Questioning “Our Renewable Future” is the title Ted Trainer uses for his review of Our Renewable Future, by Heinberg and Fridley, and he urges a reconsideration of some of its conclusions:
“This valuable book explains many of the difficulties making the achievement of 100% renewable energy uncertain. However a much stronger case can be given, indicating that present energy-affluent societies cannot be run on renewables. We can and must shift to renewables, but there must also be dramatic reduction in energy consumption, rich world “living standards” and GDP.
There is a very strong tendency for green people to take it for granted that we can transition to 100% dependence on renewable energy sources without any significant reduction in “living standards” or the economy, and do it at low cost. Many impressive studies and reports make this claim. I have examined several of these and written a number of detailed critiques. All make highly challengeable assumptions and most are of little or no value because they are not based on actual weather data for the regions under discussion.
For many years I have argued that the alarming and deteriorating global predicament cannot be solved unless we abandon the commitments to economic growth, the market system and a culture of individualistic competitive acquisitiveness. (For the detail see thesimplerway.info) However most people do not hold this world view, but believe that adjustments and technical advances such as adopting renewables will be sufficient to sustain societies that are more or less like those we have today. If my view is correct we have to face up to making the most enormous and radical change imaginable, and quickly. I am arguing here that there is a much more coercive case for this view than is put in Our Renewable Future.”
The review concludes: “The belief that energy supply can be 100% renewable is probably the main element in the tech-fix faith held by most people, including green and left people. They think there is no need to shift from something like present energy and resource intensive lifestyles and systems, or from an economy driven by growth and market forces. If the position arrived at in this reassessment is sound then the big global problems cannot be solved unless there is dramatic reduction in rich world per capita levels of consumption, the present economy is abandoned, there is immense cultural change away from individualistic, competitive acquisitiveness, and transition to some kind of radically Simpler Way. (That this would be workable and attractive is argued at thesimplerway.info/).”
Read the whole review: Read more. . .
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