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128 comments on Is Sustainable Development sustainable?
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128 comments on Is Sustainable Development sustainable?
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Louis,
Excellent essay. Thanks.
I am a longtime reader of the oildrum and a new participant. The oildrum has been an invaluable resource for me. Thanks to the oildrum, I am an expert on peak oil and surprisingly knowledgable about oil and gas production technology.
Most of my colleagues and I are practical people. Honestly I believe it is a stretch to decribe our community as mythological.
Your argument turns on the assumption that our society is facing "the first signs of physical constraints to development." I just don't understand this yet. Personally, thanks to the oil drum, I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of wind and solar. The peaking of production doesn't change the fact that there is plenty of fossil fuel left in the ground. Our ability to harnass wind, solar, and other alternatives is progressing at a breathtaking pace. There is plenty of time. I just don't see catastrophe when I look about me.
I would think that you would agree with me that knowledge is the real foundation of wealth and power. The ability of society to share information was, compared to today, primitive at the time of our birth. By the time we die, today's ability to share information will appear, in hindsight, equally primitive. The future is bright. There is every reason to be optimistic. I want to make sure you realize that large groups of thoughtful scientists and engineers believe that it possible to believe in peak oil while remaining optimistic that civilization's best days lie ahead.
One last comment. Most scientists and engineers, myself included, understand that exponential growth eventually comes to an end. Some day, civilization of the universe will, like fossil fuel production, peak and decline.
Welcome to the forum, occr.
You wrote, "I just don't see catastrophe when I look about me."
Hmmmm. It may be that you need to look more carefully and more broadly.
Did you notice that we are in a world financial crisis that started in earnest when oil was nead $150/bbl?
Did you notice that there was a world-wide food crisis due to spikes in food prices due partly to bio-fuels diverting food crops to hummer tanks?
More important, did you notice that the earth is in the sixth great mass extinction event, one which may be greater than all the previous ones, one caused by humans?
Did you notice that the Arctic ice cap, a permanent feature of the planet for millions of years, is now poised to completely collapse any summer now (the five-meter-thick ice that used to predominate has already almost completely disappeared)?
Did you notice that direct human-caused global warming is turning out to be merely the trigger that is setting off multiple feedback loops (or death spirals--from enormous methane release from tundras and sea beds to burning forests, drying soils and dying oceans all giving up their carbon content into the atmosphere.
Not to mention increasing water shortages from changing weather patterns, disappearing glaciers and vanishing aquifers; record droughts and floods becoming yearly occurrences in many locals; spread of tropical diseases and pests into northern latitudes; killer heat waves; islands becoming uninhabitable; ocean acidification......
What in this list (that could be expanded quite a bit) leaves you so cheerily optimistic? I'm afraid it is the oblivious cheery optimism of technocrats and economists that scares and depresses me more than nearly anything else.
On the main topic, sustainability itself is a profoundly disrespectful term. It suggests that we can essentially preserve business as usual with a few tweaks to make it sustainable. Given the absolutely devastating effect that modern industrial society has has on terrestrial life, "sustaining" our rapacious behavior is like a gang of rapist of a child deciding to continue their abuse at a more measured pace so their victim will live a bit longer, affording them a few more hours of fun.
Well said. I see no cause for optimism. Almost all of the world is seeking a way back to economic growth, because they don't understand that the earth is finite - or choose not to let that small fact get in the way of their dreams of the future.
That occr seems to see renewables as a saviour is sad. He or she needs to start to get to grips with what finite means.
I do have one minor criticism of Luis's essay. Development need not mean growth or universal progress and I think it can be called sustainable if it is targetted only at achieving some basic level of infrastructure or accommodation, that is then intended to be maintained indefinitely. However, I don't think use of the term, sustainable development, is meant to convey that so, in effect, Luis is probably right. An even more blatant oxymoron is commonly used, though, "sustainable growth". If economists and governments don't understand the absurdity of such a phrase then there really is no hope for an orderly transition to sustainability.
You exaggerate with phrases like, "a world-wide food crisis." World population did not decline in 2008 due to mass starvation.
World population is 6.6 billion in 2007
In 2008, world population is 6.7 billion
Doomer's scenarios require population decline. Get back to us when there is a real food crisis.
And maybe not greater than all the previous ones. If the K-T extinction event was caused by a meteorite impact, it probably made species extinct at a greater rate than current anthropic efforts.
The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is about 10 years making it less of a problem than longer lived fossil CO2. Last I read humans extinguish more forest fires than nature resulting in less burned forest. Have rainfall patterns already shifted enough and been scientifically attributed to anthropic global warming (as opposed to natural variation in climate) to declare "drying soils?" Acidification of the oceans and overfishing are probably major contributers to "dying oceans."
and from overuse and overpopulation, but which are dominant?
You have not specified a timeline when such things will reach their tipping points. They could be tomorrow, next century or never for all you know. Doomers tend to ignore the timing believing doom is in the near term. When will the last tuna die? When will the last piece of coral blanch? When will the last bumble bee be photographed? When will there be no more downstream water from the melting glacier? When will 10% of the ice slide off of Antarctica into the ocean raising sea level? Will any of these happen during your lifetime?
I do not use sustainable to mean a few tweaks because the current system can not be made sustainable using a few tweaks. Luis de Souse has cherry-picked the definition of development to be synonymous with growth or progress to make his point. Development does not have to be exponential development. Development could be a sole village of 5,000 people on Earth replacing their log cabins every 50 years due to rot and termite damage. That would be sustainable development capable of persisting for the remaining lifetime of Earth, ~4 billion years.
"You have not specified a timeline when such things will reach their tipping points. They could be tomorrow, next century or never for all you know. Doomers tend to ignore the timing believing doom is in the near term. When will the last tuna die? When will the last piece of coral blanch? When will the last bumble bee be photographed? When will there be no more downstream water from the melting glacier? When will 10% of the ice slide off of Antarctica into the ocean raising sea level? Will any of these happen during your lifetime?"
When did the 90th percentile of Atlantic cod or Pacific bluefin tuna get taken from the sea?
When did the last Somali fisherman pull up his empty nets, empty because EU and Asian countries' supertanker sized trawlers had taken all his catch?
When did the last dodo bird die?
When did the last carrier pigeon die?
When did the last woolly mammoth die?
When did the last Neanderthal die?
When did the last Ohlone Indian die?
When did Lehman Brothers go belly up?
When did Chrysler and GM go bankrupt?
When did the USSR, Spanish empire, Ottoman empire, British empire, Roman empire, Khmer Rhouge and Nazi Germany disappear?
When was the last chariot raced in ancient Rome?
When did Mono Lake north of Los Angeles start receding?
When did you become a global warming denier who rejects proof of reduced polar ice volumes?
When did Michael Jackson die?
When will you die? (it will happen in your lifetime)
Ken1,
When did Chrysler and GM go bankrupt?
Which times, GM has been bankrupt three times in the last 100years, I think Chrysler only twice?
The view in hindsight is not the doomer's forte.
I am not an AGW skeptic. I accept the science behind anthropic climate change. The Arctic ice cap is melting while both the Antarctic sea ice and land ice are increasing. Even the climate models project this due to increased precipitation at the poles caused by global warming. The Arctic sea ice is melting from beneath due to increased sea temperature. You can study the data at Cryosphere Today.
I agree that an human caused extinction event is in progress, that humans are consuming natural resources at an unsustainable rate and that humans are polluting the environment in numerous ways. My arguments are against doomerism: there is no solution, don't ever bother because we can't fix it, there are no such things as sustainable, renewable and environmentally friendly human behaviors.... Ideas that are not sustainable with a human population of 6.7 billion will become so once the human population is reduced sufficiently (and I do not mean reduced to zero).
This is good, but you have some out-of-date info or misunderstandings.
Incorrect. The Antarctic is a net loser WRT the Ice Cap, with warming occurring happening across the continent, but much more precipitously on the WAIS. Accumulations in the center of the continent are no longer overriding losses.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/state-of-antarctic...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/warm-reception-to-...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/antarctic-warming-...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/on-overfitting/
Yes, but as the deniers like to say, the models were wrong. That is, they underestimated the rate of change.
As for time, either you or someone else derided the idea that time may be short. Anyone who claims to not be a skeptic on climate, but thinks there is plenty of time, still doesn't get it 100%. Rapid Climate Change is a real threat because these things happen in chaotic, non-linear ways. The record shows temperature changes of up to 7C in time periods of less than a decade. Assuming this won't happen is short-sighted, IMO, and even dangerous - particularly since we know we are adding to atmospheric CO2 and CO2e at a rate faster than most, if not all, of the climate record. Pushing a system to its limits makes it that much more likely they will be exceeded catastrophically.
Cheers
Hmmmm ...
What and where is the line between acceptance (of AGW) and denial?
The important question is why? It all seems so ... lemming- like to me!
(BTW, lemmings don't commit mass suicide, they are too smart to do so.)
As for the doomers; John Maynard Keynes had is right; "In the long run, we are all dead." How can this not drive all human behavior? If I die ... who gives a shit about anyone else?
I suppose the brink and various tipping points will be pulled away from us by economic collapse. Thank god or Yahweh or Jehovah for the mortality of economies! In the long run, economic systems are all dead. Taking away profits means taking away factory smokestacks and the puffs of CO2 that emerge from them. Even though the Chinese and the Indians and whatnot are frantically attempting to ape the USA consumer lifestyle, they cannot know that the whole idea of 'lifestyle' is kaput, replaced by the more old- school 'hard labor'. Hard labor is usually a fatal illness. Again, the human race's reach exceeds its grasp.
Demonstrating again the principal that in most ways it is better to be lucky than good.
Our stupid luck will save us from our own desperate self- immolation. It is impossible to be more lucky than this. Or ... will it? Who knows?
How does all this effect 'sustainability'? It doesn't, in fact nothing does. Sustainability is a conceit, it cannot exist anywhere because the ground rules that nature constantly adapts to are in themselves constantly changing. Since change is constant - in fact the only constant - the only iota of sustainability is effective un- sustainability. It's best to be flexible.
And prepared for disappointment.
Now ... when all in a particular market are calling for some thing ... like growth ... this signifies the end of the market for that thing. Call it a 'turning point' if you will. The existance of growth itself destroys growth because the costs of it are always higher than receipts. Our fantasy charade is we can collect some of those returns ahead of the onrushing costs which grow ever larger.
But, don't worry yourselves. Like all problems the growth issue solves itself by the simple expedient of us doing nothing or also doing something active to solve the growth problem or by outside means destroying the matrix for growth. Hmmmm ... growth is outnumbered by solutions. So is climate change. Climate change does not affect the Earth since the climate has changed over and over and will do so whether we sequester carbon or pump it up the asses of deniers and businessmen and politicians. It won't effect humans since we are all dead in the long run so who cares about our successor humans? Or, other species ... who wants to care about those losers?
(What's a 'species', again?)
It does effect our cars which we love to pieces and are defending literally to the death. If we don't care about ourselves, cannot we care about our dogs and cats?
Blue Twilight,
Maybe not for long:
"California Division of Forestry Not Paying Bills, Vendors Demand Cash or Credit Cards Upfront" [Mish Shedlock]
BT, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, you seem to have already made up your mind firmly on certain things, perhaps for emotional reasons. I will address some of your points for those reading.
If you missed the worldwide food crisis, perhaps you were asleep last year. Perhaps the people involved in food riots in Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Haiti and others were just playing a joke.
globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8877
Note that I did not say "starvation at a level that significantly reduces world population" though that is the claim you seem to be falsely attributing to me and addressing.
The KT extinction event was the result effectively of a bad afternoon. Modern industrial civilization represents a bad couple centuries, with effects that will last much, much longer.
You say: "The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is about 10 years making it less of a problem than longer lived fossil CO2."
If you know this much about methane, you presumably also know that methane over this time span is some 70 times more powerful as a ghg than CO2, and that it breaks down mostly into CO2. Either you did know this, and you were just trying to be cute (or something worse) by describing it as "less of a problem," or you actually know nothing about the subject and are just grabbing random facts and spouting off. Either way, there does not seem to be much more reason to engage you on this particular topic.
The same seems to apply to your comment about acidification of oceans. Do you not realize that CO2 is what is acidifying them? DO you not realize that increase in acidity is killing plankton that are crucial sinks in the global carbon cycle, bringing carbon down to the ocean floor as they die.
It boggles my mind how you think weather patterns and glaciers are being affected by "overuse," but in any case, I was just pointing out that these and many other bad things are demonstrably happening, yet occr seemed to blissfully unaware of them.
Do you think that these things are not happening or that they bode well for human on non-human futures?
Timeline? Timeline????
These things are all happening right now. Open your eyes, read a little. It's not always fun, but it helps keep you from saying things that are wildly off from observed reality sometimes.
Glad to hear you have your own definition of development.
"I have my own definition of black and to me it means white, so there is no race problem."
This seems to be about the level of your logic here.
Lots of misunderstandings.
I am criticizing your sensationalistic use of the term "food crisis" to describe events that do not rise to the level of a crisis. The article, "Global Famine," by Michel Chossudovsky, May 2, 2008, at Centre for Research on Globalization is a political piece biased by its author's hatred of globalization. The author claims speculation in commodities triggers famine by increasing the price of food. He also blames the IMF, World Bank and big agro companies. In this world view overpopulation, drought, climate change, resource limits and peak oil are not factors in causing famine and affecting the price of food. This article fails to support your claim of a "food crisis."
Yes. You wrote "... dying oceans all giving up their carbon content into the atmosphere." The ocean is a net absorber of CO2 from the atmosphere. Your statement suggested that you did not understand this.
"Overuse" refers to a cause of "increasing water shortages," not to "weather patterns" and "glaciers." I was pointing out there are additional factors to the ones related to AGW.
I think most of what you listed is happening with differing magnitudes, and it does not bode well.
Have you considered how much time is available to deal with the problems? oilcompanycorporateresearch is optimistic that there is time to deal with these problems to avert disaster. Your response screams of doomerism declaring we have already passed the tipping points so there is no need to bother trying. On the Oil Drum I am labeled a cornucopian because I advocate solutions. Everywhere else I speak about peak oil I am labeled a doomer because I state there are major problems forthcoming if we do not act. There is a gaping chasm between our beliefs about how to perceive the problems and what to do about them.
"I think most of what you listed is happening with differing magnitudes, and it does not bode well."
Then we are essentially in agreement and the rest is window dressing.
"Everywhere else I speak about peak oil I am labeled a doomer..."
I guess you want to return the favor by labeling me in a similar fashion.
I was specifically addressing occr's statement that s/he didn't see any major problems.
I did not opine one way or the other on what should be done.
You once again have chosen to create a claim for me that I have not made and do not hold. I find it hard to continue dialog with people that do this sort of thing.
For the record:
I have taught thousands of people about these topics for decades
I hold seminars for other teachers
I speak in various forums
I am on my city's environmental advisory board
I am active in various ngo's and local political groups
I have planted over one hundred native species in my yard and give away seeds and plantings
I have brought my foot print (cf. www.myfootprint.org) to near one earth, giving up all air travel, most car travel, meat and most dairy, most non-local foods...
I garden at home and do much of the work to support a local community garden...
If these all sound to you like the behavior of one who believes "there is no need to bother trying," then I guess there is not much use continuing the conversation.
I happen to think that one needs to have a clear-eyed view of the enormity of the situation in order to know what actions and non-actions are appropriate for the times. Apparently you hold a different view.
Best of luck with that.
Blue Twilight, you wrote "You exaggerate with phrases like, "a world-wide food crisis." World population did not decline in 2008 due to mass starvation."
First, did countries like Ethiopia, Somalia, Iraq etc do a census last year. Even the US only does a census every 10 years. Population numbers are estimates. The population of the world could have held static or gone down last year.
Second, do you know how many people moved from getting a bit more than needed to survive to getting only what they needed to survive? Estimates are that 1 billion live on $1 a day and another 1 to 1 1/2 billion live on $2 a day or less. Perhaps that is now 1 1/2 on $1 a day and still 1 1/2 billion on $2 a day as they have moved down from $3 a day. We don't really know. We do know when food prices go up. If they go up, as much as half the population of the world has a more difficult time getting enough food even if there is more than enough around.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
http://www.countercurrents.org/walsh020908.htm
Huge numbers of people live in daily food crisis. A small decrease in the amount of food available or a small increase in the cost of food is a major crisis for them. Last I heard the people of Haiti were eating mud cakes to slake hunger.
http://leekfixer.newsvine.com/_news/2009/02/16/2440840-haiti-mud-cakes-b...
More fertlizer and more irrigation are NOT increasing production at the same rates that they did initially. Meanwhile ground water is getting harder to reach as we deplete fossil water supplies in many countries. http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss2.htm
How do you get to deeper and deeper water - you use fuels to pump it - how do you get to deeper and deeper oil - you use fuels to pump it - how do you get more and more diffuse minerals out of the ground - you use fuel to mine and process it. Hmmm do we have a problem here? Everything needed to keep as going at current levels of population and consumption takes more fuel these days.
We have little slack in the world food supply - I suppose the greatest area of slack is in the overconsumption by first worlders and especially those in the USA.
http://chervil-earth.blogspot.com/2008/03/only-40-days-of-global-grain-s...
"Only 40 days of global grain stocks left
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Two days ago, the newly appointed chief scientific adviser to the UK Government, Professor John Beddington, warned of coming food shortages for the whole world. In a speech given at the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster he said: "There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty." (quoted from The Guardian, 7 March 2008)
Professor Beddington also pointed out that as of two days ago, "global grain stores are currently at the lowest levels ever, just 40 days from running out." ...."
Hi, OCCR, and welcome to the conversation.
Our ability to harnass wind, solar, and other alternatives is progressing at a breathtaking pace.
If by "ability" you mean technical ability, I would concur. If you mean our actual harnessing of said energy, I don't think this is true. Renewable energy investment is down by half from 18 months ago. See the second-quarter figures from New Energy Finance. (Yes, there is some pent up demand, but I don't think we're going to see investment levels return to their heights without some dramatic stimulus from some source.)
And even before the credit crisis, the fossil fuel industry (oil, natural gas and coal) was adding more energy to the primary world energy system than renewables were on an annual basis. In other words, during the economic boom times of the 90's and 00's, renewables as a percentage of the overall primary energy mix were decreasing. I presented this rather dismal data point as part of a State of the World talk I gave at a conference.
Your belief points to the fundamental disconnect that I see between the optimists and the pessimists. The optimists say there is plenty of time and the pessimists say that it's largely too late. I fall into the second camp and the reason I prefer is that peak oil means peak credit. Without credit, the transformation of our energy system cannot proceed quickly. Today's drumbeat has yet another story describing how the pace of moving off of fossil fuels has slowed as the economy contracts.
This directly contradicts those people who said that when energy got expensive the pace of moving off fossil fuels would accelerate. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred. One of my pieces uses the example of the passenger fleet turnover rate increasing from 15 years to about 27 years to demonstrate that point. When it comes to cars, moving off fossil fuels is now moving further into the future rather than coming closer:
http://www.postpeakliving.com/content/youve-bought-your-last-car
This is not to say we should stop investing in renewables. Quite the opposite. We should build as many energy collecting machines as humanly possible before the bottom falls out further.
-André
www.PostPeakLiving.com
Don't call yourself a pessimist Andre, you are an Actualist as Kunstler calls it or a realist.
Foolish optimism on solar and wind is misplaced, the US total energy consumption per day is 46 million barrels of oil equivalent while after 30 years of subsidies and hype the total output for solar and wind is around 76,000 barrels of oil equivalent.
Maybe the economists and optimists should read this,
http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm
To produce an equivalent amount of energy provided by oil in one year would take:
200 Three Gorges Dams
2,600 Nuclear Power Plants
5,200 Coal Fired Plants (not good for global warming...)
1,642,500 Wind Turbines
4,562,500,000 Solar Panels
Oh and we haven't made a new world class mineral find in 8 years and the lithium that the US needs for it's electric economy is found in Bolivia under Evo Morales, not exactly an American friend and China controls the rare earths market pretty much.
ps - Jay Hanson did some work in the 90's that Solar energy is net energy negative. We use more energy producing it then it produces.
Also note that since we are in the middle of the Greatest Depression there simply won't be any money available to finance any of these projects as if you haven't noticed 34 million people are on foodstamps in America as well as an underemployment and unemployment figure reaching some total of 30 million people and we are just getting started as deleveraging is yet to take hold due to out of control deficit spending that is, how can I put it mildly, robbing you and paying for GS bonuses.
That picture of energy equivalents of oil I think comes originally from a Sciam or New Scientist article. It's a bit misleading. The equivalents you quoted actually have to run non-stop for 50 years to get the same energy as oil provides in a year. So you need to multiply all of the equivalents by 50, to get real equivalents. So that's:
10,000 Three Gorges Dams
130,000 Nuclear Power Plants
260,000 Coal Fired Plants (not good for global warming...)
82,125,000 Wind Turbines
228,125,000,000 Solar Panels
So now are you saying, hydro dams , nuclear reactors, wind turbines only last for one year?
No, nowhere in my post did I say that. But this constant cornucopian optimism is going to ensure a die off. If the cornucopians hadn't been mindlessly promoting the hydrogen economy, the nuclear power is going to be to cheap to meter economy, the alternative energy green growth jobs based economy of the future, MAYBE, just maybe people of my generation would have a chance of living till 40 atleast and having a future if only people had listened to the realists and realized that we're killing the planet with our addiction to growth and oil. We could have gone on the path of mass conservation and an economy not based on a ponzi scheme with a quadrillion dollars in derivatives years ago but no one wanted to stop the party and who would listen to party poopers anyway?
Look at the reality of the world around you. The US government has known of peak oil for 40 years or more, and they have not done a damn thing? Why would they do anything now?
The US government is actively robbing taxpayers and transferring it to a dead banking system, thats what the 14 trillion in grants, guarantees, loans and other programs are for. The poor and middle class are f*cked while the elite are going to laugh all the way to the bank. And you still believe that the Govts of the world are going to wake up and solve the energy crisis? (if it was even solvable?)
VK,
My question was immediately below Sofistek's statement, but since you replied, I am assuming that you use considerably less electricity than the average 11,000kWh/person/year in US or 8,000 kWh in Europe. Presently 30% of that electricity is generated by non FF( wind, hydro and nuclear), with wind energy adding another 0.5% per year.
We don't have to replace the energy present in 82 million barrels per day, we only have to deliver the equivalent work to the wheels of trucks trains and cars. For the US that 90EJ of FF needs to be replaced by about 25EJ of electrical energy TO HAVE TODAY'S lifestyle. About x5 what we produce today from non FF energy.
If you use considerable less than the average, the US has enough non FF electrical energy today for that life-style. Some countries have more than that some less.
It's my understanding that about half of the total US population have a job(46%), almost a historical record( except for last 25 years), considering that some of the population are children, some retired, some parents are at home, are raising young children and some are so rich they don't need to work. Almost everyone in US has food, shelter clean water, some clothing. I am assuming that you have those basic things and as well access to the internet. Many people in the world don't.
Your anger a the US government assumes one person has been "in control" for 40 years, various administrations have done things to try to reduce reliance on FF, the Obama administration seems to be doing a lot more than the last administration. They could do more, we all could do more to use less FF unless we don't drive, fly, use NG heat or electricity.
My answer to your question is YES I do think the governments of the world will solve the energy crisis but only where they get support from the population. We are the problem, not governments.
That's a pretty optimistic comment, and completely ignores growing populations and growing economies (or at least that's the aim of governments the world over). Did you read the essay that we're commenting on?
I don't live in the US but I see almost no evidence that Obama is making any real effort to reduce dependence on oil. Some effort to move to a sustainable society would be nice but there is no evidence of that either.
So you think that every use of oil will smoothly be transitioned to some other fuel source, used to create electricity? Will electricity extract all of the minerals we think we need? Will the process of creating and transmitting electricity be made 100% efficient? Will our countries never need more energy (or the equivalent work) than they do now?
Governments won't solve any of the myriad crises facing us because no government really acknowledges any of them.
You sound like a cornucopian suggesting that 6.7 billion people multiplying exponentially can be preserved by using conservation. World population needs to be reduced significantly and stabilized to make any solution possible. The 6.7 billion ton elephant is still standing in the room and being ignored.
Well, you got that right.
So now are you saying, hydro dams , nuclear reactors, wind turbines only last for one year?
No. I don't know where you got that idea. I was saying the the graphic that VK referenced actually gave numbers of alternative energy production means but included that each would have to run for 50 years to provide the same energy as one year of oil. Consequently, one has to multiply those numbers by 50 to get an alternative to oil that produces year after year.
rechech the source. the poster already did the multiplication
I once did a calculation on what it would take to replace all the coal burners in the US over a twenty year period. If you did it using nukes with a 1 GW output then a new reactor would need to be built every 34 days. The shear scale of the challenge makes me very doubtful that global disaster could be avoided. There is a big difference between what is technically possible and what the politicians could agree to do.