I wrote this response to being asked for comments about an article regarding the feasibility of charging vast number of EV's on our electric grids (which it argued in the affirmative, largely due to off peak charging and the potential for PV and Wind growth). I've added a bit more for posting.
I'm on this page.
Vast EV with managed storage (starting with charge during off peak) is complementary to vast renewable energy, with wind farms that tend to produce higher power at night, and PV during the day.
It should be like having your own backup battery too, but they don't do that.
It's ridiculous to be having lithium battery packs on houses when there might not be enough materials for replacing all cars...which must be done asap.
Lead/Acid is fine for household backup, no need for lithium's light weight. Just need an outdoor shed.
How much any of this means is uncertain. In Limits To Growth simulations, a society which has "some" environment consciousness and tries to use energy more efficiently, etc, lasts a bit longer but then crashes harder, meaning the population drops from over-sustainable level to way below sustainable...undershoot in the same ranking as the overshoot which preceded it.
I see carbon energy conversion without a full commitment to degrowth as like that. And sadly the rate of degrowth required to avoid a crash at this point is nearly unimaginable. Thinking about the numbers of how this works, I suggested a 0.5 child "policy," if there were as many couples with just one child as without any children, then there would be degrowth to 1 billion people ultimately but it would take until well after 2100. Still, it's pretty close to what we'd need to do (still probably not fast enough, and it's a virtually unimaginable concept to most people) to prevent a huge population crash, and illustrates the difficulty.
Without such a great reduction in the number of people, there's little hope of reducing our full ecological footprint to maintain a habitable planet, even if by some miracle we did solve the CO2 problem.
My only caveat to pure doomism is that the longer we hold on, the more likely it is that humanity will be saved or spared some loss due to unexpected developments. So despite the possibility of a deeper crash, we should aim for holding on (and degrowth too!) as much as possible. And saving everyone to the degree they make that possible.
Faced with existential crisis we probably won't survive anyway, the thing to do is what's right, not what's "pragmatic" (like eating people) and might buy us just another day. And the more we do to rebuild things as they should have been built, the longer we may have to hold on.
This is where I part company with those who say renewable energy is a farce because it causes even more growth. If we have a future, it is with renewable energy and there is no better time to get started than now. Green energy subtracts from the human labor power and other resources which would otherwise be spent (and wasted) on other things...including more fossil energy and war, which will only bring the end on quicker. There is only so much human labor power available, and it's indecent to believe we must have vast unemployment by design in order to achieve environmental goals. No, we should put everyone to the best work possible under the circumstances, and not waste time in destructive (Military Industrial Complex) and bullshit jobs (all the various scams which exist in the United Scams of America) which are used now to achieve our (fake but not meaningless either) 97% employment. Decent societies, as we should be, find useful work for 100% of people who want a job, and endeavor to make that useful work as pleasant and satisfying as possible.
The number of sustainable people on Earth is somewhat dependent on what sacrifices people are willing to make. If you give up all fuels and electricity, give up meat, and any form of transport except human-powered, then perhaps we could have a couple billion people. I'm assuming we want to have a technological society with electronic devices, which I believe is sustainable only with 1 billion people or fewer. That's what we need to defend Gaia from asteroids, which would be something we could be good for. We will still probably have to give up meat.
It is absolutely untrue we cannot make technological devices sustainably and without renewable energy. But such devices might best be designed to last and be repaired and renewed as long as possible. This orientation, and all the other changes we need, are impossible under capitalism. What's needed is an Eco Communist "dictatorship," including as much Participatory Democracy as possible.
Furthermore, the smaller the human population, the smaller our needs to tie up vast land for agriculture and renewable energy generation systems, leaving more room for the restoration and development of non-human species in pristine habitats.
But Meanwhile, let's not pretend we are not currently headed straight over the cliff, with a majority of living humans dying off from one or multiple disasters over the next 100 years, unless we make really big and useful changes. And it's looking to be even worse for non-human species. It won't be long before corals go, they are already seriously bleached all over, sea life diversity has fallen dramatically, and we may not be far from mass die off of Plankton (and how we are going to survive that I don't know).
The degrowth that we refuse to do will get done to us and moreso.
Inspiration for me:
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