Completely agree we need to massively reduce energy use; adding new kinds of energy to total energy supplies just grows the system, which then requires more energy to maintain. York and Bell showed that so-called "renewables" are additive and do not replace fossil fuels when viewed at the global scale. And many have shown that shifting from a fossil fuel-intensive energy system to a materials-intensive energy system will create skyrocketing demand for many materials, including lithium, copper, nickel, and so on. We won't save the planet by destroying it, that's for sure. And of course climate change is just one of many symptoms of ecological overshoot, and by far, the collapse of biosphere integrity, with habitat loss, species loss, overall wildlife numbers plummeting, is the worst of these many symptoms. The polycrisis is here, and more energy, no matter how it's generated, will only make that worse.
Completely agree we need to massively reduce energy use; adding new kinds of energy to total energy supplies just grows the system, which then requires more energy to maintain. York and Bell showed that so-called "renewables" are additive and do not replace fossil fuels when viewed at the global scale. And many have shown that shifting from a fossil fuel-intensive energy system to a materials-intensive energy system will create skyrocketing demand for many materials, including lithium, copper, nickel, and so on. We won't save the planet by destroying it, that's for sure. And of course climate change is just one of many symptoms of ecological overshoot, and by far, the collapse of biosphere integrity, with habitat loss, species loss, overall wildlife numbers plummeting, is the worst of these many symptoms. The polycrisis is here, and more energy, no matter how it's generated, will only make that worse.