Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

I am going to build a thread tonight on Erin's excellent thread from yesterday.
I invite all to read Erin's thread and her supporting documents. I will be addressing one of them later.
I call readers' attention to the graph here on the opening tweet.

https://twitter.com/remblance_erin/status/1639008008108908546

2. The pinky - beigey parts are what we're doing. "Implemented policies."
The green line is what we'd have to do to stay at or below 2° C, the blue one 1.5° C.
The red one goes the wrong direction. It slopes up.
After a while it appears to slope back down, but

3. The upslope is real and the downslope is "projected."
So - it slopes up.

4. Since year 2000 we've almost added half again the emissions we had then. Black like at left, connecting to red line.

5. It is critically important to realize that during this time - the "black line rising" time - the nations of the world were drastically increasing our production and installation of solar panels and wind turbines.
We have built so many wind turbines in the past decade that

6. wind turbines are now reported to be the cheapest form of utility scale electricity generation to build and install, per GW capacity.
2019 emissions are 12% higher than 2010 emissions.
Simultaneously with building all this wind capacity.
Explain.

7. Now let's address the bullshit factor in this chart.
That red line IS NOT HAPPENING IN THE REAL WORLD.
Notice how when the black line slams into the red one the angle flattens drastically?
That didn't happen.
We're still traveling the black line, while we look at the red one

8. And totally fucking ignore the green and blue ones.
The best case scenario as illustrated here is known, technically, as "fiction."
They measure the energy output but not the embedded energy. Our whole economy is based on that same accounting.

9. If you look close here you can see the black line data point as a gray dot well above the red line, where the "2019" arrow points.
Seriously, y'all - if we want to do *anything* we have to
A: quit building highways NOW, and
B: quit building so-called renewables NOW.
Then.

10. For most of my time working life I was the Repairman of Last Resort. When all the nice people can't fix it you go back into the brush and you drag out the creature that looks like the fictional Tasmanian Devil only not so cheerful, and let him fix your piece of shit phones.

11. Lady in the office at Park College in Missouri looks up at this scruffy kid and says, "You don't look to me like you've got a PhD in telephones," and the guy behind me says, "You'll never see closer," and in half an hour they've got phones.
Been out two days.
I had rules.

12. Rule 1: Fix everything you know for sure is wrong FIRST. Then evaluate further.
Stop building highways.
Stop building airports. Stop extending runways.
Stop extending seaports.
These things are WRONG. There is no possibility that a society which gave one microscopic fuck

13. About climate change, habitat loss, greenhouse gases, any of that shit - no society which cared AT ALL about the disintegrating ecosystem would do those things.
I don't care what the excuse is.
Building highways is a crime against humanity. Ecocide is a crime against humanity

14. I tweeted this just before I started this thread.
16 "Sustainability leaders" give advice on how YOU little Timmy and Susie can Save The Climate, and NOT ONE WORD about building highways.
What does everyone think we do with fossil fuels? Burn them and dance Satanic rituals?

15. Anything which combines Earth moving and concrete is a world class fossil fuel sink.
World class.
Concrete is one of the most energy intensive materials humankind uses. Steel is right up there with it.
While everyone is looking at the lithium and neodymium, wind turbines are

16. Mostly giant steel towers.
And on those towers are giant glass reinforced plastic blades.
Those are some of the most energy intensive objects humankind has ever made.
Observe the black line.
That is the transition everyone is demanding. Right there.

17. I'll tell you how we can transition to 100% renewable energy from where we are today.
We have a sizeable amount of renewable energy in place today. Cut back energy use until that's all we need. We've got it. Use.
Poof. Transition. In the real world.
Coz this other thing ain't

18. Later on in her excellent thread Erin links an article by Jason Hickel. It's a couple of years old, but Jason and I have both remained consistent over that time and I think it's still representative.

https://twitter.com/remblance_erin/status/1639008092703825921?t=kT2yv6WsYJft2-yMkEGmPg&s=19

19. I don't disagree with anything Jason says, but I don't think it's down in the dirt enough.
He gets close. Jason says the following, which I endorse without reservation.
I would point out that my pinned Tweet is step-by-step instructions for accomplishing this in ten years.

20. But here is where I disagree with Jason: Jason wants to limit fuel availability to limit fuel use. I want to directly limit fuel use through the mechanism of observing how we use it, and limiting that action.
He wants a fuel treaty. I want a global speed limit.
Energy demand

21. We have wonderful charts showing where we use our fuel, where we get our fuel - we've studied this six ways from Sunday because God forbid we DO anything about it.
Here's US fuel sources and sinks.

22. Here's global energy destinations.
What we can see is that there is this huge, fast machine which extracts materials from Earth, transports them, processes them, delivers them to end users, the industrial transportation matrix, which sucks up 3/4 of all the energy humans use

23. You look at the blue and salmon slices of pie, or at the top two pink boxes in the fancy lines version - that's the wetware. Us. The humans, in our residences and commercial selves. We use a quarter. The machine uses the rest.
Industrial ag is in there too.

24. We think in terms of named products, named services, but for the sake of observing energy flows it's useful to view it as an undifferentiated flow of materials and processes. No matter what we are going to make, we extract materials from Earth, transport them, process them,

25. Transport them again, process them again, as what started out as part of a cubic meter of dirt and rocks turns into a speck of iron to a piece of steel to a shaped part to a sub-assembly, around and around the cycle, motion, process, motion, process - and by now, year 2023,

26. It's all nose-to-tail in an endless Pacman of motion and process.
We need, we are agreed, Jason Hickel and I, that we need to slow that Pacman machine down. We need to #degrow.
He wants to restrict the machine's access to energy.
I want to put sand in the gears. Molasses.

27. The reason Joe Biden is building highways is because to move more material farther faster we need them. Since GDP is basically a measure of ton/miles of material from Earth to landfill via smelters, factories, ships, salesmen, and suckers, per year - if we physically slow it,

28. it can't suck up as much fuel, it can't haul as much material as far - we can set this up so you can use an engine if you want but it's no faster than a donkey, and donkeys have babies and shit fertilizer, and let the market choose.
But.

Let's talk about #degrowth .
Watch this piston go up and down.
Before it can go down it has to stop going up.
That transition, from up to down and vice versa at the other end of the stroke, are the highest stress points for the mechanism.
If it's going to break, it will be there

30. Right now our upward trajectory is accelerating. Our rate of growth is growing. Most of the carbon ever released was released this century. To me that's less than a third of my one brief life. Most of the carbon ever.
And we're building highways. And screaming for speed.

31. I could go on, but I do, don't I. Go on and on.