[flagged]
Furthermore, yes, getting to the point where we're no longer starving and in thatched huts did require fossil fuels, but now we know what they do, and that they're actively having an effect on the environment, and clearly us, are we so stuck in our ways we can't change our actions to secure a life for those that come after?
[0] https://www.bureauofinternetculture.art/memes/shareholder-va...
I'm glad we agree that fossil fuels were necessary. It has nothing to do with "shareholder value" -- it has to do with minimizing human suffering.
Also, it's noteworthy that US emissions peaked in 2007. We're down ~20% since then. The world is absolutely addressing climate change, and the worst case scenarios have already been avoided. Faster would be better but we're moving reasonably fast.
The reason other countries are able to move so much faster than the U.S. is because parties that have power in the U.S. push back with economic concerns. The distance between "shareholder value" and "stock market performance" is miniscule.
We can have our cake and eat it, we just need to transition to cleaner forms of energy. Which we are doing.
Look at the headline. Res ipsa loquitur.
They told us to deny the evidence before our very eyes.
Do you have a source on this?
Anyway, here's new research demonstrating the near polar opposite of the original claim, in case anyone digging up these old threads was also wondering if slibhb's foundational arguments held up: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389855619_Global_Wa...
The quality of life of a human being is directly related to the amount of free energy (i.e. thermodynamic free energy, not free as in no cost) they have access to. Life must be able to generate more energy than it needs, even tiny bacteria. As humans developed, we found more ways to access and utilize free energy.
There is a phrase: Energy return on investment (or EROI). You can map the development of humanity pretty cleanly to an increasing EROI over the entire course of our history.
Fossil Carbon allowed us to explode our EROI and gave us access to never before seen amounts of free energy. Unless we find ways to maintain that EROI, our quality of life will necessarily diminish.
Obviously we need to cut our use of fossil carbon. And if we don't, we're simply going to run out, and then we'll be stuck anyway. But we also don't have anything with a comparable EROI to replace it with.
This is the root problem we're facing. If we had working fusion, it would be a whole lot easier to decarbonize.
And it was the cheapest way only because most prices are fake, because they do not correspond to the cost of closed cycles of the materials used to make a product.
All those things require mostly energy, air, water and a few abundant minerals and metals to be made. Technologies to make them in this way have already existed for almost a century (e.g. making synthetic hydrocarbons, to replace oil), but they are still very inefficient. However, the inefficiency is mostly due to the fact that negligible amounts of money have been allocated for the development of such technologies (because as long as the use of fossil oil is permitted, there is no way for synthetic hydrocarbons to be cheaper), in comparison with the frivolous amounts of money that are wasted on various fads, like AI datacenters.
The fact that fossil fuels -- since their mass adoption in the late 19th century -- are the single largest cause of improved living conditions is standard economic history.
> An unsustainable solution is not in-fact a good solution.
It was a perfectly good solution. It replaced wood fires which are clearly worse. Coal was great until natural gas became available. As solar/wind/nuclear become abundant, they are conintuing to displace fossil fuels.
I only paid for fuel, not lies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...
- fossil fuels have provided huge benefits
- the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing gradually increasing problems that will eventually become severe in some places
- a lot of people made a lot of money along the way
- at some point, some people chose to lie about the problems
- lying about the problems is morally wrong
- the transition off fossil fuels will be expensive
- that is not a sufficient reason not to do it
I'd say this statement has been almost entirely false since roughly 2020. The only areas where fossil fuels aren't readily replaceable are long-haul aviation (only a few percent of global emissions) and long-haul shipping (also a few percent). So we can probably cut emissions by 80-90% with no meaningful impact to standard of living.
At this point the pro fossil fuel position is kind of like "you realize camp fires are why we don't get eaten by lions!" Yes, that was true once.
BTW the degrowthers are also wrong. We can cut emissions by 80-90% without degrowth.