2050 is far too late anyways
How they are going to convince capitalist fossil barons?
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Ridiculous even as slogan, but ok, i’ll bite:
- Who will “make” the new barons?
- The fossil companies are surely not gonna move their massive monopoly capital and influence to do exactly what they are doing all the time in the past and are still doing, right?
- Assuming for a short while that unreal became real and you (or “we” or any other entity) have the power to remove the said incredibly entrenched businesses, why do you even need any new barons? You have the power to enact any reform just by the power you wield. Btw. where that power came from, what it is based on?
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I guess the most obvious entity to make them is the same one that made the earlier ones. Government.
Why? The old ones still have all the leverage, if you see how the bourgeoisie state operate, at this point it is more that they make the state. After all, this is how the capitalist state operate in the imperialist stage, the merging of monopoly capital with a state.
Yes, that’s gonna probably be a bit of a problem. Not something the government couldn’t handle if they want to, though.
Yes, you correctly point that the government is the only one who do have the power (short of a revolution but even after successful revolution the proletarian state would still to be established). But as pointed above, they do not have incentive to, since state is always the tool of the ruling class to safeguard the interest of said class. And in case of current bourgeoise states, the fossil barons are very important and influental part of that class. So any change would have to come from them.
This is also confirmed if you look at the current investments in renewables and general green tech. The state on top of the chart is China, which differs from let’s say USA in that it is largely command economy where the bourgeosie influence is limited.
if renewable energy becomes as important as fossil-based energy is now.
They aren’t gonna unless something change drastically. Because fossils are more profitable, and this won’t change in the forseeable future. And the sole reaon of capitalism is to generate profits, nothing else. That’s why currently it is impossible for capitalist world to make such drastic change for the renewables. The minimal change needed for it would have to be nationalization of energy sector and it’s impossible now.
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Also, what is really disturbing
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Yes, but lumping “governments” is hugely misleading without context, like for example: subsidies per capita, subsidies per investment in green energy, recent changes in the fossil/renewables etc.
In reality we have China being global leader in renewables while USA Supreme Court just torpedoed one of the small shreds of regulation they had, and their new economic plan basically negates all large scale renewable investments because it first make it dependent on fossil industry recieving excessive amount of land. I’m not even mentioning other issues like fracking.
No idea about Russia and Japan. India most probably wont make it. Hell we also have EU there where Germany is in the hole after it bootlicked itself into energy crisis AND they probably regret resigning from atom immensely now, or France of which i just today read they are loosening environmental protections because energy crisis. Which (the energy crisis) is caused by USA and EU sanctions on Russia.
Don’t worry, renewable barons will eat the fossil barons.
But it’s anarchists who are supposed to eat the rich :(
They won’t. You should rather focus on convincing the people getting money coffers from them.
Politicians? Problem is they are, as you said yourself, in in for the money, and nobody can pay more than the barons, so that would be a first time in history of bourgeoisie states if happened otherwise. Good luck though.
Let’s do it
I haven’t looked at this study yet in detail (but I will when I have time), however I’m suspecting they’ve missed or ignored some huge sectors.
There is at least one study that suggests effectively the opposite for just Australia, and Aus is a particularly good example because it actually has relatively low industrial energy use.
Compare Australia’s energy flow graph with that of China and the USA and then try to work out the numbers to show just how much new solar+wind+storage will need to be built to fill in the difficult-to-electrify but major sectors and you’ll see just how big the problem is:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy
I think the world might be able to largely electrify ground and sea transport, and maybe home heating, together with a net-zero electrical grid, all by 2050. However that’s just a small portion of the total energy use in the world.
It is also important to realize that there will be no peaks or valleys in the electricity demand graphs once all things are electrified (or even once just ground transport is electrified). This means all intermittent power generation has to include sufficient storage and or other backing for when it isn’t working.
From my own back-of-the-envelope calculations I find that renewables (other than hydro-electric) are at least one order of magnitude, and probably two orders of magnitude too far behind the fossil-fuel powered sector, while storage is at least three orders of magnitude too far behind. I think nuclear power will have to play a much larger part, but it can just barely make it to the table in large enough amounts by 2050, and it also requires some re-engineering to have a closed fuel cycle and use new fuels like thorium, and much of this is still research (though CANDU reactors have already been demonstrated to burn thorium efficiently).
There is also quite a lot of speculation in just exactly how some huge sectors can be electrified. Cement and steel being two. Sure there’s green steel being produced now, but China is also still building and planning to build numerous new coal-fired blast furnaces and smelters that may have to all continue running until after 2050. Also there are as yet no 100% net-zero commercial airline flights to book, and none on the near horizon either.
Add politics and capitalism to the matter, especially in the USA and China, and it seems very unlikely that the world will achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
“can” :(
