Have We Already Won the Renewables Revolution?

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. I don't see at all that "we as a species" have deliberately chosen renewables

A small subset have; but the vast majority of the species just want cheap energy, and have taken that. A series of pieces of luck have helped us; the Soviet bloc collapsed around 1990, and that helped decrease the use of dirty coal (at the cost of a precarious standard of living for many in those countries for a few years), and cut some CO2 emissions. But that was not "deliberate work".

In the 90s, several developed countries switched from coal to nuclear or natural gas, but for cost/energy independence/anti-union reasons, rather than climate reasons. Once Kyoto happened, a significant part of the developed world, the major emitters, did start to think about CO2 emissions, but by no means all of it (eg the USA), and pretty half-heartedly. You can look at the figures you gave to see we've used very little renewables so far. Political and economic reasons kept the use of fossil fuels still pretty high, and that has been more important to governments and electorates (especially economic for the latter) than climate change. Meanwhile, developing countries massively grew their energy consumption by the cheapest means available. There was no 'planning' for renewables - we still use very little, and the existing plans for it are still small.

Growth rates don't belong to the renewable technologies themselves - a technology is chosen by users who want it, and people still want whatever's cheapest. They don't say "we see there's a growth in solar, therefore we demand more of it", they say "how can I heat my house cheaply?" (and very few are using renewables for that; those are making small inroads into electricity production, but gas, oil and coal still do the vast amount of heating in the world).

The apathy about climate is obvious in the US elections - do you see people complaining that climate change is not discussed at all? Democrats nod to it, and Republicans deny its very existence. And the same goes in other countries, more or less.