| Controversial thought(not my opinion) Fossil fuels are good for the world, The reason we used them was because we did not have any real alternative at the time.
For the vast majority of history, people were dirt poor. By utilizing fossil fuels we were able to lift billions of people out of poverty. Think about it, you cant really run an industrialized economy on 100% reneable energy. Wind and solar are variable energy sources the more we add to the grid the more storage you have use to balance it out. Hydro(which has its own environmental problems) and geothermal are constrained to certain regions which have favourable geography. Fossil fuels are literally stored energy that you can stockpile and use when you want to. We talk about replacing plastic but plastic is one of the greatest materials we ever made(its waterproof, light, flexible, we can shape it into any form and its cheap so it is accessible) just think about all the food we buy at the supermarket most of it is stored in some form plastic to keep it fresh( not talk about things it does not make sense to store in plastic ie fruit that's just silly/wasteful) Our modern world is built with cement just look around it is everywhere, we use asphalt to build our roads and steel to build means of transport ships, trains, cars etc We talk about decarbonization but some countries have not even really carbonized to grow their economy to what could be considered a decent standard of living.
I can't see how we can look at 3rd world countries ie India/Africa and other 3rd world countries and tell them they can't grow their economies because we used up all the carbon "budget". |
If there were a colony of modern humans established on an Earth-like planet that lacked surface coal seams, didn't have limestone deposits for cement, and lacked oil fields, you wouldn't expect them to shrug and say "Well, back to the stone age, I guess."
No, instead, they'd set up smart grid networks to use power when wind and solar were available and consume less energy when it was not. They'd use DC-DC converters that were more flexible under brownouts, where early energy systems didn't have that technology and had to rely on fixed transformers and fixed frequencies. They'd connect long distance, high-voltage lines between areas with hydro and geothermal energy to regions without, using pumped hydro storage when variable energy sources had excesses. Yes, they'd run Sabatier process factories to generate synthetic hydrocarbons for plastics and portable fuels, they'd precipitate calcium carbonate from ocean salts and atmospheric CO2 to make cements and ceramics; these would probably be less plentiful as a result of their cost and because they'd be aware that they don't decay but they wouldn't be nonexistent.
Our energy systems are moving bit by painful bit in this direction already. Indian, African, and other growing economies are growing in a world where renewables are cheap, where we have tech that makes them more usable, and where there's a lot of knowledge about climate and environmental science so they don't have to make the same mistakes we did.
Yes, the industrialized world works the way it does because of a history of fossil fuels. It may even have been impossible to jump-start the industrial revolution without them. But it doesn't have to remain that way.