Once renewable energy is abundant most other problems seem to be much easier to solve, e.g. protecting biodiversity if you don’t need the space for coal mines.
This may be a nitpick but actually the most popular renewables (e.g. wind and solar) need so much land that they could very feasibly be/already are a threat to biodiversity and land use. See image below for an illustration, from this work from TerraPraxis.
Land Area Requirements for Meeting Current UK Oil Consumption from Hydrogen: Comparing area required to replace the UK’s current oil consumption with hydrogen generated from either wind, solar, or advanced heat sources
It is very hard, if not impossible to stop growth in developed countries but keep growth in developing countries. Degrowth in the West most likely implies decreased growth in the developing world, which I oppose.
This seems like a big claim—what are you basing this on? I mean the Industrial Revolution led to the UK/Global North growing very fast without help from more developed nations so I’m not sure why less developed nations couldn’t also develop quickly without growth in the west.
Also I think one of the stronger arguments of the post above is about resource use/other environmental constraints besides carbon emissions. It also seems like you agree that this might pose a problem for long-term/sustained economic growth? IMO this could be a consideration large enough to sway the argument in either direction.
I agree that wind and solar could lead to more land use if we base our calculations on the efficiency of current or previous solar capabilities. But under the current trend, land use will decrease exponentially as capabilities increase exponentially, so I don’t expect it to be a real problem.
I don’t have a full economic model for my claim that the world economy is interconnected but stuff like the supply-chain crisis, or Evergreen provided some evidence in this direction. I think this was not true at the time of the industrial revolution but is now.
I think it really depends on which kind of environmental constraint we talk about and also how strong the link of that is to GDP in rich nations. If there is a convincing case, I’d obviously change my mind, but for now, I feel like we can address all problems without having to decrease GDP.
“But under the current trend, land use will decrease exponentially as capabilities increase exponentially”
Most of the cost reductions in wind and solar to date are reductions in producing roughly similar technology more cheaply (somewhat less true in the case of wind and larger turbines), so I am not sure where your view for definite lower land requirements comes from (I think there is some argument for this being possible via next-gen renewables, but not from the perspective of past cost-reduction progress).
A couple of small points:
This may be a nitpick but actually the most popular renewables (e.g. wind and solar) need so much land that they could very feasibly be/already are a threat to biodiversity and land use. See image below for an illustration, from this work from TerraPraxis.
This seems like a big claim—what are you basing this on? I mean the Industrial Revolution led to the UK/Global North growing very fast without help from more developed nations so I’m not sure why less developed nations couldn’t also develop quickly without growth in the west.
Also I think one of the stronger arguments of the post above is about resource use/other environmental constraints besides carbon emissions. It also seems like you agree that this might pose a problem for long-term/sustained economic growth? IMO this could be a consideration large enough to sway the argument in either direction.
I agree that wind and solar could lead to more land use if we base our calculations on the efficiency of current or previous solar capabilities. But under the current trend, land use will decrease exponentially as capabilities increase exponentially, so I don’t expect it to be a real problem.
I don’t have a full economic model for my claim that the world economy is interconnected but stuff like the supply-chain crisis, or Evergreen provided some evidence in this direction. I think this was not true at the time of the industrial revolution but is now.
I think it really depends on which kind of environmental constraint we talk about and also how strong the link of that is to GDP in rich nations. If there is a convincing case, I’d obviously change my mind, but for now, I feel like we can address all problems without having to decrease GDP.
“But under the current trend, land use will decrease exponentially as capabilities increase exponentially”
Most of the cost reductions in wind and solar to date are reductions in producing roughly similar technology more cheaply (somewhat less true in the case of wind and larger turbines), so I am not sure where your view for definite lower land requirements comes from (I think there is some argument for this being possible via next-gen renewables, but not from the perspective of past cost-reduction progress).
OK, thanks for the clarification. Didn’t know that.