Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions

Our Finite World: "Green technologies, including solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, have pushed resource use toward minerals that were little exploited in the past. If we try to ramp up usage, current mines are likely to deplete rapidly. We will eventually need to add new mines in areas where resource quality is lower and concern about pollution is higher. Costs will be much higher in such mines, making devices using such minerals less affordable, rather than more affordable, in the long run."

EU biofuels policy bad for Indonesia, bad for #climate, bad for humanity.

Friends of the Earth Europe: "EU biofuels policy currently requires 10% of transport energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, but almost all of this is biofuels from food and oil crops mixed into the fuel sold at the pump, which is in turn helping to drive deforestation, land grabs and climate change. And it is impacting Indonesia particularly hard by driving the expansion of palm oil. Since 2006, palm oil imports into the EU for direct use as biofuels have increased by 365%."

Wood pellets worse than coal for environment

Post by Biofuelwatch.

Humans will cook the earth regardless of fuel used. Unless #degrowth

Free Public Transit: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist | Do the Math: ""Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.""

Vaclav Smil - a wind turbine is a pure embodiment of fossil fuels

Congestion pricing, bureaucratic nightmare

Congestion pricing is unfair, but we can solve unfairness with computers, right?

The Urbanist: "But there’d be a negative equity effect because congestion charges, like taxes and prices, don’t distinguish between buyers according to their income. Congestion charging would make driving in the peak less affordable for those on lower incomes; they’d consequently find it more expensive to access important opportunities like employment.

That’s a very important issue that must be addressed. Now that the practical constraints have largely been overcome by technology (e.g. transponders), the impact on drivers’ pockets (and not just the poorest ones) is the main practical factor limiting implementation of congestion pricing."

Minimum wage fight is old economics, will fail even if won.

Cheap oil has peaked. Debts will not be repaid, but interest mostly will. What does that mean? That means that the rich will bleed the system until it crashes. There's tons of cash hidden, but that will stay hidden because there are no customers, so nowhere to invest.

Senate Nears Minimum Wage Vote, Defeat Likely: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and Republicans grappled Wednesday over which party is truly helping American families as the Senate neared a vote on a Democratic election-year bill increasing the federal minimum wage, a measure that seemed all but certain to be defeated."

But there is low-hanging fruit. Autosprawl. A vast amount of money and energy is being wasted on the autosprawl system. This should be the first target of degrowth.