The other issue is that boomer-style green parties in the EU are completely counterproductive as far as limiting CO2 emissions. Both EELV in France and the greens in Germany are responsible for raising our electrical carbon emissions from closing nuclear plants, when we have no practical solutions for using solar/wind with storage today (it’s fairly obvious to me now that I live in California, where the sun shines almost all the time). I really hope some of them are secretly paid by the oil industry because that’s basically what they have caused us to do, burn more oil and gas.

While you can indeed make an argument about shutting down nuclear power plants while there are coal power plants in operations, the green party was part of the government which targetted the mid-20ies for an end of nuclear energy in Germany - many power plants would have had to be shut down of age anyway. But they also set energy politics onto a trajectory which would have meant to mostly run on renewables by now. It was the Merkel government which first prolonged nuclear power plant run times and then cut it down quicker than the initial plans after Fukushima. All of that could be rationally argued, but not that they mostly killed the deployment of renewables. If they had pushed that properly, we still would be fine. Still, Germany managed to get to 50% renewables in the electricity mix. But indeed, we now have to push hard to take up speed of deployment and fortunately we have now the greens in power to push for that.

The idea that we can run not just our current demand on “renewables”, but peak demand after electrifying everything from cars to stovetops, was and remains an absolute fantasy.

No, it’s clearly not, and we’ve wasted decades chasing the utopian impossibility of energy with zero-downside — all while continuing to dump pollution into the atmosphere.

> electrifying all cars would mean about 10% more electricity consumption

Not at peak load.

> Doing so would add about 2 TWh of storage capacity in the cars alone, which would be very helpful for the grid.

Come again?

You want people to donate the limited lifecycle of their very expensive car batteries to provide inefficient backup power to the grid?

This is why the OP said greens hold significant responsibility for the mess we’re in. This kind of magical thinking has been a gift to the fossil fuel industry.

I don't know what you mean by "peak load", but it is 10% more electricity consumed. Electric cars rather help than load the grid, as their charging can be easily controlled to help balance the grid.

And yes, a small part of the battery capacity won't be "donated" but rather rented to the grid in exchange for much lower prices. VW is about to roll out a corresponding project, owners can expect much cheaper charging up to even free charging.

And no it isn't the Greens who are feeding the fossil fuel industry but those who hold back renewables and the electrification of transportation.

So, what is your alternative? Nuclear plants for that peak load? Just burning gasoline and diesel forever? Please explain.

I live in California, we have 59% renewables. The last 31% is exponentially harder as you actually need electricity sources that are reliable. Nuclear is reliable / suitable for base loads, wind/solar aren't. There are zero grid that use solar/wind as base load today.

Both the French and German governments did just that in the last 10 years. The Belgian one as well, though they seem to have second thoughts now, it’s just a shame that it is not a decision you can reverse.

> I think it's just signalling on their part.

I don’t think so. Besides, it is a very dangerous idea to rely on. There are several examples in the world in the last 5 years or so of governments implementing absolutely stupid policies for ideological reasons. That’s how one end up with Trump or Brexit, and later whine that one did not know that they were going to do what they told they’d do.

Often, it turns out that the face-eating leopards actually do eat faces.

Basically: Rich people telling poor people that they cannot do the things that make people rich.

I think overall, carbon fees and getting tech to cost parity via local subsidies, then ensuring corporations/kleptocrats don't conspire in developing nations may work better.

We can simultaneously support development without killing all future generations.

We also need a lot more mining. We need more lithium, more cobalt, more copper, more aluminum, among others. It's not a matter of "just pay for it", the material inputs for a GLOBAL green transition do not presently exist at any price without more mining. But mines are environmentally damaging and require fossil fuels to get started, so those same parties often ignore the need. Hell the good people of Maine recently voted down a measure to import clean hydroelectric power from Quebec because they didn't want to destroy a small stretch of forest to build the transmission lines. That bullshit FernGully flavor of environmentalism has to go extinct

If we're going to be serious about de-carbonizing the economy, then we need to purge the various environmental factions of their nature-worshiping ideologies and focus on the dry, economic, technological, sometimes nuclear, localized-nature-destroying methods that will actually do it.

The more we try to make it look like industrial society can be green, the more everyone is going to consume and that's not sustainable in the long run. We need actual degrowth now, if not yesterday. And i'm not saying we global northerners should moralize countries like Brazil or India about their industrial practices: no, we need to develop our own self-sustenance for food, housing, and medicine in the here and now... and stop pillaging/exploiting the 3rd world as our industrial backyard where all chemical atrocious pollution is permitted.

Nuclear is part of the tech pipe dream that the oligarchy is promising us, of an ever abundance of free/clean energy. But the reality on the ground, from mining sites to storage facilities, looks very different. And who cares where your electricity comes from if even the most mundane devices come with electronics and batteries? Can't i buy a fucking car without having at least a 100 micro-controllers inside?!

If you want to save the environment, make it a criminal offense to sell a product without having at least minimum 50y warranty/service. That's how you change things: the planet doesn't care if your energy has more or less carbon if you keep on producing disposable phones that's gonna be broken/obsolete two years from now. We have to stop this madness. The same goes with the housing industry and many other industries, believe it or not: the Romans and the Aztecs built low-tech structures that will outlive us all, and multi-billion dollars corporations can't even build stuff that stays in decent shape for more than 10 years (or rather, they won't for financial reasons).

So fine, be angry all you want at people like me who promote actual environmentalism. Maybe we're too much "nature-worshipping" to be heard by the psychopaths in power who already ruined everything. I personally have zero faith in the system and structures that have taken us so far, and have made sure that every attempt to diverge from the worst possible timeline has been sabotaged. I come from France, where the Rainbow Warrior was sunk by secret services, and the COP21 mass demonstrations were all canceled using the indecent pretext of so-called "terrorist" attacks and State of Emergency... The people in power will never help us save the planet: we have to make them.

This could not be further from the truth. Nuclear power has the lowest rate of deaths per unit of energy. Uranium mining does have environmental impact, but it's so energy dense that very little of it has to be mined.

If "actual environmentalism" means rejecting industrialized society then we're doomed. The Romans built a stable society, sure. But it was a society with a huge portion of enslaved people, and little opportunity outside of the elite. If I have to choose between climate change and reverting to an agrarian preindustrial society I'll pick climate change without hesitation.

I agree we should refocus the economy on more durable goods and housing, that's part of the solution. I'm not sure where your criticism of Nuclear is coming from though. It has the smallest mining footprint, all the nuclear waste dumps in the world could fit in an incredibly small area compared to waste products from other power sources. Small modular reactor designs basically solve the waste issue by being self-contained for their entire lifetimes. Nuclear is also incredibly safe statistically speaking, and produces no pollution in its power generation.

Your last paragraph is telling as well. For those who think like you there's a social-revolution element to combating climate change. You see things as "already ruined", and have declared the "psychopaths in power" the absolute enemy standing in the way of "saving the planet". So you have all the resentful psychological license you need to burn the house down, with the rest of us in it, just to stick it to the psychopaths, and that's your primary objective.

I'd rather save the house, with everyone. I'd like the psychopaths gone as much as anyone, but if you think de-industrializing will get rid of them, you haven't read much history.