This Sustainable Life

592: We're thinking about and using solar and wind wrong. Here's how they could work.


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Including their greatest proponents, nearly everyone thinks of and uses solar, wind, and other so-called renewables wrong if their goal is to reach sustainability or to stop reducing Earth's ability to sustain life. They all pollute in manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, recycling end materials, and disposal.

I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't use them. I'm saying using them as we do is exacerbating more problems than we're solving.

Their shortcomings don't come from a lack of insight, innovation, or ingenuity but physics. I'd love to hear of any evidence giving hope around the need for pollution to create, use, and handle at their ends of lives renewable technologies. In the meantime, we don't need them to pollute less, including dropping fossil fuel use over 90 percent in a few years.

Here are the myth-debunking posts I refer to at the end of this episode:

  • Health and longevity of other cultures
  • Our culture destroyed theirs, but which had better health, mental health, meaning, and purpose?

Recent news about carbon emissions still increasing, despite decades and billions developing and installing solar, but little attempt to reduce fossil fuels:

  • Climate scientists warn of increased climate change events as carbon emissions fail to drop
  • Global CO2 emissions rebounded to their highest level in history in 2021

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This Sustainable LifeBy Joshua Spodek: Author, Speaker, Professor

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