Once energy scarcity drives prices so high society decides to transition, any energy allocated to do so will only increase scarcity, drive price higher and undermine resolve.
Tom Murphy called this the energy trap.The construction of that shiny new infrastructure requires not just money, but…energy. And that’s the very commodity in short supply. Will we really be willing to sacrifice additional energy in the short term—effectively steepening the decline—for a long-term energy plan? It’s a trap!
I said essentially the same thing in my very first post here,
PopsThat is the wild card; how long do we have to prepare before the cost of preparing is out of reach or the necessities unavailable?
Considering the demand of say facebook on the global grid I'm thinking the draw to build RE so far is negligible —so good on GW for running interference. Because of course no one even considers peak or even where the juice comes from. At best they vaguely believe the infamous "they'" will think of something, at worst that they'll be elsewhere leaving we sinners to deal.. Global energy market is $6 Trillion according to the AI I just consulted so at mose a couple of percent.
We will need to spend 10 or 20% if we start soon, more if later. (in my erudite estimation (i.e.: WAG))
This little 15 year head start at development and deployment afforded by GW & LTO is in my mind possibly the thing that helps soften the landing, for me personally I am 100% more independent than even when I had 40 acres and a mule... cattle and chickens and pigs anyway.
I could not have dreamed of a better scenario back around 2008 — well I could but it would have been dreaming. PV and Wind costs are a fraction of back then, and installs many multiples. We've done the experimenting, trial runs, false starts, and epic failures any society-scale project would expect and we aren't yet even peaked—that's a huge win, better than I expected. It's all about carbon, but I don't care, the development is what counts. I've never thought we'd boil in our skins, not enough fossils left. But I did think we could conceivably crash back to 1933, or further, over a period of energy wars and economic shocks.
Of course we'll still have those, we've just had a little time to think about it
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)