Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

There's pretty near nothing in modern life that doesn't have fossil energy embedded in it. At a minimum it got hauled in a truck, boat, train, airplane, or possibly all of the above, for any object. The supply chain, the machine that puts stuff where we can buy it, is fossil fuel

Our drinking water has fossil energy embedded in it. It's been processed, pumped, stored high up so it can run out of everybody's faucets. Not everyone, obviously, but - almost everyone. Me, for sure. I can see the water tower from here. Electricity puts the water in it.
And...

3. Electricity in the US is 85% fossil fuel. And here it is. Still lots of coal burns in Missouri.

4. It is a fact that every object made, anywhere, ever, is, on the average, 85% fossil energy. Hydro - giant dams, dead river ecosystems, water wasted to evaporation, you know, clean hydro, is about 10%.
There really aren't any big rivers left to kill, so hydro is maxed.
Nuke,

5. Fission energy heat engine generation, is most of what's left. A little tiny bit is wind, and solar half of that.
That's how we do everything we do, without exception.
Here it is in 2019, the full mix, in chart form.
So -

6. Our options, as regard climate change and fossil fuel use, are as follows:
Continue to increase fossil energy throughput, or
Drastically reduce material throughput in the economy. Degrowth.
Material throughput is done with energy.
The only way to reduce emissions is reduce use

7. Long time readers will recall that I underwent an epiphany when Biden signed, and all the Democrats praised to the high heavens, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework.
This is the largest single planned CO2 emissions project of the 21st Century so far. The meaning of this is

8. "We absolutely and positively do not plan to address climate change. It's just theater."
And - I got that. We are increasing our energy throughput daily. Most of that energy is fossil fuels.
To entertain ourselves, we sing and dance and glue ourselves to buildings in ceremony

9. to absolve ourselves from sin but we all demand jobs, and all the jobs are powered by fossil fuels, and we all want to go fast, far, any direction at any time, a mile a minute or damn the assholes in front of us, and -
We can either do all this shit, or we can reduce our CO2.

10. Yes, we must travel shorter distances at lower speeds, and every single object in the entire global economy has to do the same.
That means fewer objects can be manufactured.
That means new jobs can't come from manufacturing. We have to make less stuff and ship it less far.

11. Our entire economy is based on a model of maximizing material throughput from the mine to the landfill, via stores and houses, but not for too long. Throw it away, buy the new one. That's how money is generated, by making and selling product. It has undesirable outcomes.

10. If, for instance, governments quit subsidizing cheap fossil fuels (which many demand) the cost of everything in the entire economy would go up.
Because everything, every single thing, in modern life has fossil fuel energy embedded in it. At its current prices.

11. I wish the public conversation in the United States had this sort of exchange. We are literally complicit in our own hoodwinking. The energy they are promising you isn't coming. The free energy that doesn't emit. It's not coming.
They're lying.
Meanwhile, highways.

12. Even the #Degrowth people, bless their hearts...
Be specific. Degrow what one thing, and how do you do it?
If we set a national 35 mph speed limit, there would be immediate degrowth. If we grounded all the planes there would be degrowth. If we - you tell me. What specific?

13. Every time an object is moved, its total energy footprint, what I am referring to as embedded energy, increases. Energy was added to it.
Unless it was moved by hand, that energy came from fossil fuel. Forklift, conveyor belt, all powered by majority fossil energy.

14. When I drive into Richmond to the Walmart and buy said item, I add more energy to it, to transport it even additional miles.
This is what we do with fossil fuels.
We mine raw materials with fossil fuels. We transport them for refining with fossil fuels. All energy. Power.

15. After we refine a raw material, iron ore to iron to steel, or tar sands to gasoline and diesel fuel, we use energy to dispose of the waste, the part we couldn't make into steel, somewhere on the land or in it, and we haul the refined material to a factory, where additional

16. energy is added to it, as shape and form and function, with, of course, the inevitable waste energy and material - but, through a series of steps, raw materials get turned into products, requiring untold joules of fossil energy, fire, heats in the 2,500° to 3,000° range,

17. The world we live in, the world we see, it shaped and maintained in shape through the ceaseless application of fossil energy.
Each human is as 1,000. With our fossil slaves.
We shout, "Halt fossil fuels!" It would be possible, but we'd have to climb down off a really high,

18. high horse, and learn to produce for ourselves within the speed of life.
Life runs, exquisitely, and doesn't require fossil energy. But it's a steep learning curve from here.