The continual characterisation of non-renewable infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy as "clean" gives the impression that it is clean (i.e. does not adversely impact the environment in any way). It is not clean. I wish that it was characterised correctly but I guess I'm whistling in the wind.
I sympathize in the abstract, but I think it's pretty well understood that 'clean' is relative to fossil carbon. Complaints that 'clean' is misleading, overlook the fact that no good or service on the global "free" market is free of socialized cost, and only collective intervention to take the profit out of selling fossil fuels by making renewables cheaper can mitigate the tragedy of the climate commons.
Although I agree that that may be what people claim to usually mean when they use the term "clean energy" but I'm not sure that's what all people reading the term take from it. Why was "renewable energy" (also a misnomer) not good enough? What happens if an actual clean energy source is found?
No, I think incorrect terms are bound to be misleading to most people. Why not use correct terms? The correct term is "infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy." Oh, right, that would not provide a hopeful way out of our predicament.
Fossil fuels will always be needed for everything we now do or make in modern civilisation (including for building infrastructure to harness renewable energy). If the profit is taken out of procuring them, then they won't be procured at anywhere near the rate required for modern civilisation.
Please don't take this as any sort of support for fossil fuels, I just prefer reality to delusion.
"Fossil fuels will always be needed for everything we now do or make in modern civilisation (including for building infrastructure to harness renewable energy)."
Why do you think that? Energy is energy. Fossil fuels have powered the rise of the modern world, but they turned out to have an unacceptable deferred social cost. The profit-driven transfer of geologic carbon to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes annually, *must cease* as soon as carbon-neutral alternatives can be built out. The only other scenario is open-ended global warming, with ever-accumulating cost in money and tragedy, as society is forced to keep adapting to higher and higher GMST.
Collective intervention in the energy market, i.e. the "visible hand" of government, to eliminate the price advantage fossil fuels enjoy by socializing their climate-change cost, will steer the "invisible hand" of the otherwise-"free" market to build out the global carbon-neutral economy. I expect technology R&D to eventually develop replacements for fossil carbon in every sector, one way or another. And although building new renewable energy supplies and infrastructure still uses fossil fuels, as time goes by it's being replaced by carbon-neutral energy for its own production. It's already happening. Whoever is telling you fossil fuels will always be required, is either a mercenary disinformer or a useful idiot for the petro-plutocracy.
Plastics will still be required, and the demand for them will sustain some fossil carbon production. Then it won't be a climate-change problem, but a solid-waste and mining impact one. Not 'clean', but not globally catastrophic, either. Humanity's impact on the biosphere will be ongoing, but at least it will be in a stable climate!
I think that because of analyses I've read. The need for concentrated transportable energy and for high industrial heat, as well as increasingly difficult to access minerals in ore of decreasing quality will ensure that fossil fuels will continue to be used in the life-cycles of all products and activities.
I've been reading of the transition for at least a couple of decades but, so far, no infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy has been built without fossil fuels. One would have thought there would be serious attempts to do so, to prove the concept. Of course, technology keeps changing and maybe, if collapse doesn't come beforehand, it might manage to replace a few of those hard to replace uses. But there are a lot of those.
You mentioned plastics but not fertilizer. However, if there ends up being a tiny fossil fuel industry, will there be one at all? The easy to get resources are mostly gone. A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse.
And it's odd that you appear to dismiss the non-climate-change issues. Most of our biodiversity loss has occurred before climate change became a problem. If ever climate is stabilised, civilisation would continue to devastate the environment. If all energy can come from renewable energy sources, the environment would continue to deteriorate but in a very different climate (+2°C, +3°C, more?) affecting all activities, including growing food (without fertilizers).
"A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse."
Wow. That's some industrial strength anti-decarbonization bullshit, all right. Straight from the Trump kakistocracy (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/chris-wright-climate-fossil-fuels)! I trust TCB followers are sophisticated enough not to be fooled. If you've been "reading of the transition for at least a couple of decades", you surely know better, and I'm wasting my time 'debating' you.
You can have the last word. I can't stop you, that's up to our host. But maybe someone else will take up the mallet!
Mike can still get the last word, but I'm delegating mine to Gemini 3 'fast' (i.e. 'free'). It's the autofisker 8^D! I asked it:
"Is 'A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse.' industrial-strength anti-decarbonization alarmism?"
It replied at some length, beginning with:
"The argument that a 'tiny,' shrinking fossil fuel industry will trigger a societal collapse is a sophisticated form of economic alarmism. It frames the managed decline of an industry as an inherently catastrophic 'death spiral' rather than a planned transition.
"While this logic appeals to the complexity of global supply chains, it relies on several flawed assumptions that categorize it as industrial-strength anti-decarbonization rhetoric."
Congratulations, Mike. Gemini thinks your argument is *sophisticated* industrial-strength anti-decarbonization rhetoric!
Ethiopia is sick of spending its country's treasury on importing fuel.
They're going all in on a green economy. Their big new hydroelectricity dam (GERD) has come online, they just made it illegal to import ICE cars, they're building factories for assembling new EVs and Chinese electric semis, they've got plenty of sun and a large region with a lot of shallow geothermal (part of the African rift).
This is just one example where the Chinese sphere of influence expanding in the Global South is helping to wean countries off of fossil fuels. The spiking global oil and LNG prices will accelerate that. (Though I do think it's possible that more countries will revert to coal-burning as cheaper than gas plants until they can make the transition.)
So right on, Dr Hausfather!
The way it's going, we will burn up unless we put an end to war. No more killing, ecocide, and waste of resources on weapons and militaries.
Dang! I live in a pipemare where people will wage war, buy guns, and destroy my planet til it 🔥 up.
I need a nice awakening.
The army class is the enemy.
Fear is the enemy humans must transcend, and military means fear.
The continual characterisation of non-renewable infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy as "clean" gives the impression that it is clean (i.e. does not adversely impact the environment in any way). It is not clean. I wish that it was characterised correctly but I guess I'm whistling in the wind.
I sympathize in the abstract, but I think it's pretty well understood that 'clean' is relative to fossil carbon. Complaints that 'clean' is misleading, overlook the fact that no good or service on the global "free" market is free of socialized cost, and only collective intervention to take the profit out of selling fossil fuels by making renewables cheaper can mitigate the tragedy of the climate commons.
Although I agree that that may be what people claim to usually mean when they use the term "clean energy" but I'm not sure that's what all people reading the term take from it. Why was "renewable energy" (also a misnomer) not good enough? What happens if an actual clean energy source is found?
No, I think incorrect terms are bound to be misleading to most people. Why not use correct terms? The correct term is "infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy." Oh, right, that would not provide a hopeful way out of our predicament.
Fossil fuels will always be needed for everything we now do or make in modern civilisation (including for building infrastructure to harness renewable energy). If the profit is taken out of procuring them, then they won't be procured at anywhere near the rate required for modern civilisation.
Please don't take this as any sort of support for fossil fuels, I just prefer reality to delusion.
"Fossil fuels will always be needed for everything we now do or make in modern civilisation (including for building infrastructure to harness renewable energy)."
Why do you think that? Energy is energy. Fossil fuels have powered the rise of the modern world, but they turned out to have an unacceptable deferred social cost. The profit-driven transfer of geologic carbon to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes annually, *must cease* as soon as carbon-neutral alternatives can be built out. The only other scenario is open-ended global warming, with ever-accumulating cost in money and tragedy, as society is forced to keep adapting to higher and higher GMST.
Collective intervention in the energy market, i.e. the "visible hand" of government, to eliminate the price advantage fossil fuels enjoy by socializing their climate-change cost, will steer the "invisible hand" of the otherwise-"free" market to build out the global carbon-neutral economy. I expect technology R&D to eventually develop replacements for fossil carbon in every sector, one way or another. And although building new renewable energy supplies and infrastructure still uses fossil fuels, as time goes by it's being replaced by carbon-neutral energy for its own production. It's already happening. Whoever is telling you fossil fuels will always be required, is either a mercenary disinformer or a useful idiot for the petro-plutocracy.
Plastics will still be required, and the demand for them will sustain some fossil carbon production. Then it won't be a climate-change problem, but a solid-waste and mining impact one. Not 'clean', but not globally catastrophic, either. Humanity's impact on the biosphere will be ongoing, but at least it will be in a stable climate!
I think that because of analyses I've read. The need for concentrated transportable energy and for high industrial heat, as well as increasingly difficult to access minerals in ore of decreasing quality will ensure that fossil fuels will continue to be used in the life-cycles of all products and activities.
I've been reading of the transition for at least a couple of decades but, so far, no infrastructure for harnessing renewable energy has been built without fossil fuels. One would have thought there would be serious attempts to do so, to prove the concept. Of course, technology keeps changing and maybe, if collapse doesn't come beforehand, it might manage to replace a few of those hard to replace uses. But there are a lot of those.
You mentioned plastics but not fertilizer. However, if there ends up being a tiny fossil fuel industry, will there be one at all? The easy to get resources are mostly gone. A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse.
And it's odd that you appear to dismiss the non-climate-change issues. Most of our biodiversity loss has occurred before climate change became a problem. If ever climate is stabilised, civilisation would continue to devastate the environment. If all energy can come from renewable energy sources, the environment would continue to deteriorate but in a very different climate (+2°C, +3°C, more?) affecting all activities, including growing food (without fertilizers).
Are you getting this stuff from Doomberg, Mike?
I've never read Doomberg, but have heard one of his "interviews" which wasn't exactly reality based.
"A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse."
Wow. That's some industrial strength anti-decarbonization bullshit, all right. Straight from the Trump kakistocracy (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/chris-wright-climate-fossil-fuels)! I trust TCB followers are sophisticated enough not to be fooled. If you've been "reading of the transition for at least a couple of decades", you surely know better, and I'm wasting my time 'debating' you.
You can have the last word. I can't stop you, that's up to our host. But maybe someone else will take up the mallet!
Mike can still get the last word, but I'm delegating mine to Gemini 3 'fast' (i.e. 'free'). It's the autofisker 8^D! I asked it:
"Is 'A tiny industry won't be able to continue to invest in getting at harder, lower quality resources. So if the transition gets close to being successful, it would ensure collapse.' industrial-strength anti-decarbonization alarmism?"
It replied at some length, beginning with:
"The argument that a 'tiny,' shrinking fossil fuel industry will trigger a societal collapse is a sophisticated form of economic alarmism. It frames the managed decline of an industry as an inherently catastrophic 'death spiral' rather than a planned transition.
"While this logic appeals to the complexity of global supply chains, it relies on several flawed assumptions that categorize it as industrial-strength anti-decarbonization rhetoric."
Congratulations, Mike. Gemini thinks your argument is *sophisticated* industrial-strength anti-decarbonization rhetoric!
Ethiopia is sick of spending its country's treasury on importing fuel.
They're going all in on a green economy. Their big new hydroelectricity dam (GERD) has come online, they just made it illegal to import ICE cars, they're building factories for assembling new EVs and Chinese electric semis, they've got plenty of sun and a large region with a lot of shallow geothermal (part of the African rift).
This is just one example where the Chinese sphere of influence expanding in the Global South is helping to wean countries off of fossil fuels. The spiking global oil and LNG prices will accelerate that. (Though I do think it's possible that more countries will revert to coal-burning as cheaper than gas plants until they can make the transition.)
Let's make wind energy REALLY CLEAN and fashion the turbine blades from industrial hemp,!