Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
Yes, and yes.
We can move away from fossil fuels. In fact, it is nearly inevitable that we do. If fossil fuels become scarce, as they almost certainly will, it will become expensive to use them, and the free market will move to renewable energy. But it will be a very gradual and deliberate process.
Along with dire predictions about the effects of using fossil fuels that inevitbly fail to come true, there have been many predictions by "experts" that we would move quickly to renewable energy. These predictions also failed.
Renewable energy sources could take the world by storm. That is what well-known advocate Amory Lovins envisaged in 1976. He claimed that by the year 2000, 33 percent of America's energy would come from many small, decentralized renewable sources. Decades later, in July 2008, environmentalist Al Gore claimed that completely repowering the country's electricity supply in a single decade would be “achievable, affordable and transformative.” And in November 2009 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published “A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables” in Scientific American, presenting a plan for converting the global energy supply entirely to renewables in just two decades.
Yet from 1990 to 2012 the world's energy from fossil fuels barely changed, down from 88 to 87 percent. In 2011 renewables generated less than 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply, and most of that came from “old” renewables, such as hydroelectric plants and burning wood waste from lumbering operations. After more than 20 years of highly subsidized development, new renewables such as wind and solar and modern biofuels such as corn ethanol have claimed only 3.35 percent of the country's energy supply.
www.scientificamerican.com
If government takes steps to hurry that process, it can annoy us by making fossil fuels artificially expensive before they become scarce. It will not speed the transition by a noticeable amount, but it would be no more wasteful than most government actions.
If they try to rush it too much, and use too much force, they can damage the economies of the world's energy consumers, leading to famine, and death due to lack of medical care. They would shut down factories if they attemped to force them to be powered by windmills. Farms will not do well if government forces them to operate with solar powered tractors.
There has never been a government that has found a way to motivate producers more than a free market does. The purple haired college students demanding we end the use of fossil fuels are unlikely to ever compost their own feces to grow food for themselves in an urban garden. Even if they did, they would immediately be set upon by fellow students demanding a handout because they are too studious, artistic, sensitive, hormonal from transgender care, anxious, or offended by something or other, to do any useful work.
Of course, since the left focuses entirely on the U.S., and gives countries whose polution levels are far higher a pass, it would only be the U.S. economy that would suffer directly. But that will drag down the economies of nations that don't bother trying to "stop the climate from changing." Speaking of windmills, trying to do that is the epitome of tilting at them.
We can move away from fossil fuels. In fact, it is nearly inevitable that we do. If fossil fuels become scarce, as they almost certainly will, it will become expensive to use them, and the free market will move to renewable energy. But it will be a very gradual and deliberate process.
Along with dire predictions about the effects of using fossil fuels that inevitbly fail to come true, there have been many predictions by "experts" that we would move quickly to renewable energy. These predictions also failed.
Renewable energy sources could take the world by storm. That is what well-known advocate Amory Lovins envisaged in 1976. He claimed that by the year 2000, 33 percent of America's energy would come from many small, decentralized renewable sources. Decades later, in July 2008, environmentalist Al Gore claimed that completely repowering the country's electricity supply in a single decade would be “achievable, affordable and transformative.” And in November 2009 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published “A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables” in Scientific American, presenting a plan for converting the global energy supply entirely to renewables in just two decades.
Yet from 1990 to 2012 the world's energy from fossil fuels barely changed, down from 88 to 87 percent. In 2011 renewables generated less than 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply, and most of that came from “old” renewables, such as hydroelectric plants and burning wood waste from lumbering operations. After more than 20 years of highly subsidized development, new renewables such as wind and solar and modern biofuels such as corn ethanol have claimed only 3.35 percent of the country's energy supply.
A Global Transition to Renewable Energy Will Take Many Decades
The great hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is wishful thinking
If government takes steps to hurry that process, it can annoy us by making fossil fuels artificially expensive before they become scarce. It will not speed the transition by a noticeable amount, but it would be no more wasteful than most government actions.
If they try to rush it too much, and use too much force, they can damage the economies of the world's energy consumers, leading to famine, and death due to lack of medical care. They would shut down factories if they attemped to force them to be powered by windmills. Farms will not do well if government forces them to operate with solar powered tractors.
There has never been a government that has found a way to motivate producers more than a free market does. The purple haired college students demanding we end the use of fossil fuels are unlikely to ever compost their own feces to grow food for themselves in an urban garden. Even if they did, they would immediately be set upon by fellow students demanding a handout because they are too studious, artistic, sensitive, hormonal from transgender care, anxious, or offended by something or other, to do any useful work.
Of course, since the left focuses entirely on the U.S., and gives countries whose polution levels are far higher a pass, it would only be the U.S. economy that would suffer directly. But that will drag down the economies of nations that don't bother trying to "stop the climate from changing." Speaking of windmills, trying to do that is the epitome of tilting at them.
