My Views: I would love it if Solar, Hydro and Wind and other renewable sources of energy + Non Renewable Nuclear were to provide enough energy reliably to completely replace fossil fuels, but I know it’s not a feasible solution at least at this point. And maybe it will never be. Renewable sources of energy are highly dependent on some metal mining (some are rare metals) and I doubt if the prices of those metals would go lower as the demand for those renewable sources of energy sky rockets. i.e., It’s a non-linear equation, the price of renewables will not remain the same if we want to meet 100% of our energy needs from renewables. So, Just Stopping Oil is a pretty stupid idea concocted by people who have a much better standard of living than me.
Skip This if you must: As an Indian, I can speak for 1.4B people (I asked) when I say that, no matter how much pressure developed nations impose on India and countries like India, we will still keep using the least costliest source of energy, because we too want nice things and we too want our women to be liberated from cow dung/wood stoves and from the burden of washing clothes and utensils. So yeah, there is no way bar great scientific innovation which will phase out fossil fuels at least in the near future and perhaps ever.
PS: I don’t like fossil fuels, I don’t like the pollution or the effect it has on the environment and I wish they could be replaced by something renewable, but I just don’t like the chances of that happening.
Good on you for checking in with all those people, it must have taken a while.
Lifting the whole world off of fossil fuels is going to be hard, especially if we want to do it quickly. This isn’t however a problem the capitalist and nation-state models are well equipped to solve. It should not be a question of can a given people afford the technology or if someone can turn a profit on it.
We need to do this as a species, for the species. It should be given not as charity, not because wealthy countries owe it to poor ones, but because it is right that everyone should benefit from this.
The difficulty is how to convince the politicians and their masters of this, and I don’t think throwing paint on things is going to be sufficient.
I am pretty sure climate change is/will be a disaster for India, but I am betting on the capability of Indians as well as other third world countries to develop economically and be better prepared to face the consequences of climate change. Because I know for a fact that collective action problem is not solvable.