I do agree that dramatically reducing the number of private cars is a challenge. But I strongly believe that we don't have a choice.
I see it this way: our society is built upon abundant energy, which is mostly (and by far) fossil fuels. Yes, renewable grow fast (while still being marginal), but they grow fast in a world of abundant fossil fuels. Cut the fossil fuels entirely today, and we are dead.
The thing is: fossil fuels are not unlimited; in the close future, we will have passed the peak of production for all of them (conventional peak oil was in 2008, Europe feels it since then). So we are going towards a world with less fossil energy, and we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today). Hence it seems pretty reasonable to think that we will have less energy in the future. And therefore, we need to do less, and it will be more costly.
That's not necessarily the end of the world, that's just different (though probably more complicated).
> Do you expect to still pay $20 for that?
No. I expect to have to do less with less. I am not saying that I will necessarily live better, just that my survival depends on my society being able to do it.
> we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today)
Yes, we do: nuclear. The reasons why nuclear energy has not taken hold as widely as it should have are political, not technical. We could be at the point today where no fossil fuels need to be burned anywhere in the world if we had started building nuclear plants on a larger scale back in the 1970s, as soon as it became clear that OPEC was not going to play nice when they thought they could extract more money from their customers by restricting supply.
That's likely wrong, or at least it would be a very risky bet. If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time. Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.
This is wishful thinking. What's most likely is that we need to start building a lot of nuclear plant today, and we still need to degrow. Because nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels, but obviously even with a degrowth we will need some energy. We will have less energy, hence the degrowth.
> If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time.
Replacing fossil fuels with anything will take time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start doing it.
> Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.
No, we wouldn't. For applications where electricity is not practical (such as, for example, commercial aviation), we can use electricity to make liquid fuels from the CO2 and water vapor in the air, by reversing the chemical reactions that take place when the fuels are burned.
> nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels
They will gradually reduce their usage, eventually to zero. You simply refuse to consider the possbility of gradually shifting energy usage in order to not have to "degrow" and lower people's standard of living. Good luck convincing the rest of the world of that. Particularly when "degrow" for most of the rest of the world translates into "stay in poverty forever". Poverty has negative consequences too.
> Replacing fossil fuels with anything will take time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start doing it.
Of course we should do it as quickly as possible. But look at the number: most likely we won't replace. We will just compensate for some of the loss.
> we can use electricity to make liquid fuels from the CO2 and water vapor in the air, by reversing the chemical reactions that take place when the fuels are burned.
Because we can does not mean at all that it scales. That's my whole point. Did you ever stop to check how many nuclear plants we would need to replace all fossil fuels? And I mean considering all the very energy-expensive ideas you're considering like "reversing the chemical reactions that take place when the fuels are burned".
You're basically saying that we will replace fossil fuels by producing more energy that will allow us to synthesize fossil fuel-like alternatives. That's a lot of energy, you can't just ignore it.
> You simply refuse to consider the possbility of gradually shifting energy usage in order to not have to "degrow"
And you apparently refuse to consider that maybe fossil fuels are so "great" (in terms of energy) that we don't have a viable alternative. Again: we need to build nuclear plants to compensate for the loss of fossil fuels, but that won't completely replace it.
> lower people's standard of living
That's just about the narrative. If your view of "a good life" is no biodiversity, but a new phone every year and flying every weekend to a different city to listen to the same music in a similar night club", then yes, it will lower your standard of living. But maybe it just means that we need a lot less TikTok-like technology and go back to more essential ideas (like enjoying nature and slow travel to closer places).
Also, from my point of view, anyway we will degrow. It will be forced by the reduction in availability of fossil fuels. It's just that if we don't control it (by organizing society around degrowth), it will be worse.
There is this great French person who says that uncontrolled sobriety is poverty. And I agree with that: I don't want poverty, but I have to face the fact that I will need sobriety.
> look at the number: most likely we won't replace. We will just compensate for some of the loss.
If you are referring to the current political situation, in which nuclear is at a huge disadvantage for irrational reasons, then I would agree that we won't start building serious nuclear capacity unless and until that political situation changes. But that will need to happen for any solution to work.
> Did you ever stop to check how many nuclear plants we would need to replace all fossil fuels?
About as many as we currently have of fossil fuel plants, since the replacement, at least for large base load electrical plants, is more or less one to one. There is no technical reason why we can't build that number of plants; your apparent belief to the contrary is simply uninformed. The obstacles are purely political.
> That's just about the narrative.
No, it isn't, it's about basic facts: poverty kills people. "Poverty" for most of the world does not mean "can't afford the Disney channel" or "can't afford wasteful overconsumption". It means "can't get enough to eat", "can't get basic health care", "can't afford basic control over your life". Telling people that they just have to suck it up and accept that because of your "degrowth" narrative is not going to work. Nor is it necessary.
You and I are posting here in a medium that requires an industrial civilization, and doing that does not imply wasteful overconsumption. I have had the computer I'm writing this post on for ten years. I've had my current phone for three (and it would be more except that my last one broke--I had that one for about seven or eight years). I've had my current car for six, and my wife has had her current car for ten. I think there are many more people living in first world countries who are like us, than who are wastefully overconsuming.
We don't need "degrowth". Nor will it be forced on us by running out of fossil fuels. If it is forced on us, it will be by stupid politics that refuses to adopt an obvious alternative that has been staring us in the face for decades.
> No, it isn't, it's about basic facts: poverty kills people.
Either you misunderstood me, or that's bad faith. I said that we need sobriety: we need to stop consuming too much energy (and increasing the rate at which we consume it).
I also said that if we don't get our act together and control the transition to a world without fossil fuels (and hence with less energy), then it won't be sobriety, it will be poverty. Obviously, nobody wants poverty, and I know we do agree on that. Don't make me say what I haven't.
Now the thing is that you seem to vastly underestimate the power of fossil fuels and the difficulty of nuclear power. Do you even know how one would "reverse the chemical reaction that takes place when fuels are burned"? Sounds to me like you don't have much knowledge in chemistry, do you. Note that I am not a chemist myself, I just had a specialization in environmental chemistry at university. But what's for sure is that reversing a chemical process is not always easy, and this one surely isn't.
You can't just throw ideas out there about "reversing chemical reactions" without having a clue how much energy it takes to do that. Energy is not infinite, it's not that hard to grasp, is it?
I see it this way: our society is built upon abundant energy, which is mostly (and by far) fossil fuels. Yes, renewable grow fast (while still being marginal), but they grow fast in a world of abundant fossil fuels. Cut the fossil fuels entirely today, and we are dead.
The thing is: fossil fuels are not unlimited; in the close future, we will have passed the peak of production for all of them (conventional peak oil was in 2008, Europe feels it since then). So we are going towards a world with less fossil energy, and we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today). Hence it seems pretty reasonable to think that we will have less energy in the future. And therefore, we need to do less, and it will be more costly.
That's not necessarily the end of the world, that's just different (though probably more complicated).
> Do you expect to still pay $20 for that?
No. I expect to have to do less with less. I am not saying that I will necessarily live better, just that my survival depends on my society being able to do it.