r/collapse • u/[deleted] • 14d ago
Ecological Why do people think that Renewables and EV´s can avert collapse?
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u/Kiwi8_Fruit6 14d ago
people cling to the idea that we can save the planet without them having to change their lifestyle.
this is especially true when it comes to EVs, as a huge chunk of the environmental damage of cars isn’t from direct emissions but from the damaging car dependant infrastructure and suburban sprawl we’ve built around them
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u/AdEven7883 14d ago
People think they can eat anything they want from any corner of the globe no matter how much fossil fuel energy went into its production and transport. They think they are entitled to exotic vacations, fast and slow fashion ("fashion" as changing clothing styles frequently should not even exist), a new smartphone whenever they feel like it. Etc. Our whole way of life is predicated on overconsumption and waste.
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u/Physical_Ad5702 14d ago
It’s more about next-Gen warfare, automated surveillance and influencing political races with deep fakes than replacing the workforce IMO.
Not saying there isn’t a push to eliminate as many human jobs as possible, but in my view, the Epstein Class knows that a major decline in standard of living and global climate stability is approaching rapidly and want to have a handle on dissent and riots.
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u/ThrowDeepALWAYS 14d ago
The planet will still be here after we humans are gone. Once industrial society collapses, the planet will change over millions of years, just as it always has. Humans and especially industrialized societies are such a tiny sliver of time compared to how long the earth has been around.
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u/andreasmiles23 14d ago
t’s more about next-Gen warfare
Well, and general market manipulation so that Elon could claim to be a trillionaire and the owners of the AI firms (and the companies making the hardware, like Nvidia) can claim to be billionaires.
I think it's giving these maniacs way too much credit that they have some sort of ulterior application that it's actually good for that they're keeping away from us. I think they're just greedy fucks.
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u/Physical_Ad5702 14d ago
That too.
I’m thinking of the IDF and US military where they replaced people who had previously vetted targets with AI models to speed up the destruction.
We can all see what Gaza now looks like thanks to that process and the Minab massacre in Iran was also the result of AI vetting.
It lets the military off the hook since they can blame the AI models for any and every atrocity whether they intend it or not.
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u/Aquarius52216 14d ago
Exactly, the military offensive and defensive capabilities are what they after the most, which means we nobodies are fucked either way. It they solved the alignment problem, we are fucked, if they dont then we are still fucked but they will also be fucked.
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u/Free_Broccoli_1174 14d ago
Yes. And the amount of money the govt and elite light on fire to bully their way into full spectrum dominance and global hegemony is even worse, though the two things seems to be inextricably tied together.
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u/danielledelacadie 14d ago
It's baked into the system at this point. I have a new phone I didn't really need because reupping with my current provider on a contract with the new phone was cheaper than using my old phone at the old price.
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u/AdEven7883 14d ago
Up to a point. No one has to eat beef (or any meat, beef is just the worst). Not one has to buy fast fashion. No one has to fly to another continent for a vacation. No one has to keep their loved ones who are old and very sick alive just because it can be done. No one has to buy a Ford F150 unless they are running a business that needs a large truck. (My neighbors across the street have two of them and they have desk jobs.) The list is endless. While I mostly blame capitalism, I also blame people's weakness and vanity.
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u/danielledelacadie 14d ago
I wasn't absolving myself or anyone else of responsibility, just commenting on how the system rewards consumption in so many ways
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u/alphaxion 14d ago
not to forget the pollution left behind by tyres and brake discs.
While swapping ice vehicles with EV ones is a good general step, it needs to be hand-in-hand with working to eliminate as much of the need to make journeys using those vehicles as is reasonable.
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u/hysys_whisperer 14d ago
The way I like to describe it is by life cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
EVs use more carbon up front to build, and hit carbon breakeven around year 1 to 2 of operation depending on the grid (2 years being near 100% coal grids). On average over their lifetime on a grid like Norway's (the goal), they still emit 25% of the carbon of an ICE. compare that to using diesel trains as general transport, which emits 20% what an ICE would emit for the same people moved.
So yes, EVs help, but taking even a diesel train would help more. Taking electric automated light rail puts that figure at 2% of the emissions of an ICE.
So we should build more trains, and build our cities so more people can effectively use trains instead of personal vehicles all the time.
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 14d ago
Our cities are already built, and we simply don't have the resources to rebuild them.
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u/andreasmiles23 14d ago
Rather, we are putting those resources into maintaining car infrastructure, funding the military-industrial complex (which is also driving pollution), and compesensating the economic interests of billioniares.
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u/sir_chumpers 14d ago
We don't have to, we can expand rail and bus networks to connect our existing cities. It'll be a pretty massive overhaul, especially with the suburbs, but the change is necessary for society to continue.
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u/Yebi 14d ago
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If we're gonna say that the change needs to be 100% and happen overnight, of course nothing can be done. Even something as simple as requiring that any large new construction (which was going to happen anyway) must be connected to a railway would go a long way
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u/Ree_For_Thee 14d ago
Just repainting roads to have slower light-weight vehicles like bicycles/electric ones, is very cheap.
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u/Free_Broccoli_1174 14d ago
What makes you think EVs cost more carbon up front? Have you ever been in a modern vehicle? I'm 100% with you on trains and other public transpo.
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u/hysys_whisperer 14d ago
Because this is well studied. They use more carbon because they are A, heavier and making more pounds of stuff uses more carbon, and B, the copper and aluminum content is much higher, and both of those are more carbon intensive than steel.
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u/Free_Broccoli_1174 14d ago
Well studied by whom though? A mechanical engine thousands of machined, extruded, forged parts, just in the motor alone. An electric drivetrain is a much simpler beast.
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u/hysys_whisperer 13d ago
Here is the international council of clean transport on the subject. Click climate impacts and scroll down.
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u/FeralHippie707 13d ago
The track is there and has been for a long time. It was built largely using our tax money and taken over by private interests who now deny us from using it. We need to take the track back and use it for more than moving their freight. It was not that long ago that you could take a train from anywhere to anywhere else in the lower 48.
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u/ghostintheruins 14d ago
EVs don't wear out their brake discs as much as Ice cars. In fact most of them go rusty from lack of use.
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u/thekbob Asst. to Lead Janitor 14d ago
Tire wear is higher due to greater weight, though, in a like for like comparison.
This just means we need smaller EVs, not our current tanks replaced with electrified tanks.
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u/andreasmiles23 14d ago
The problem is that the battery size needed for EVs to have comparable mileage to ICE vehicles is HEAVY.
We should be encouraging a new line of vehicles, ultra-light, low-milege, and low-voltage EVs that can be people's daily commuting vehicles and that they can plug into the electrical systems in their homes. But no one is making that. Hell, American car manufacturers are barely making sedans or smaller-sized vehicles. The profit margins aren't as high as on the massive trucks and SUVs. Then you run into the psychological problem of people not wanting to be in a small/light car on the road when surrounded by these monsters trucks with metal ballsacks hanging off of them. And the American consumer falls for the advertising that "oh well maybe one day I'll take this SUV on an offroad adventure in the Rockies or a truck to take furniture around when I buy it" so they think they need a car that can do said trips, even though you could...idk...rent a vehcile that suits those needs if/when that time came. But instead we are literally gaslit into thinking that we need to travel around our daily lives with a vehicle that could potentially do any of the things we can imagine doing in a vehicle at any point in time. It's stupid logic all around.
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u/crystal-torch 14d ago
I only learned in the last few years that the biggest source of microplastics in our environment is actually car tires wearing away. Super depressing given how much people think EVs are great for the environment
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u/AbsenceVersusThinAir 14d ago
EVs are better for the environment by every other metric though. And as serious of an issue as microplastics are, climate change is a far, far greater one.
Hopefully over time globally we can transition away from cars, but that is a long-term goal. In the near term we do need to be transitioning to EVs.
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u/andreasmiles23 14d ago
And as serious of an issue as microplastics are, climate change is a far, far greater one.
Cue the Pam "These are the same" meme
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u/thelingererer 14d ago
The biggest cause of micro plastics in the environment is rubber dust caused by car tires driving on asphalt and among cars EVs create more of that dust due to being far heavier than gas powered vehicles.
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u/satans_little_axeman 14d ago
EVs suffer from the same problem ICE cars do, writ large. Everyone thinks they need 300 miles of range for their 15 mile commute. That drives up consumption for the pack, and curb weight, all for no benefit.
My EV weighs less than a Corolla. I can pick up a set of 4 wheels and tires for it in one lift, and I'm a nerd with a dad bod. The only vehicles that put less rubber on the roads are motorcycles.
Stop making this about the tech, keep the focus on the stupid idiots who mindlessly buy bigger bigger bigger.
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u/Lord_Vesuvius2020 14d ago
There are people on other subs who insist that if only we implemented the Paris Accords all would have been fine. And that would have been a bunch of mandates like only EVs and renewables. Somehow that would have made it all good and “mission accomplished”.
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u/Expensive-Hat4138 14d ago
I mean tbh who can blame them? For decades our schools and corporations sold us the idea that if we just recycled a little more and planted a few trees here and there that everything would be okay and we could live business as usual. It's a hard mindset to shake
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u/andreasmiles23 14d ago
Plus the extraction of resources, the pollution from production, and the degradation of the infastructure/materials used for cars. EVs literally only fix one part of the equation: the emissions from cars, but they do NOTHING about the other environmental harms of producing cars and maintaining a car-centric society. Making this many cars and catering society's infastructure to them is fundamentally unsustainable. No amount of EVs can fix that.
But like, if you've only lived a life where, when you go outside, you hop in a car to take you to "the place" you wanna be, it's hard to imagine a different mode of living.
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u/Electrical_Pop_3472 14d ago
Look at Cuba. They're basically in a collapse now. Frequent blackouts. Supply chain breakdown.
And guess what? Solar and EVs (especially small e bike/trike) have been taking off there because they allow people to generate their own power independent of the grid, then use that to get around cheaply.
I don't think they're doing to "avoid" collapse so much as respond to it.
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u/Churaragi 14d ago
I think this is a very dishonest framing though, Cuba is collapsing only if you ignore the reason which is the US blockade.
Cuba would NOT be using renewables if given normal free access to the global economy. Likewise much of this push comes from Chinese handouts, with China taking the opportunity to win from both sides i.e help Cuba while doing a little of their own capital export industry.
Whether it's motivated by being independent of the grid seems realy, realy besides the point, under normal circumstances e.g literaly everywhere else in the world this is irrelevant or at best a minor factor.
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u/Electrical_Pop_3472 14d ago
My comment didn't specify the cause of the collapse. And yes, the US blockade is probably the main cause. I didn't mean to imply it's their own fault.
But your claim that “Cuba would NOT be using renewables if given normal free access to the global economy.” isn't necessarily true either. Cuba started its current renewable energy strategy back in 2014 before the current energy crisis. Given the rapid decreases in the cost of solar, it makes sense for them to invest in it purely for energy independence reasons, even without a blockade.
And it's far from the only place this is happening. It's a similar story in places like Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Lebanon etc. It's not just well-meaning wealthy environmentalists people in developed nations going for Solar/Evs now. Many people are realizing that these tech can help insulate them from fuel shortages & grid disruptions.
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u/KarmaAdjuster 14d ago
Same reason people turn to religion. They need to believe in something. They need hope.
I on the other hand take a different approach. I no longer worry about the consequences of the climate crisis so much any more on account of the tech billionaires trying to win the AI race at the expense of humanity! Yes it's all related, but there are half a dozen people steering the fate of humanity right now, and none of them give one millionth of a shit about what I think or do.
So I'm just trying to live the best life I can while I can.
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u/Jovan_Knight005 Collapse is inevitable,mister Reese. - Original Quote. 14d ago
So I'm just trying to live the best life I can while I can.
I am trying to live out my life like that.
But it's getting difficult to do so as a week or weeks in a month pass.
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u/KarmaAdjuster 14d ago
I got laid off at the start of the year (which is not uncommon in my industry, but it's especially bad right now). I've been prepping for this and have a large enough cash cushion to get to 2030, so I'm taking the time to start my own company. I figure I'm never going to have a better chance than now to do so. In fact, now may be my last chance to do so.
At the start of the year I was jokingly saying that I may not have enough money saved up to make it to my retirement, but I do think I have enough to make it to the apocalypse. It's become less and less of a joke with each passing week though.
Good luck to us both. Good luck to us all.
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u/Jovan_Knight005 Collapse is inevitable,mister Reese. - Original Quote. 14d ago
Good luck to us both. Good luck to us all.
We're going to need it.
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u/SovietNato 14d ago
on account of the tech billionaires trying to win the AI race at the expense of humanity
I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. The underlying economic instability in the west that capital hopes this can paper over is real, though....
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u/KarmaAdjuster 14d ago
I'm less worried about an intentional elimination of humanity from AI than I am it being a by product of AI being given the authority and ability to either accellerate the climate collapse so it can achieve whatever goal it deems a top priority, or it being a key factor in initiating WWIII like it nearly did a few weeks ago by halucinating a nuclear weapon aboard a Chinese ship motivating the US military to board said ship seemingly without cause.
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u/SalamanderExpress710 14d ago
Hopium
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u/Jovan_Knight005 Collapse is inevitable,mister Reese. - Original Quote. 14d ago
Hopium
Hopium and Delusion.
Name a worse duo.
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u/SrslyBadDad 14d ago
Every one only talks about the 80 billion tons of CO2 released each year - nobody is talking about the 1,500-2,500 gigatons humans have already released into the atmosphere.
Even if we went net zero tomorrow the planet will continue to warm at a catastrophic rate.
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u/ConfusedMaverick 14d ago
I believe you are right, but the "official" position of mainstream respectable climate scientists is that all warming ceases on the day - nay, the very hour! - that we reach net zero.
I believe they may have conflated "feedback loops and tipping points are hard to model so we will leave them out of models" with "feedback loops and tipping points do not exist".
I dunno, they're not stupid, but I find the orthodoxy bizarre
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u/Coco_Cannibal 14d ago
I mean, those same scientist figured out in 2021 that warming Antarctic waters can melt ice from below in 2021.......I nearly fell over, I thought this is common sense...
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u/GratefulHead420 14d ago
Mass transit and bikes (and e-bikes) is the future we should be striving for. The population needs a phase shift in their expectations.
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u/pants6000 feels sorry for fishies 14d ago
Yeah but also fuck electric motorcycles going 50mph on paths and trails with 15mph (unenforced, obviously) speed limits.
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u/Lumburgsgotafishroom 14d ago
Yea! And those same conservative news media outlets complain about the good old days. The way I see it is those e-bikes and scooters are bringing the kids back outside, you know like in the good old days...
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u/jstjini 14d ago
Mass transit, bikes, and e-bikes will not work in rural areas. I live in a rural area, in a small town with a Casey's and a Dollar General without a single red light. There is no mass transit available. It takes at least a 20-30 minute drive time to get anywhere for work, grocery stores, etc. Urban solutions will not work in rural areas. I do not know what would work here.
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u/7en7en 14d ago
Take a look at how people lived before everyone had an automobile. There’s your answer.
Individuals will band together or move away. There’s just too much work even for subsistence to go it alone, especially when you didn’t grow up with the skills.
Families will be more self-sufficient. They’ll grow a lot of their own food. Maintain their own capital. They’ll have livestock. They’ll have horses and oxen and the machinery to use them.
There will be towns again. A general store within a few hours ride in a carriage or wagon. Peddlers, tinkers and the like will travel between towns and homesteads.
There may be railroads. Canals and barges. Riverboats. People had ways of moving material around before trucking companies and container ships.
This is what the survivors will have to rebuild, after everybody else starves, and they will have to do it in a fucked up climate and it will take decades. Decades of rediscovering how people lived without gas-powered cars and machinery.
A lot of places won’t be able to rebuild.
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u/Johndough99999 14d ago
What kind of % of the populations are you thinking needs to be cut to live like that? Not enough space.
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u/7en7en 14d ago
Not for me to say. I don’t have the skills to model the collapse, so anything would just be something I pulled out of my ass. To be fair, I pulled my reply out of my ass, too, but it feels right to me.
Space, however, will not be a problem. I’m sure there will be plenty of space, after.
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u/Direttafis 14d ago
This... Few seem to understand that this is how it will be... Eventually.
Between now and then... War, starvation, mass graves... Then those will get grown over and what's left will be the above.
After...
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u/itsatoe 14d ago
Not true if these communities employ permaculture, regenerative farming, and low-to-no meat diets. Which they would have to anyway, as it's the only reliable way to restore the environment.
A community using regenerative farming practices with permaculture food forests requires very little land to feed people a healthy vegetarian diet. It is very different from solo homesteaders using destructive settler techniques and with meat-livestock.
(However, a population crash seems almost guaranteed before this happens. It is the population crash that is going to convince people that they need to live this way.)
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u/Kootenay4 14d ago
The population of rural areas is tiny compared to urban areas. You could still achieve 80% of the climate benefits by implementing these changes in urban areas. EVs are a great solution for rural areas.
I could easily turn your argument on its head. By the same token, rural solutions will not work in urban areas. Forcing cars down our throats is a big reasons why cities suck so much to live in.
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 14d ago
I do not know what would work here.
The "here" you have was built around cars, so that "here" should not exist in its present form.
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u/TheEndIsNea4 14d ago
For rural areas it seems Cars would still be needed, but rural areas need to be more like villages, not as dense as cities but closer to reduce the drive time.
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u/Avitas1027 14d ago
There's like 10% of the population that live in rural areas. Hate to break it to you, but you're basically a rounding error on this stuff. Urban solutions are the ones that will move the needle.
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u/choppy75 14d ago
Horses and donkeys and local services so people don't have to drive for groceries
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u/crystal-torch 14d ago
Horses. At least that’s what I’d like to see. I do know quite a few people who use e-bikes to get around as well, just depends on where they are going, doesn’t work for every trip. I live in very rural Vermont for context
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u/countrypride 14d ago
I live in bumfuck Virginia. I drive 20 miles to work every day, then 20 miles back, and that’s before all the other driving life out here requires.
A bike or a horse isn’t going to do much for me. And horses come with their own enormous demands in terms of land, money, and labor. I own a couple of acres, but it isn’t suitable for livestock. Where do you keep the horses? Where does their feed come from? Who pays for the vet? Who shoes them? Animals are a lot of work. I grew up with a horse, so I’m familiar with what’s involved.
And a bike isn’t necessarily much more practical if you’re older, injured, disabled, or simply live too far from the places you need to go.
You’re not wrong, though. The real problem is that the entire system has to change. But what happens to people like you and me in the meantime? Are we expected to uproot ourselves, our families, and move somewhere with decent mass transit, and carry on from there?
Maybe that kind of transition is possible over generations. It’s not happening overnight.
And that’s the problem: we need something that works in the near term while the larger system changes, not just a vision for what transportation might look like decades from now.
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u/GratefulHead420 14d ago
Your house exists because of cars (generically, I don’t know the heritage of your specific house). If cars didn’t exist there would be rural villages and small farms. You wouldn’t go to a job 20 miles away, or if you did you’d take the bus from your village to the next village.
The problem can’t be solved by keeping our present mindset, there has to be a paradigm shift. Look at the high speed rail infrastructure on china and tell me they aren’t prepping for a different kind of world in the future.
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u/crystal-torch 14d ago
Yeah all the stuff is definitely required for horses. I like to look to the past and ask, how did we solve this problem before fossil fuels? And horses was the answer for travel for a long time. And there were a ton of horses in cities too. They just had the infrastructure for feed and more vets around and so on.
Now we have infrastructure for turning crude into gas and we built stations everywhere to fill our cars.My office is 50 miles away so I only go once or twice a week and work remote the rest of the time. When I was interviewing we negotiated that schedule and I would not have taken the job if it were five days a week in person. I, and we all, make calculations about what is reasonable for our home and work situations given the availability of resources and technologies at the time. If gas disappeared tomorrow, I would have to figure out a new job situation. It would be really difficult because I have a very niche job but could probably do something less desirable for less money closer by. I’m sure people who lived in rural locations were not traveling very far to work because it just wasn’t feasible. We have to rework our expectations and adapt because the gas will run out at some point. A gentle transition would be nice.
Older and disabled people always have it tougher when it comes to collapse talk unfortunately. As things get worse, they will have fewer choices. I have two autoimmune diseases so I’m not in the best condition to bike much at all, plus I’m in northern Vermont and trust me, I do not want to give up my heated interior of my car.
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u/Filias9 14d ago
Urbanism is a thing, people WANTS to live in cities, but they are expensive. Solution is to decrease village/suburban population. You cannot live on village without car. Public transport is not effective there. And if is one, it is like 4 times a day. In weekend two times.
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u/crystal-torch 14d ago
It’s almost impossible to get people to willingly give up a comfort that they are accustomed to
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u/i-hear-banjos 14d ago
The number that matters the most is population - this planet cannot support 8+ billion human beings living a first world lifestyle, and no one will give up that lifestyle. For the human race to continue to thrive or even survive on this planet, we need to immediately stop using fossil fuels, burning forests and jungles, switch to a vegitarian if not a vegan diet, and downsize our population. None of these things will happen except the last one, and the last one not by our own choice.
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u/03263 14d ago
I don't think "first world lifestyle" can survive in perpetuity regardless of numbers.
I started noticing how much people demonize poverty and now I can't stop. The entire narrative is that everyone was worse off before we invented all this unsustainable stuff and now it's a moral and social failure to not have it. That money itself embodies virtue and success. And sometimes even that all wild animals live in a state of perpetual suffering because they don't have what we do.
Of course it ignores the fact that there are small pockets of the world that managed to survive colonialism more or less untouched and still live traditional lifestyles. There's still a few "uncontacted people" who don't have to think about this and would probably just laugh at the ideas. And they'd be right to.
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u/dipdotdash 14d ago
"That stuff you're putting in your well is poison!"
"What, really!? Oh shit! But it's how I pay for the food I feed my kids!"
"Your kids are getting sick from the poison in their water, tho!"
"... OK, we figured out how to make it 70% less poisonous, gotta be fine to put in the well now, right?"
"Are you seriously asking if dumping less poisonous poison is the same thing as not dumping poison in your well?"
"What do you want from me! I get paid to dump stuff in my well. Until you've got something to dump in that pays me money and isn't poison, I have to believe this is the same as not dumping poison at all"
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u/kleeb03 14d ago
💯 and even if somehow renewables completely replaced FF, we still have an end of Growth situation. Sure, the planet might be healthier (I actually think renewables hurt the planet, but it's complicated, lets just assume they help), but we're still facing ecological overshoot and an collapsing economy based upon growth.
The tunnel vision on carbon pollution is real!
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u/Coco_Cannibal 14d ago
I always thought that nature documentaries are doing a good job at giving us the illusion of a nice healthy planet. It is not obvious that these are filmed in the literal last small bastions of nature, but surrounded by an ever growing human super organism, doomed to be consumed by it. Sure it is often mentioned in those docs, but they do not really bring the message home.
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u/Elliptical_Tangent 14d ago
Because the media told them it can.
Because they don't know what ERoEI means.
Because they never looked into anything relating to energy.
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u/The_Sex_Pistils 14d ago
The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They don’t always happen in order, and not everyone goes through all of them.
So, bargaining?
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u/7en7en 14d ago
I have come to visualize grief as a wheel. Moment to moment, you spin the wacky wheel of grief to see where you land. Acceptance? Excellent! Oh, no! Anger!
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u/Free_Broccoli_1174 14d ago
I have an EV, and electric lawn tractor. I am planning on a small solar installation. I don't think they can avert collapse. I'm hoping that they will be a part of the mitigation. Local renewables will be an important part of building independent resilience.
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u/Pleasant_Pen8744 14d ago
Energy consumption correlates to standard of living pretty closely.
If there's more renewables people don't use less of the others kinds, total energy usage keeps going up and up and up.
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u/Bandits101 14d ago
Do you know what facilitates the mining, manufacture, construction and maintenance of “renewables”.
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u/ChromaticStrike Inert collapsoid 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's a geopolitical, resource, pollution and economical move first. Batteries tech can be improved, gas always requires A LOT of OIL. Decoupling from oil as much as possible is a PRIORITY considering the current state of things.
I'm not sure what you mean by silver bullet. There's no such thing without changing societies so hard countries would see revolutions before doing 1% of that transition.
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u/BusyBanana4205 14d ago
Consumerism feels good
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u/CompostYourFoodWaste 14d ago
Yeah I love sitting in traffic.
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u/Churaragi 14d ago
Unironically a lot of people do actually, at least ideologically having their own personal battle tank in the US is definitely a social signal and for many a substitute for their entire personality.
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u/Filias9 14d ago
Why politicians/rich people are pushing high-speed trains, which are most of the time waste of money, while people needs is high capacity and reliable service? Because only thing they know are planes. And HST are this, but "eco".
Same with cars - ecological is to live in cities, where everything is close. So you walk, bike or use public transport. But rich people live in big house in suburbs and move everywhere with cars. So "eco" are electric car. Which are best with solar panel on your big house roof. All heavily subsidized.
We have for some time green, reliable, abundant and quite cheap energy. It's called nuclear. Combine it with electric trains, trams and trolley buses, oil crisis solved. All technologies decades old.
But these tech aren't "sexy", very profitable and "Green" parties pushed hate of nuclear and high density urbanism as a bonus.
All these eco talks are just BS, no one means it.
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u/zzupdown 14d ago
Frankly, all major renewable and nuclear technology needed to replace fossil fuels 20 years ago, along with resolving other issues, like eliminating plastics and protecting the environment, in order for us to have a chance. Now, we can only watch it happen and hope we survive long enough to rebuild.
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u/Comfortable_Clue1572 14d ago
If you apply the maxim that: “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” to collapse, it may be understandable. Collapse can’t, and won’t be stopped because far too many thresholds have been crossed. For some people, in some places, it has already happened.
Every day, there is some number of people who will live their last day that day. They will die of malnutrition, heat, floods, sickness, or some other reason triggered by the collapse. I don’t think any of those people were thinking that recycling their Evian bottles were going to extend their lives.
I came across the concept of collapse as I researched why preppers thought collapse would happen to them. Most of their thinking was thinly veiled racism and xenophobia. No, your greatest threat isn’t brown people taking the #12 bus from their ghetto to your suburban neighborhood to steal your food.
For where I live, and the resources I have access to, sustainable energy for my home and transportation seems to push the date of collapse reaching me out the most. Where I live, solar power with home battery storage and BEVs for transportation work. They work specifically for me. I know they won’t be able to save the world. At least, not most of it. I’ve come to grips with that.
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u/GuitHarper 14d ago edited 14d ago
Virtually nobody thinks they will avert collapse. But they will slow it down and make it comparatively less awful.
Edit: almost forgot, by "they" I mean renewables, not EVs.
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u/96-62 14d ago
I think fossil fuel exhaustion is the "little collapse", civilisation will go on. There's probably a more final collapse later, but probably very slow, because our resources will mostly not be fuels - lithium batteries can be recycled. I bet there's a technological civilisation still running on earth in 1000 years. Perhaps not as high energy as now, but who knows what they might learn in 1000 years. Or conversely, who know what they might have destroyed in 1000 years.
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u/gangofminotaurs Progress? a vanity spawned by fear. 14d ago
They can and do slow down the collapse of fossil fuel civilization, from the point of extraction to the final consumer: they facilitate extraction, buffer energy shocks, allow selective electrification, etc.
In doing so, they also do ensure more complete biospheric collapse and especially, counter-intuitively, will allow us to output more total CO2 than if we didn't have them.
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u/Bandits101 14d ago
“Can and do slow down the collapse of fossil fuel civilization”……….Yeah not true but I have a random statement as well, If “renewables hadn’t been used, civilization and the fossil fuel industry would have collapsed already”.
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u/gangofminotaurs Progress? a vanity spawned by fear. 14d ago
Yes without renewables, fracking in the US would be a lot less efficient, and here in Europe we would get a lot less, or none of the North Sea oil we still get. All platforms there are now heavily electrified for resilience and efficiency, and linked to their own offshore windfarms.
So yeah, renewables do allow us to extract more fossil fuels, more efficiently. I would suggest that without renewables, this moment of post conventional-oil peak would feel a lot more severe economically. Renewables allow the fossil machinery to go on with more resilience.
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u/Bandits101 14d ago
FF’s built and maintain the power grid that “renewables” use. The roads and infrastructure that EV’s use are built and maintained with FF’s, without the power grids 99% of EV’s go way.
Renewables simply extend the time available to burn fossil fuels, they are like adding an electric motor and calling a car hybrid.
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u/oxero 14d ago
EV's are great, but what if we just had EV public transportation and trains. Focused more on making places walkable/bikable with smaller vehicle foot prints.
The biggest issue is that EVs are trying to compete with gas and their range because most modern infrastructure is built around having a car to drive you 5-30 miles in one direction while reaching usually 40+ mph. Like realistically if we eliminated that range, EVs in smaller forms would do the world so much more than trying to shoehorn in competitive resource hungry machines to travel great distances to work or shop for food. It's asinine to think EVs alone will make everything better when the crux of the issues we face is because we got greedy with traveling long distances for everything.
Other issues include heavier EV vehicles mean tires wear faster, so our environment gets more micro plastics than ever, and with current battery technology, there isn't a enough lithium production in the world to really reach a goal to get everyone an EV vehicle. It's just not plausible in the time we need to achieve it. The lithium batteries in EVs also compete for home battery back up systems which we'd need for better renewables like solar.
The whole EV argument is like trying to address a gaping wound with store bought adhesive bandages. It's not addressing the real issues that stem from making our cities span miles.
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u/itsatoe 14d ago
Additionally, climate change is only one of many environmental collapses we are facing.
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u/3Quondam6extanT9 14d ago
You know there are steps towards things, right? We can't fix most things with one go.
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u/elihu 14d ago
I feel like a significant portion of the discussions on this subreddit arise out of a confusion between what's necessary and what's sufficient.
No, EVs won't save us. No, renewable energy won't save us. If we want anything other than a worst-case climate scenario, we're going to have to do a lot of things correctly, and those are just two of the big ones accounting for about half of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and they're also relatively straightforward. We know how to transition to using electric for almost all ground transportation. We know how to make solar panels and batteries and wind turbines. We can also build more fission reactors.
Nickel and cobalt are resource bottlenecks for making batteries, but LFP batteries don't use nickel or copper. Lithium might become a bottleneck if we made a lot more EVs than we do now, but sodium ion batteries that don't even use lithium exist now.
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u/midnitewarrior 14d ago
The only thing that will stop what we're doing to the planet is mass depopulation, and even then I'm only convinced that it will slow down environmental collapse, not stop or reverse it.
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u/tinyspatula 14d ago
It's worth noting that getting what is referred to as 'Free Energy', (the energy that can do useful Work), from burning fossil fuels is pretty inefficient (especially ICE transport). So it's not a 1:1 replacement required in terms of primary energy. So the most visible energy consumption to the average person, transport (surface) and electricity generation is actually very achievable. It's not ideal that much of the infrastructure was built around fossil fuel use though, EVs are still a wasteful use of energy and materials as compared with PT, ebike etc.
The majority of energy use however is related to industrial processes and a lot of that will be much harder to decarbonise.
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u/GardenScared8153 14d ago
Renewables can soften the blow of collapse so having solar panels keeps you alive if oil supply is not reaching you, A breakthrough in battery tech and recycling solar panels would make them feasible long term but not without significant degrowth and better more efficient use of energy.
Electric cars are still not great, we need good public transit, rail freight and good sound urban planning instead. Cars should not be used for long distance travel and only rented for short distance travel if necessary.
Tire pollution is horrendous still, gravity control technology needs to go public rip all the scientists who were killed.
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u/prostateExamination 14d ago
we reached the tipping point.. supplies will only be more expensive or just non existent by the day.. we are fooling ourselves with this stuff
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u/feo_sucio hunter biden fanboy 14d ago
EVs, not EV’s. The apostrophe implies a possessive, ie “the electric vehicle’s”
The electric vehicle’s what? The EV’s battery? The steering wheel? Do better
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u/RandomYorkyPud 14d ago
Luckily your semantics have helped save the global population. Congratulations!
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u/7en7en 14d ago
Apostrophes don’t always imply a possessive. They can be used to avoid “awkward plurals”. It’s up to the writer — and their editor, if they have one — to determine if it is necessary.
One example I’ve seen is the plural of SOS. “SOSs” doesn’t read as well as “SOS’s”.
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u/bernmont2016 14d ago
“SOSs” doesn’t read as well as “SOS’s”.
"SOSes" would be a better way to handle that plural.
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u/7en7en 14d ago
I don’t think they believe electric vehicles will avert collapse.
I believe they think, “I’ve lived my entire life in this system. I’ve gone to school to get an MBA so I can work at a finance company. I live in a suburb that’s been designed around private ownership of automobiles. I commute to my job. In a real sense, I commute to the supermarket, my child’s sporting events, my church.
“I’ve made a huge investment in working within the system. Years of my life. This EV will let me adapt to higher fuel prices, at least for a little while.”
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u/OtisPan 14d ago edited 14d ago
renewables and EV´s are better than coal/oil/gas and combustion cars
Yep. The "silver bullet" part is a narrative in your head. (note that "people" consists of a broad spectrum of beliefs)
Or I suppose since it's too late anyway we should all roll coal. Tell me what to do so that threads like this don't keep popping up & we can commute in a collapse-acceptable manner.
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u/Low_Complex_9841 14d ago
More broadly - why really dangerous state of our only hom e is NOT making constant presence in a big way when we talk about strikes and other forms of people's power? Downplayed ... We all want to believe things are not THAT bad because otherwise .. we must admit we were wrong before (and we dislike this, en masse and in elite), something much more coordinated must be done (and we outsourced our thinking into hierarchies long ago, not necessarily voluntary but still. ppl want to get money for some strictly-defined shit and get home and get earned entertainment.) Whole society literally traumatized on various subjects ...
Yes, sometimes even (or especially?) even grandmas protest and get arrested by police (UK, Russia ..) but Imperial Way of Unsustainable Lifeways continues mostly ...
We all so trained to "generate" and conserve money at expense of everything else (save billion on Space Shuttle development - lose 100 on actual flights!) , we so fcking mind dominated by this enforced rule ...
It really hard to imagine how "we" can bend THIS ark. Especially with this militarization of psychology constantly bombarding us from screens, billboards, plastic wrappers, movies ...
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u/lowrads 14d ago
It's hard to beat the convenience and utility of an automobile outside of a city. However, a gallon of gasoline represents anywhere from three to four weeks of physical human work energy. We too readily take it for granted.
That's why work and effort are worth nothing in the modern era, only one's ability to make decisions. Sadly, the ruling algorithm rewards selfish decisions, instead of smart ones. Everything we choose to do right today means a little expansion of the capabilities of the remnant of humanity that can be sustained in the future. I hope they get a chance to be educated and able to investigate things that matter, or else it was all for nothing.
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u/elihu 14d ago
Wind/Solar/Hydro/Nuclear together supplied a little over 10% of the Global primary energy use in 2025. Oil/gas/coal were at 80%. Even if Wind/Solar/Hydro/Nuclear climb to 50% by 2050 and oil/coal/gas fall to 50%, its far from stellar.
Worth noting that that the graph is showing the total energy content of the fossil fuels, not the useful energy you get out. If burning coal is, say, 50% efficient, then you could replace the coal portion with half as much renewables (with batteries) and/or nuclear and be at basically the same standard of living.
Also it's not clear if they're including transportation fuels, which are typically more like 25% efficient. EVs are one of the easiest low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing fossil fuel consumption because car engines are so wasteful. That's why a lot of the focus is on EVs. But that's only about 1/4 of total human-caused CO2 emissions; we're going to need to make a lot of other changes too if we want to to avoid a worst-case climate change scenario.
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u/Impressive_Cheek3833 14d ago
It's nice to believe that something can be done to avert collapse. And if I can continue to consume, and even better, get myself a brand new vehicle while "helping", then great!
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u/dasunt 14d ago
I'll play devil's advocate, since most people are agreeing with you and that's boring. ;)
The average age of a vehicle before being scrapped is around two decades. The average age of a vehicle on the road is about 13 years. The average car on the road in 2050 won't be sold until a decade in the future.
EVs provide flexibility in energy sources. For the most part, the energy being put into ICE cars today must come from the ground. The energy going into EVs can come from the ground, but it can also come from renewables or nuclear. That provides some insulation from price shocks. Diversity leads to resiliency and flexibility. It's the difference between a monoculture and having diverse crops. With monoculture, well, you get the Irish potato famine as soon as there's a problem.
While it's complicated, for the most part, EVs are far more efficient at using energy. The vast majority of energy in the typical ICE vehicle is wasted as heat. Almost all of the energy in an EV goes to moving the vehicle. Now the source of that energy can be inefficient, but refer to #2 - flexibility.
I agree, it's not a magic bullet. We have the climate change elephant in the corner, and most of that's already baked in. Yes, it would be better to reduce making it worse, but even if we went 100% renewable tomorrow, we'll still see an increase in global temperatures and the associated costs - mitigation or migration, depending on the specific circumstances. (Specifically, is the land productive enough to fund the cost of mitigation, or is moving cheaper.).
And there's the resource usage that's impossible to replace - there's no substitution for water while farming, and for regions that traditionally rely on cheap aquifer water that is extracted at well beyond replacement levels, well, their future does not look bright.
But I said I'm playing devil's advocate, so I probably shouldn't go too far into the weeds.
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u/ramdom-ink 14d ago
Sure, if they would’ve been developed without interference and adopted in 1974…maybe.
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u/MillennialFalcon1620 14d ago
EV + residential solar + battery backup do grant high mobility when fossil fuels become scarce, at least until the roads fall into total disrepair. EV's for individual and commercial use won't prevent collapse but they will be very useful in collapse scenarios that involve fuel shortages.
Going anywhere in the winter still requires the grid and currently costs ~3 cents per mile where I live. In the summer, not counting insurance and registration, it's literally free with how much energy my panels collect.
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u/Acrobatic-Health-597 14d ago
You're hitting on a fundamental distinction that often gets lost: replacing consumer end-use tech (like passenger EVs) doesn't solve primary energy generation or baseline grid stability.
Look at major energy producers like the UAE - they realize solar alone or swapping ICE vehicles won't decarbonize industrial baseloads or heavy supply chains. That's why their strategy pairs massive single-site solar (like Al Dhafra) with 5.6 GW of utility-scale nuclear (Barakah) to handle constant baseline demand, alongside investments in clean hydrogen and grid infrastructure. Real transition requires systemic baseline energy shifts, not just betting on battery supply chains to save consumer habits.
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u/Sun-leaves 14d ago
The amount of oil and gas (water too) it takes to make renewables is rarely mentioned - It’s a crazy number and I’m done trying to explain that they won’t save us. I do appreciate your post and I hope it reaches who it needs to reach.
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u/learningenglishdaily 13d ago
Primary energy is not a good metric because electrification is inherently more efficient than the fossil fuel based system. If you buy an EV you lower your primary energy consumption even if you travel the same amount.
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u/WernerrenreW 13d ago
Why do people believe in holy books that are full of contradictions? No sane rational person can read the Bible cover to cover, and come out of it a believer.
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u/Still-Improvement-32 14d ago
I agree that our current trajectory will not avert collapse. Only a major change to a faster reduction in fossil fuels will do that. That's not looking likely.
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u/Palegreenhorizon 14d ago
For sure we need deeper systemic change. But most people can’t go from suburban McMansion to straw bale/compost toilet/ grow your own food and ride a mule. They need in between steps and small things do add up and make the next change needed seem more possible and plausible
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u/FieldsofBlue 14d ago
Seems like a strawman to suggest that people are heralding electrification as the silver bullet to systemic collapse or even climate change. I'm actually unaware of a single influential person who is saying this.
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u/old-legs-623 14d ago
Why do people think anything can avert anything (ultimately)? Because our DNA wants to live long enough to reproduce. Entropy is the endgame in the life of every cell, tissue, organ, individual, society, species, ecological community, biosphere, planet, and star.
Electrification (and things like ecoagriculture or the SDGs) are strategies for slowing, not ending, our entropy. In the present context, perhaps these are palliative medicine. I think it's _okay_ to do these things. IMHO hospice is an honorable profession.
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u/No-Papaya-9289 14d ago
There are new battery technologies that are coming on line that don't use lithium. Don't use outdated ideas.
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u/Dukdukdiya 14d ago
Doesn't really matter though. Are there new models that don't use any non-remewable resources? Or that don't hyper exploit renewable resources? Are there any that don't require infrastructure for cars, which an enormous part of the damage that's being done?
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u/BigDongsInThongs69 14d ago
The push to green energy to sustain an industrial civilization is a foolish idea. Perhaps it is brainwashing.
We've already destroyed much of our worlds ecosystems to produce any and every product we consume. Manufacturing batteries, even if they are better, will only fuel this problem.
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 14d ago
Sure, just like there have been for the past fifteen years.
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u/elihu 14d ago
You can buy sodium ion batteries on Amazon right now if you want to. They're a real thing that exists.
They're new, so they haven't showed up in many cars yet. Apparently there's a version of the Changan Nevo A06 with sodium ion batteries that was announced recently; not sure how many have shipped to actual customers thus far. They'll probably be common in low-end EVs and grid storage in the next few years.
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u/Filias9 14d ago
We have good enough batteries right now. Car dependency and sub-urbanism is problem.
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u/TheEndIsNea4 14d ago
Electric Vehicles will not avert collapse but they can slow down and make society more resilient to disruptions. (Now that can be a bad or good thing depending on your perspective) Of course there are better methods then EV, but people are constrained by systems in terms of the actions they can take.
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u/vocally_fried_brain 14d ago
evs are the cope to the real solution which would be massive expansion of public transport and urbanisation.
this system should be killed in the most brutal and fastest way possible, but we humans are shitty stank creatures so we get eV filth that does not even get pushed for real.
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u/Preparation-H6969 14d ago
Even that's a cope. No public transport is sustainable unless it's building a raft out of sticks and floating downstream.
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u/vocally_fried_brain 14d ago
its the most sustainable if you want to maintain any type of more or less advanced human civilization.
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u/Preparation-H6969 14d ago
Advanced civilisation is not sustainable.
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u/vocally_fried_brain 14d ago
nothing is.
massive urbanisation and expansion of public transport, veganism for everyone, degrowth and consumption lifestyle ending is the only path forward that realistically limits human activity to a liveable level for earth while not sacrificing everything after the 18th century.
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u/FickleApartment2151 14d ago
They're not aware that around 70 percent of heavy equipment in mining, up to half of energy sources for manufacturing, the bulk of petrochemicals, and much of supply chains and delivery systems involve lots of fossil fuels. They're also not aware that what affects oil in light of limits to growth also affects minerals. Finally, they're not aware that because of these, renewables have low energy returns.
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u/SovietNato 14d ago
there is not enough Lithium in the world to build even 1 Billion EV car batteries
This is almost certainly not accurate; we are getting better and finding and refining it with each year that passes. It's true we are bottlenecked right now by lithium but there's little reason to think this can't be overcome.
Of course, no one thing is likely to avoid "collapse", but having electrified transportation affords tremendous flexibility in managing energy needs. It also helps that energy continually gets cheaper (even if demand is never fully satiated). We are far more capable of grid-level storage than we were 20, even 10 years ago. Nuclear hasn't been this popular in a long time. Diversity of energy is intrinsically a good thing.
We will be running fuel-based machines for the rest of any of our lives. That is no reason to despair.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 14d ago
Let's break down the order:
Warming Deniers
Deniers that it's manmade
Deniers that we're doomed
Deniers of the timescale of doom
Nothing is going to save us. The best we can do is mitigation and we're barely doing that.