It is clear to me that we need to focus on renewables, yesterday, even without regard to its cost. We face a future otherwise of proliferating nuclear reactors and a probable unmanageable energy security problem, continued carbon emissions which will continue to erode our ecological sensibility, and a very real and serious problem of innovation. Forget food, i am not sure we will have energy security, because any net electrical consumption per capita increase is going to escalate the price index for electricity. This will pose a greater challenge to the poverty trap. It is a trap for progress too, because in many ways, our per capita consumption of electricity is going to limit our ability to adopt new technologies, and may indeed be the reason why governments and big business are not yet throwing their weight behind electric cars. It shifts consumption of oil to consumption of electricity in a way that probably doubles current above poverty household consumption, which is beyond the estimate i first gave, quite substantially. Unless we move to renewables, we dont just have the poverty trap, we have stunted innovation and progress, a business model ever concerned with efficiency, greater strain on government resources to manage the widening gap and civil unrest and frustration that will result, and further abandonment by idiots in power, of anything with humanistic value. We arent going to get to zero emissions by 2050, but we need to come close enough to it that an innovation age can take place. No one will back such industries and ideas if there is no excess of electrical production forthcoming for which will allow those technologies to be effectively used. The entire issue itself may consume the entire focus and resources of the world and we need to be divesting and investing in it now to bring the prices down and allow bulk acceptance. Forget development of emerging nations if we cant solve these problems. No one will have a humanistic interest in it, yet this is the most irrational course of action to take, because affluence is what will enable the resolve of all outstanding issues in the developing world. There is still much work there to do. The developed world on the other hand is likely to get so caught up in the issues of energy security and climate change policy that little else will be effectively delivered where it is needed. This is not a picture that gets better over time if we do not act on renewables now. Even though i could be fairly accused of being alarmist about some of the things i have said, i had failed to recognise exactly the challenge of both climate change and energy security, and they are antagonists to each other to the effect that the access point for renewables is still too expensive to give investor confidence. We are at this point having to quite literally trade progress, for survivability. It is most ironic because we must adopt renewables, but we must also have a way to outstrip consumer demand for electricity. The drive for energy efficiency may be an issue also. It would seem to come at the expense of either or both of lower wages, or higher cost. In short, without renewables significantly outstripping the demand for electrical consumption and progress, we are in the path of a death spiral.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 14:32:35 +0000
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