You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made. Technology is seen as the only solution because of the primary assumption that we need to keep growth and late stage capitalism. Degrowth, relocalisation, lower consumption are all solutions that would work better than technology (there are very serious people out there who demonstrated that technology won't replace the energy we need, Jancovici to name just one).

Technology is the only option in constant system, but with nothing happening, the system won't remain constant for long, and sacrifices will have to be made, not by choice.

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pingou 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Jancovici said a lot of stupid things also, although it seems that he recently acknowledged that renewables could make an impact (and not just "l'épaisseur du trait" as he always said). I'm not sure what you mean by "degrowth, relocalisation, lower consumption are all solutions that would work better than technology". People in general do no want to consume less, or buy more expensive stuff created locally, so I think it's easier to create new technologies than to change people mindset, although we probably should try to do both (which we are).

	▲	immmmmm 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		He does says (said) a lot of stupid things, but also has a good analysis in some domains. He’s very influenced by meadows/ world3/ club de Rome and while it’s a toy model it certainly a good thing to have a global view.
	▲	immmmmm 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Per IPCC AR6 total power goes from 18TW to 16TW in a good scenario, due to increased efficiency (no Carnot cycle). Degrowth per IPCC / earth system scientists mean the 10% the richest consuming less power. It’s much more a wealth distribution problem rather than a technological one. Both IPCC and IPBES agree there. Can’t wait for the downvotes on that one. That’s the one hill I’ll die on, literally. Edit: AR6 (WG2+3)

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epistasis 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made.

No. I am not.

I'm saying that unless the incentive system is aligned with our goals, then it's not actually climate action.

Technologists succeeded at doing that.

People who decided to use non-policy driven political action failed utterly at this. The degrowthers are particularly bad at this, but then all their thinking was muddled and riddled with errors about the reality of the science.

Technology makes the system non-constant. Technology is one of the biggest sources of social change.

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breuleux 20 hours ago | parent [-]

> Technologists succeeded at doing that.

Have they? How have they done that? I just want to know what you mean here.

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epistasis 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean this: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-...

Technology did that. With lots of government subsidies, and in particular with Germany kick starting a ton of solar industrial development.

Even in the US, with concerted anti-renewable sentiment at all levels of decision makers in both electric utility leadership and government leadership, new electricity is overwhelmingly carbon-free, because the technologists made it the cheapest:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

Technologists caused massive social change, by changing the technology. Far more than the people that focused only on culture and changing society through those means.

	▲	breuleux 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. That's good, I fully agree with you on that. But is this the solution, or just treating the symptom rather than the root cause? Technology by itself has never been the problem, the problem is the scaling up of it. Fossil fuels are harmless at a small scale, it's only once you exploit enough of them that you start to see harmful effects. But renewables are no different: we're drawing from the Earth's natural energy allocation, but that's the same energy that heats the planet in the first place -- so as we scale up renewables, we will also end up wrecking the planet. We'd need to scale it up so much it feels preposterous, but it seems obvious to me that if we can, we will. There is no upper limit to energy demand. And that's what I'm worried about in the long term, I suppose: that surprised Pikachu moment where human ingenuity (and AI, I guess) worked so hard on extracting every bit of solar energy that the rest of the planet, not receiving any of it anymore, predictably turned into an ice ball. This kind of nonsense could never happen if we could properly look and plan ahead as a society, but neither would climate change, so. Don't get me wrong, it's great that renewables are booming, but we could also have built a sustainable utopia on the back of fossil fuels if we had properly budgeted their use. We need to switch ASAP and start budgeting, because the problems we currently have aren't the only problems we will ever have, and the size of them, unfortunately, tends to scale with energy.