An Energy Diet Will Light the Way to a Bright Future

Access to the incredible power of fossil fuels has powered the industrial revolution and a very rapid expansion  of economic throughput and population over the past two centuries.

There is no “economy” — there is only energy conversion. Your car, your heated houses, your flights to Europe — all must take a big hit. Unless we invent some miraculous type of energy technology, seriously stemming climate change means we would have to deliberately decrease our standards of living. It’s impossible for everyone on the planet to live like people in Santa Clara County and still have a perfect environment. Just impossible. – Vaclav Smil, Scientist, Policy Analyst and Author

Here’s what we know about energy:

  • There is a finite supply of economically viable fossil fuels
  • Burning fossil fuels destabilizes our climate, threatening to make it unlivable
  • Harnessing the power of the sun, wind and water have their own negative environmental consequences, and they cannot realistically be scaled up to provide the same amount of energy we enjoy today.
  • The amount of energy we use, regardless of source, inevitably results in damage to Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems

It’s projected humans would have to mine more metals and minerals over the next 30 years than have been dug up over the last 70,000 to build a “renewable” transition.

“...the global economy doesn’t have the metals, rare earth minerals, energy, time or money to make this transition, and we must consider other actions such as radical reductions in energy demand and material consumption.”   - Andrew Nikiforuk, journalist covering the oil and gas industry

So reducing our energy appetite will be a key element of our National Project to End Overshoot. Yes, we’ll be focusing on decarbonizing our energy system, but at the same time we must find ways to use much less energy of all types.

Our energy policy will include:

  • An end to fossil fuel subsidies
  • No more fossil fuel leases on federal land
  • No more approvals of pipelines or other fossil fuel projects
  • Elimination of fracking
  • Suspend space exploration (reluctantly) until we achieve aggressive emissions reduction goals
  • Luxury carbon tax
  • Disincentives for use of fossil fuels - carbon pricing, probably a tax
  • Disincentives for energy use of all types
  • Implementing a cap on energy use
  • Programs and incentives to root out wasteful energy consumption
  • Programs and incentives to reward significant efforts to reduce energy use
  • Routine reporting on our levels of energy use
  • Prolific public education campaigns to drive elimination of waste and reduction of all energy use


LEARN MORE:

Shorter Reads:

I Warned Against the Green Energy “Boom.” It Sparked Debate – by Andrew Nikiforuk

Our Renewable Future – by Richard Heinberg

Can We Live Again in 1964′s Energy World? - by Andrew Nikiforuk

Is a Luxury Carbon Tax a Fair and Equitable Way to Tackle Climate Change? – by Sarah DeWeerdt

Emissions Savings from Equitable Energy Demand Reduction

Luxury-Focused Carbon Taxation Improves Fairness of Climate Policy

Longer Reads:

The Great Simplification – by Nate Hagens

Energy and Sustainability in Late Modern Society – by Karl North

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