Things like solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, hydrogen, wave power, and fanciful notions like energy beamed from space and nuclear fusion may play an increasing role in our energy mix in the coming decades. But none of them alone can replace fossil fuels. Even when we add them all together, these “green” fuels can’t help us avoid catastrophic climate change […]
Do you have actual arguments for this? Renewable energy can provide a lot of power; The way the article says it makes it sound as if we should neglect these contributions; What makes you think that renewable energy is less important than degrowth?
Global emissions are still growing. That is due to global energy consumption growing faster then global renewable production increases. To avoid climate change, we have to not only increase renewable production, but also reduce energy consumption. We have to replace 139PWh of fossil fuel energy as quickly as possible. Last year we added 2PWh of new fossil fuels to the mix, but only 1.48PWh of wind, nuclear and solar. So just stopping the growth of fossil fuel energy production, would help more then all the clean energy we add.
However a fully clean energy system is possible. It is just a matter of getting to it quickly enough.