imperial education.

>Worst possible outcome is that the oil supply redirects to the developing world and millions of lawn mower style engines are put into high utilization

This is exactly what will happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=8PavA4rUypE

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