Save the Drama for your Mama.
We can DECARB THIS MFER and get YOKED, and make some MONEY and crush a NATTY and get YOKED.
They have Merch.
Been meaning to post this for months.
Decarb bros believe it’s all going to be OK.
They believe that I.P.A.s go best with party chat about smart-grid management and electric vehicle infrastructure. They believe in trading memes on Twitter and in messaging groups, formed around their zeal for technology as the answer to a lower-emissions future.
And the bros, a loose affiliation of mostly young researchers, climate tech workers, policymakers and people following along online, believe in making fun of themselves, at least a little. See: “Decarb bros,” a term they have embraced regardless of gender identity or weight-lifting ability.
What they do not believe in is wallowing.
“We are against doomerism,” said Billy Casagrande, who works at Scale Microgrids, a climate tech start-up. He was referring to a pessimistic view that humanity has passed the point of being able to do anything about climate change.
The consensus among young people seems to be “that we are screwed as it relates to climate,” the self-described decarb bro, who is 25, continued. Mr. Casagrande, one of dozens at a monthly meet-up in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood for clean energy enthusiasts, believes there is another way.
“The solutions are here. We just need to deploy them.”
“Deploy” has become a rallying cry for decarb bros. They argue that deploying climate technology solutions — solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, electric cars, meat alternatives (the list goes on) — will decarbonize the economy while generating eye-popping financial returns.
“The environmental movement has been traditionally seen as altruistic,” said Kyri Baker, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado and a self-described decarb bro. “It was about giving away stuff and making sacrifices.”
The decarb bro flips those associations on their heads, rejecting pure doom and putting faith in business innovation and government spending to fight climate change.
The bro label has historically been associated with negative connotations of toxic masculinity and exclusivity, Dr. Baker said. But she thinks the term is undergoing a shift and taking on a gender-inclusive status. The decarb bro is “someone who’s working toward something that we all care about” without adopting the sacrificial tone of traditional environmentalism, she said.
Dr. Baker sees aspects of the decarb bro culture as an antidote to the wonkiness and self-seriousness of parts of the environmental movement. In particular, she cited the Twitter account Bros for Decarbonization, which shares memes that connect bro-approved activities — namely drinking, lifting weights and making money — with decarbonizing the economy.
Like Dr. Baker, James McGinniss, the founder of David Energy, a climate tech start-up with over $20 million in funding, felt “environmentalism was just not functioning as a narrative.”
For decades, saving the planet was seen as requiring sacrifice. Environmentalists were primarily concerned with “scarcity, reducing consumption and population growth,” said Paul Sabin, an environmental historian at Yale.
Green technological development was also at a different stage, said Bill McKibben, the environmentalist and author. Solar panels were not yet commercially viable; the mainstreaming of electric vehicles was still decades away.
“In the olden times, we viewed clean energy as ‘alternative energy’ — the Whole Foods of energy,” Mr. McKibben said. Now that “pointing a sheet of glass at the sun is the cheapest way to make power on planet Earth,” he continued, green-powered products can be “the Safeway.”
The change in technology has also shifted, for many, what it means to work on climate. Through the first decade of this century, working on limiting emissions usually meant working for a government or an NGO. Today, it can be working for a start-up, consultancy or financial institution.
“Business has caught up,” Mr. Sabin said.
Still, Mr. Sabin cautioned against a total reliance on technology to fight climate change. “An abundance strategy is very optimistic that we are going to be able to have it all through technological innovation,” he said. “But we haven’t actually produced that solution yet.”
The decarb bro is undaunted.
The way Mr. Casagrande sees it, the only way to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is through abundance — that is, building things that reduce emissions and that people want to buy.
Using a business mind-set to widely scale decarbonized technology means tantalizing consumers with products that are appealing not just because of their lower carbon footprint. They must be faster (think high-torque electric vehicles), cheaper (think near-free electricity from solar panels) or cooler (that one’s a bit subjective).
—
Also, Decarb Bros are fashionably gender neutral.
While I am for companies involved with climate solutions, aggressive economic growth combined with those solutions dilutes their effectiveness. We keep ramping up the economy, but that requires ever higher levels of resource and energy use globally. If we somehow used our vast intelligence to figure out systems of limiting material consumption while also replacing dirtier forms of energy use and resources extraction, we could maintain a reasonably good standard of living while also greatly reducing the environmental destruction we see now.
So far, we aren’t keeping pace with actually reducing carbon emissions globally, all while greatly increasing material extraction and environmental destruction. Growth without limits ensures that even with an eventual drop in carbon emissions globally due to renewables, that drop will be gradual, with resource use and other forms of environmental havoc increasing.
With an event expanding economy that promotes (and actually needs) ever greater levels of consumption and resources extraction, we are on a path that will very likely, if not certainly, lead to some sort of externally forced contraction – by environmental collapse, economic crash due to debt, war, and/or other causes.
That’s why I am a doomer. It’s not that I think it’s impossible we can do anything. We can and we absolutely should. It’s a moral obligation to try. We should be building heat pumps and solar panels and trying to replace fossil fuels. But, as a species, we seem to lack the collective wisdom to understand that never ending growth in a finite area isn’t a winning strategy long term.
The environmental movement understood that in the 1970s, but now seems to be moving to the happy abundance tune of the libertarian party. To me it’s just doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. We’re doomed because we’re not wise. We’re wiping out species and so degrading the biosphere, we’re creating weather system chaos, were drawing down topsoil and aquifer levels, we’re continually building an massive economic engine requiring ever greater levels of complexity and international dependence while global politics move towards nationalism, we’re building technologies blindly that we have no idea could cause to happen, our governments are getting into untenable levels of debt to do all these things, and we think this won’t lead to repercussions? We’ll just have a happy future of space travel, robots, and non-stop synthetic sushi?
Yes, we should always try to make the world a better place, and shouldn’t stop trying for that. If the Decarb Bros can help make more solar panels, then great. I just fundamentally question their other underlying mentalities.
———————
“Which requires more mining — fossil fuels or clean energy?
The short answer to this question is that fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal (and 4.3 billon tons of oil) EVERY YEAR;
whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals IN TOTAL OVER THE NEXT THREE DECADES.”
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technologies-and-renewable-energies-better-for-the-environment-than-fossil-fuels/
———————————–
8 billion tons of coal and 4.3 billion tons of oil Every Year.
Those are mostly burned up right away.
Li-ion batteries can last 15 years; and when an EV needs a new one, the old one is far from dead, and can be used for more years as stationary grid backup.
And then, Completely Recycled.
“NREL research confirms that after being used to power a car, a Li-ion battery retains approximately 70% of its initial capacity—making its reuse a valuable energy storage option for electric utilities, before battery materials are recycled.”
“Most batteries will become available for second use at the end of the expected PEV service life of approximately 15 years. NREL studies show that these batteries—with as much as 70% of their initial capacity—potentially can continue to operate for another 10 years in second use as energy storage for utilities, translating into a total service life of up to 25 years.”
https://www.nrel.gov/transportation/battery-second-use.html
———————
And that 2nd use is already happening.
New Solar Power & Energy Storage System Uses Former Electric Vehicle Batteries
“California-based B2U Storage Solutions just announced it has made SEPV Cuyama, a solar power and energy storage installation using second-life EV batteries, operational in New Cuyama, Santa Barbara County, CA.
There is not yet an established market and clear market price for selling used EV batteries. Pricing varies considerably. Reusing EV batteries in large scale stationary storage generates substantial value, and therefore companies like B2U can pay a significant premium over the recycling value. After utilizing the residual value, B2U and other companies that reuse EV batteries work with recyclers and OEMs to ensure all batteries are recycled.
In addition to Honda batteries, B2U has successfully deployed Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Tesla Model 3, and Ford Focus batteries. This is over 80% of today’s EV market. We are working with Volvo and BYD and other OEMs to deploy additional battery types as we continue to expand the number of batteries that our EPS technology supports.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/14/new-solar-power-energy-storage-system-uses-former-electric-vehicle-batteries/
Of course renewables require less mining. I’m not arguing that. I’m saying that a continuously growing economy requires ever higher and higher energy and resource inputs from all sources. We’ll keep using fossil fuels far longer than we should because we’ll need to keep feeding that demand from any source available.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/climate/fossil-fuels-expanding.html
“Growth” in the economic sense does not necessarily mean more material consumption or energy use. Some examples:
– the introduction of SKUs and checkout scanners that reduced waste in the retail industries
– more efficient engines (cars, generators, whatever)
– reduced paper consumption
– better recycling tech
– displacement of physical media by digital media
– well-functioning water-saving fixtures and appliances
– improvements in agricultural science
– replacing fuel-based energy sources with wind and solar
– the switch from incandescent to LED (a big win with respect to air conditioned spaces)
– video meetings replacing plane flights
Of course there are still abominations like the “fast fashion” industry, but people are getting more savvy about unnecessary waste. We got people to start using refillable water bottles and we might finally be cutting down on those stupid single-use coffee cups every day. I try new products (plant-based instead of plastic pens, bamboo toothbrushes, compostable softener sheets, etc.) and send them around for other people to try.
Well, I’m not a big believer that efficiency really moves the needle due to the Jevons Paradox (not a popular view on this blog). Efficiency is great, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that overall resource just keeps growing in a free market economy, and real world stats back that up:
https://www.edie.net/report-global-resource-use-hit-record-high-in-2021-despite-pandemic-slowdown/
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-calls-urgent-rethink-resource-use-skyrockets
This ‘can’ be stopped if we place LIMITS on resource extraction and use, but that’s not the Decarb Bros are calling for – they’re echoing the libertarians about just letting the free market go wild. I strongly believe THAT WON’T WORK- but then no one is really listening to that viewpoint.
I’m listening and many others are too. The degrowth movement is GROWING. The Gandi quote about “ignoring, ridiculing, fighting and then winning” as applied to change, has reached the fighting stage. The BAU crowd has now noticed and have gone on the attack.
It is clear the status quo has not worked. The time for listening to salesmen from technoutopia is done. It’s time for a massive reorganisation of the way society operates!
Oddly, for the utopia of a renewables powered economy to come to pass, it will require massive new quantities of resources extraction powered by fossil fuels mostly to accomplish.
Oddly, horse-drawn wagons were needed to supply the first railroads and automobile factories in the US.
Oddly, people designing new computers use existing computers.
Oddly, people designing digital media used a lot of paper.
Oddly, people who designed the first mobile phones used landlines to communicate.
The payback for replacing extract-and-burn technology is a severe reduction in extraction and burning in the long term. The term you’re looking for is carbon payback period.
unlikely that the materials for Henry Ford’s first horseless carriage were delivered on an F-150
Too many people supposedly in the fight against climate change waste an inordinate amount of time and energy whining about Doomers instead of going after the fucking people that are working to make things even worse. It’s as if the fossil fuel interests have planted this talking point in forums where people should instead be strategizing the most effective ways to stop them.
Besides which, there’s a big difference between working on ways to mitigate climate change as a whole and helping the people whose communities are already doomed.
I’m for making profits in the fossil fuel industries. My oil companies pay 6% dividends, make 25% in free cash flow, and sell for less than 5x earnings. Personally I have concluded that renewables are a dead end solution. Nuclear makes sense, but I don’t see any way to make money there. Besides, it takes 7.5 years on average globally to build a new nuclear power plant. Too little. Too late.
You don’t make as much from your fossil fuel investments as I make from my chain of meth labs. Don’t forget the Sociopaths United meeting next Tuesday.
Running meth labs is a business. I don’t run businesses anymore. All my investments are passive. I read Griselda Blanco was making $80m a month at the top of her game. Then she went to prison. Then she was murdered. Too much excitement for me. At my age, staying rich is more important than getting richer. Nor am I interested in going to prison or being murdered. Boring is better.
Good luck with your criminal endeavors.
Go, net positive group.