Renewable Revolution

John Voelcker

22 Comments Mar 2, 2018

The most recent detailed studies on the likely warming of Planet Earth are grim indeed, suggesting that we are collectively at "very high risk" for the most extreme effects of climate change.

To stem that, mankind collectively will have to reduce its ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide radically and immediately.

Now, one longtime advocate of climate-change action has essentially thrown up his hands and said, it's not going to happen.

DON'T MISS: Planet at "very high risk" for extreme warming, per leaked UN report; every 5-year delay matters

It's a sobering piece of reading, but it's also an essay that anyone concerned about energy, emissions, climate change, and the planet we leave to our grandchildren should read.

The title says it all: "I'm no longer advocating for clean energy; here's why."

J.M. Korhonen is a longtime Finnish advocate for renewable energy to stem carbon emissions and the future effects of climate change.


He's followed these related issues for 10 years, and written about them since 2010.

"I think the debate is going nowhere, and I don’t want to waste my time on a futile project," he writes.

"We are not going to get a decarbonized energy system by 2050." (The emphasis is his.)

READ THIS: Most-accurate climate-change models suggest worst effects on global weather

He believes mankind will fail to limit emissions enough to limit global temperature increase to the 2 degree C reduction scientists say is required to limit the worst effects of climate change.

In fact, he says, we will miss it by a significant margin, and those effects may be exacerbated by self-amplifying feedback mechanisms.

We will fail because we've been "lulled into optimistic complacency" that renewable energy is just around the corner—and he believes it isn't, and won't be, in sufficient amounts and soon enough.

What that will mean, he says, is "difficult to assess," he says. "But I doubt it's going to be anything good for the vast majority" of humankind.

"The global poor will suffer the most, while we here in the rich North may be able—at least in the short term—to insulate ourselves from the worst effects and retreat to our own virtual bubbles to avoid hearing the cries of the others."

CHECK OUT: Earth continues to warm, fast; is climate change lost in political turmoil?

It's not easy or pleasant reading, but it's something very worth considering. Happy Friday.   

Hat tip: Ye Wang

Green Car Reports respectfully reminds its readers that the scientific validity of climate change is not a topic for debate  in our comments. We ask that any comments by climate-change denialists 🦍 be flagged for moderation. We also ask that political discussions be restricted to the topic of the article they follow. Thank you in advance for helping us keep our comments on topic, civil, respectful, family-friendly, and fact-based.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1115560_clean-energy-wont-happen-climate-change-will-be-bad-a-contrarian-perspective



Agelbert NOTE: Here's the deal, folks: We are being eaten alive by zombies of the profit over people and planet nature. They ARE zombies because they aren't really alive, consistently kill portions of the biosphere in order to continue functioning, and see THAT BEHAVIOR 🦀 (i.e. 100% unscrupulous and unprincipled) as sine qua non  to being a "rational apex predator" entity.

There is one more aspect of the fossil fuel fascist parasitical mindset that makes them virtual zombies that inhabit our nightmares AND out daily lives: THE FACT that they have a corrupting influence on our financial decisions due to the dividends many of us HERE have obtained from planet polluting, war causing, people and animal killing, BIG OIL AND GAS CORPORATION STOCKS.

THe "zombie" meme, often used in literature to make a point about how we are on the path to species destruction, looks like a human, instead of some other life form, for a very important psychological reason: We SEE OUR WORST, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, GREED BASED INSTINCTS embodied in them.

If the shoe fits, and all that...

It may not be too late to repent of our collective, greed based, stupidity. For those who want to do their small part to try, at least try, even if it might not work, to save humanity from itself, please sell ALL your stocks in polluting energy corporations and recommend your family and friends do the same. Don't earn a spot next to the fossil fuel zombies.