> The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink

Well...yea.

It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy. If they actually got their way, we would see a recession/depression that would be the most painful of our lifetime.

We should be focused on raising the standard of living for ALL people. We can work towards that goal by generating as much energy as possible with the caveat of doing so intelligently and responsibly.

> It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy.

Nothing naive about it, there are costs associated with production of energy and spending less energy is simply about lowering the associated costs.

Europe being big on energy savings and efficiency is now better off compared to what would have had happened if they lost the Russian energy without the achieved efficiencies.

Efficiency is not the same as negative growth.

There are actual, real-life proponents of policies that would have us shrink our economies and decrease the standard of living.

That's not because they hate energy but because they think it's not worth to tolerate the negatives associated with production of energy.

Energy production often impacts negatively the surroundings of the production area and that's why even those who boast for energy production at all cost are also NIMBY folks. Notice how wealthy prefer to live away from energy production sites, in prestine environment? turns out the poor and the middle class want that too.

Yes, those that would rather subsidize fossil fuels than efficiency and cheap renewables. They're suprisingly prominent and running many major economies.

As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable. Having all of India's population reaching a European level of CO2 expenditure (about 4 tons / person / year) kills us. And renewables would only account for a very small reduction of that.

I don't want to jump on the bandwagon too much, but I think if you want to argue for decreased energy use you have to do it in a way that has a vision for quality of life improving. You might for example point out how much more efficient cities are, or how wasteful consumerism is and argue that people can grow to love having less. I'm not sure, but you definitely shouldn't basically say the only solution is to keep the developing world down and maybe shrink the pie in the developed world too. That just isn't a realistic option.

Also like the other commenters I'm not at all sure renewables can't do the job. Prices have fallen fast

> As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable

This is defeatist bullshit.

No one is arguing that the whole world needs to immediately live exactly like the richest citizens.

Your attitude really disappoints and actually enrages me. Luckily, I can take comfort in knowing how counter to human nature it is. Humans will not accept a declining standard of living because a few people want to virtue signal. Try to force it on them at your own peril.

Thankfully, I don't really give a crap about your opinion of me, but thanks for the info.

I am not calling for declining standards of living, or saying that, fuck it, let poor people be poor. I'm the first person to push for more nuclear power plants, more renewables. Simply reminding people that the whole technobabble bullshit about how new things are going to save us is wrong. We're not going to save ourselves. We're going to raise our standards of living, and kill ourselves in the process. Good luck with your human nature.

Well we have enough uranium reserves to increase the world's energy output by several orders of magnitude and still last hundreds of years.

Right. And we could actually create a reliable grid vs. a shitty patchwork of unreliable power sources that require us to massively overbuild generation capacity.

I guess we don't do this because too few bureaucrats can grift if we build nuke plants?

No grid is 100% reliable, but in the present situation where renewables are cheaper than nuclear it's not hard to see why they're being preferred. You'd need a story where that price difference is artificial or temporary (both possible)

Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions. Ultimately, if you want to handle all of your load with only renewables, you're going to need to build about 3x what's needed, just to account for wind turbines not running, sun not shining, etc, and you're going to need to replace most of it in 15 years, with rare earth materials that will start costing a lot of money. Needless to say, it's a waste, and the solution that most competent people agree on is to have a nuclear/renewables mix. Nuclear is necessary to provide a massive, stable base load. Renewables provide people some temporary independence and the overproduction could be sold. But, go for too many renewables, and suddenly you're back to burning gas at night to keep producing.

>> Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions.

That is simply not true, already in 2017(?) PV and wind was cheaper in utility scale kWh prices, un fixed project auctions and without subsidies, than the then most modern nuckear plant in Europe, Hinkley C in the UK. Those utility scale PV and wind parks are faster to build as well.

Until we figured electricity storagebout on a scale big enough to sustain our needs nuclear beats coal by lightyears so.

> Ultimately, if you want to handle all of your load with only renewables, you're going to need to build about 3x what's needed, just to account for wind turbines not running, sun not shining, etc, and you're going to need to replace most of it in 15 years, with rare earth materials that will start costing a lot of money.

You're getting downvoted for living in the real world and opposing the approved climate messaging.

It is really a shame to see all the people that have been bamboozled by the "renewable energy" propaganda and refuse to see the obvious (very negative) implications of following through on that policy.