[madaxe_again]

And even some products which supposedly provide free apples are made with apples, and require themselves to be used beyond their serviceable lifetime to provide more apples than went into making them.

In short, we either need a radical new source of apples, or we need to find a way to use far fewer apples.

[pif]

> we either need a radical new source of apples, or we need to find a way to use far fewer apples.

I'm afraid that in no way we can have the second without the first one. People switched to fossil fuels because life was way too much easier with them, and no climate change can convince us to go back unless we find another big source of cheap energy or, simply, we exhaust the oil fields.

[madaxe_again]

We basically need portable fusion, or micro-hydrogen turbines powered by hydrogen formed by electrolysis of seawater from purely renewable sources. It's quite an ask, given that, as you say, fossil is cheap and easy - although not as cheap as it used to be to get at - but artificially cheap on the market in a (in my view) desperate lunge to stave off the inevitable fall, as their real production costs catch up with them. There's a reason they're investing increasingly in "alternative" energy sources, and moving branding towards energy from fossil fuels. The market will act, but I fear too late.

[pilom]

Pulling away from the metaphor for a moment, I was under the impression that with today's technology (not the panels of 20 years ago), solar panels take about 4 years to produce as much power as it took to manufacture them and then service lives of 25 years minimum. I'm honestly curious, do you have a source?

[madaxe_again]

Most of today's renewable technologies have decent energy buy-back times - this is in part due to improvements in materials, and in part due to manufacturing infrastructure energy investment being paid off - and of course the increasing use of renewable energy for the manufacture of renewable energy production goods.

That all said, a lot of what is currently installed will probably never see energy buy-back. Rather, we have to look upon a lot of existing renewable investment as just that - investment - for this has paved the way for actually energy positive renewable energy technology, which we now have, and seem poised to squander.