La transition energtique n'aura pas lieu

[NNadir]

La transition énergétique n’aura pas lieu

Dans son dernier essai «Sans transition, une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie», l’historien français Jean-Baptiste Fressoz s’est penché sur les origines du concept de transition énergétique. Mauvaise nouvelle, non seulement cette notion ne s’appuie sur aucune réalité industrielle ou économique, mais elle a détourné les politiques climatiques d’une voie plus efficace pour limiter le réchauffement.

C'est vrai.

Reality bites in any language. For all the talk, there is no "energy transition." The "energy transition" is as real as the Easter Bunny.

If any of this bothers you, you might feel better by looking at some corporate pictures of wind turbines. It's greenwashing but then again, right now I'm in Anaheim at a hotel where, outside, all the "grass" is made of plastic. It just makes one feel wonderful, doesn't it? It's quite literally "green."

We're clueless and history will not forgive us, nor should it.

[hunter]

1. La sobriete -- Not being drunk on fossil fuels and other non-replenishable resources

I first heard of the "energy transition" as a young anti-nuclear activist more than forty years ago.

One of my partners in crime frequently spoke of converting nuclear power plants, those already built and those under construction, to natural gas, and promised that natural gas would someday be renewable methane made from agricultural wastes and solar power. (Conversations on long car trips, merrily burning three gallons of gasoline an hour on the highways between San Onofre and Humboldt Bay...)

I vaguely remember Friends of the Earth founder David Brower taking a similar position at a lecture I attended, probably in 1978.

We all know how that turned out. Natural gas was generally accepted as a clean transitional fuel. That's two lies. Natural gas is not clean, and it's not transitional.

And so the world burns.

[NNadir]

2. David Brower strikes me as one of the worst examples...

...of self declared "environmentalists" who mucks things up with arrogance and ignorance.

In this case the term can be taken quite literally, the muck in question being the silt behind the Glen Canyon damn.

Real environmentalism seeks to protect wilderness.

Glen Canyon wasn't his to give away.

It is amazing how many people, like that fool, look at wilderness and think of how to render it in to industrial energy plants.

The fan dance at Lake Powell during recent climate driven droughts gave a depressing insight to what was lost to that awful ignorant antinuke.