The importance of studying collapse is so that we can divert some of catastrophe into a transformative potential if we are prepared and retain our clarity of thinking during the period of upheaval.
People who cling to the status quo out of fear usually can not differentiate this from being an accelerationist even though the position is not actually similar upon closer inspection, it proceeds from a basis of a desire to be careful not cavalier and a knowledge that we must change no matter what so beginning now is best.
Only for those who want to survive.
Yes. But increased emissions by US military and other countries arming themselves will offer much of the gains
It should…but, it won’t. High oil prices mean big profits for oil companies. This is a massive windfall for them.
Renewable energy tech is also sensitive to oil prices. Those products are just as dependent on global supply chains that still run on oil. So, renewable energy tech might go up in price like most everything else.
That said, renewable energy will almost certainly still be the cheaper option. Plus, renewable energy is just much more efficient. An electric car charged from renewable electricity is going to lose significantly less energy to waste than an ICE car running on gas.
But honestly, the affordability of renewable energy tech is dependent on one country: China. Without China’s massive industrial manufacturing capacity, and the Chinese government’s willingness to heavily subsidize key renewable tech industries, the renewable energy transition wouldn’t be possible.
For renewable energy to become viable, the tech had to come down in price. But the only way to bring down the price was to over produce.
Price is determined by supply and demand. If you produce a lot of a certain product, but the demand for that product is low, the price for the product will go down. That’s good for consumers but it’s bad for the business. Now it’s true that businesses can still make a profit even as the per unit price for their product is coming down, by increasing overall sales volume. But that’s risky, and it wouldn’t have worked for renewable tech anyway because we needed the price of that tech to come down a lot, and fast. There’s no way the producers could have remained profitable with prices coming down as much and quickly as they have without heavy subsidies.
There was no will to do that in the “free market capitalism” West.
Renewable energy tech is also sensitive to oil prices.
Not anywhere NEAR as much???
If you had bothered to read past that sentence, you would have noticed this:
That said, renewable energy will almost certainly still be the cheaper option. Plus, renewable energy is just much more efficient. An electric car charged from renewable electricity is going to lose significantly less energy to waste than an ICE car running on gas.
