Comments on: What Peak Oil Can Do for Climate Change http://www.getreallist.com/what-peak-oil-can-do-for-climate-change.html Deal With Reality or It Will Deal With You Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:21:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Justin Ritchie http://www.getreallist.com/what-peak-oil-can-do-for-climate-change.html/comment-page-1#comment-1777 Justin Ritchie Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:59:51 +0000 http://www.getreallist.com/?p=1435#comment-1777 Fantastic post. The current global approach to energy is incredibly simple minded and we need more nuanced approaches. Some positives have come out of the focus on climate change over the last few years, on a wide scale people have begun to recognize that industrial processes have negatively impacted the environment and are starting to take actions to internalize those externalities. Unfortunately all the favored solutions are high-tech and require massive amounts of energy to deploy. By focusing on one single waste stream of human civilization we are about to throw all our remaining resources towards propping up a system that does a lot more harm than just emitting CO2, removing all available excess energy that could be devoted to preparing for a low energy future. I want to be optimistic but I'm not seeing a lot of reasons to have a positive outlook for the future. Fantastic post. The current global approach to energy is incredibly simple minded and we need more nuanced approaches. Some positives have come out of the focus on climate change over the last few years, on a wide scale people have begun to recognize that industrial processes have negatively impacted the environment and are starting to take actions to internalize those externalities. Unfortunately all the favored solutions are high-tech and require massive amounts of energy to deploy. By focusing on one single waste stream of human civilization we are about to throw all our remaining resources towards propping up a system that does a lot more harm than just emitting CO2, removing all available excess energy that could be devoted to preparing for a low energy future. I want to be optimistic but I’m not seeing a lot of reasons to have a positive outlook for the future.

]]> By: Iaato http://www.getreallist.com/what-peak-oil-can-do-for-climate-change.html/comment-page-1#comment-1767 Iaato Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:33:01 +0000 http://www.getreallist.com/?p=1435#comment-1767 Finally, some intelligent thought on the subject: peak oil is a much more useful fulcrum for creating a descent economy than climate change, and the climate change models lack accurate assumptions. Other reasons for our singular focus on climate change include the idea that current corporations can see no gains in less consumption and the focus on renewables, which would exclude most of them. And the powerful financial elites see climate derivatives as a replacement arena for profit-making. The pursuit of wealth and the massive surplus of energy creates strengthening autocatalytic loops that are counter-productive to the system. Our economy is based on production, and to maintain some coherency, descent needs to focus on production for a new economy rather than paper games and penalties that would arise out of climate change derivatives. Peak oil effects on the economy are much more imminent, catastrophic, and real. IMO, the whole climate change hype is a red herring, or perhaps a more acceptable focus for our defuse denialist fears about the end of our empire. Finally, some intelligent thought on the subject: peak oil is a much more useful fulcrum for creating a descent economy than climate change, and the climate change models lack accurate assumptions. Other reasons for our singular focus on climate change include the idea that current corporations can see no gains in less consumption and the focus on renewables, which would exclude most of them. And the powerful financial elites see climate derivatives as a replacement arena for profit-making. The pursuit of wealth and the massive surplus of energy creates strengthening autocatalytic loops that are counter-productive to the system.

Our economy is based on production, and to maintain some coherency, descent needs to focus on production for a new economy rather than paper games and penalties that would arise out of climate change derivatives. Peak oil effects on the economy are much more imminent, catastrophic, and real. IMO, the whole climate change hype is a red herring, or perhaps a more acceptable focus for our defuse denialist fears about the end of our empire.

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