Lots to think about and react to here, but I just wanted to pick up one point:
about how the energy pie is divided up, […] genuine concern for fairness has to be as much or more about lowering the wealthy than lifting the poor.
At the very extreme of things there is this idea of the “billionaire bunker”. Like people can somehow cordon off climate change and energy collapse and all of these destructive forces, IF they have enough MONEY.
I question this. I suspect that many of these ideas take for granted many assumptions about collapse being somehow containable.
Like, are oil wells, tankers, electrical grids and refineries and distribution systems all going to keep running so that the rich can live life as usual while everything else goes to ruin? We will still have a system?
Let’s not get weighed down by dispelling antiquated definitions of energy transition.
An unsustainable system will transition to something else inevitably. It is hapening right now. The idea is not at an end. Its at the begining.
What’s up for grabs is a constant string of decisions to change over time that lead to better and worse outcomes with associated tradeoffs. The outcomes are on a spectrum that arguably range from:
Today transitioning to Extinction of the human race and most of the ecosphere with it. (Collapse hardest)
To
Today transitioning to long term viability of the human race and most of the ecosphere with it. (Collapse softest)
Limiting the discussion of the causes of these outcomes to just energy, for the sake of conversation, we can define the conditions of those two outcomes.
The collapse hardest is BAU, a growth paradigm where we say the nice things develop new energies that only supplement the old, not replace, and keep a growth oriented framework in play. This follows the path of growth, overshoot and collapse. The system built was designed for a high civilizational metabolic rate, requiring a high eroei that can’t be met when fossil fuels eroei of 100:1 are exhausted and a high energy system must suddenly live on ~ 3:1 eroei. It’s a starvation diet, followed by atrophy and death.
The collapse soft version is where we use the time and resources we have to build a small degrowthed core of resilient civilization that can survive on a low metabolic EROEI of 3:1 like renewables.
Arguments about the energy transition often have naysayers pipe up with “there aren’t enough minerals to electrify everything!” My response if you are correct. We can’t and shouldn’t try to electrify and renewable-ify the 8 billion plus people trapped in growth paradigm of high waste and high consumption. To try is to guarentee the collapse-hard outcome.
Metals are infinitely recyclable and we do have enough for a small sustainable civilization that lives within the planetary boundaries on renewables only. High efficiency, low metabolism and small enough to fit in the shoebox we call Earth.
Opponents and proponents of Nuclear also usually don’t understand it’s optimal use. First, let’s accept that nuclear is just another non-renewable. Even with breeder reactors. Even with alternative fuels like Thorium and molten salts. Building those plants, mining those fuels, disposing those wastes don’t fit in the EROEI paradigm.
Where they do fit, it in powering TEMPORARILY the transition of today to a smaller lower EROEI civilization. If we just cut fossil fuels today, magically we would just kill billions in the most unethical experiment. But using nuclear temporarily as a bridge from a non-renewable growth oriented civilization to a steady state, sustainable, renewable one is highly desirable.
The interesting part is getting past the money and power of the fossil fuel industry that will do everything in its power to fight this. Its lived values on display prove it only wants to die with the most money and power.
A lot of people still think it’s possible to have an energy transition, even those who should know better and are very well aware of the decline of oil resources - for example, Dennis Coyne who runs Peak Oil Barrel. He knows very well, because he’s made mathematical models to that effect, that oil production could decline by about 1/3 by 2050. But he thinks a transition will occur by then. I think it’s a religious-like belief at this point that there has to be something waiting in the wings to save us. Oh, and the mainstream opinion is, by the way, that oil supplies are plateauing because of lower demand (because of this alleged transition) and not because we are depleting the main sources.
On the other hand, you have guys like Art Berman who think supplies will last a good deal longer but that there will still be enormous upheaval in the coming century. Out here on the fringes there’s not much consensus.