renewable energy generation

Building renewable energy generation may help, but with overall energy demand continually rising, they may not offset the impacts of traditional energy supplies so much as they merely supplement those supplies with cleaner sources of power.

I guess I hope we come to see carbon offsets as a stop-gap solution and not as a permanent answer that licenses us to keep on keeping on albeit without any guilt or responsibility for our own behaviors. It really feels to me like they're a temporary strategy to reduce some of our impacts and help finance a bigger, more impactful renewable energy infrastructure, a voluntary carbon tax of sorts, rather than a solution. The only real answer to climate change that I see is to make changes in how we use energy so that we use less of it at all times, regardless of whether or not we're offsetting, and to develop and widely disseminate those technologies that permit us to make these changes without the kinds of sacrifices that turn people off by recalling a Paleolithic lifestyle.

RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 3:48 AM