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The World's Astonishing Dependence On Fossil Fuels Hasn't Changed In 40 Years (qz.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Quartz, adding: "Maybe 'dependence' is a poor description of poor people using the ready availability of cheap energy to help lift themselves out of poverty": There are few ways to understand why. First, most of the world's clean-energy sources are used to generate electricity. But electricity forms only 25% of the world's energy consumption. Second, as the rich world moved towards a cleaner energy mix, much of the poor world was just starting to gain access to modern forms of energy. Inevitably, they chose the cheapest option, which was and remains fossil fuels. So yes, we're using much more clean energy than we used to. But the world's energy demand has grown so steeply that we're also using a lot more fossil fuels than in the past.
The headline is false, of course. There is still a dependence, but "unchanged in 40 years" is bullshit.
I doubt that. Can anyone provide numbers?
It's definitely cheapest if you ignore the cost of the damage done, because it requires less infrastructure than anything else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And recently I am hearing news that "gas" is a fossil fuel which should be phased out.
Correct. In fact, we should probably phase it out before coal and oil, because the production levels we're seeing now are predicated upon fracking, which compromises the planet's clean water supply in the future for energy company profits in the present.
Guess what? We don't need that gas either if we just keep putting more storage online.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why has demand increased while global energy efficiency has also increased?
population increased!
Why do people tiptoe around the true cause like it's taboo or something?
When you think about just how much energy it takes to simply feed 7+ billion people and then the portable energy density in fossil fuels, there should be no astonishment.
We should compare things like micro-hydro power with fossil fuels.
Compare them for what? Subsistence living? Small scale hydro is a Good Thing but for most people it's hardly going to be enough to meaningfully displace fossil fuels except as a very small part of a larger energy portfolio. Solar and wind are far more practical in most circumstances, even for local generation. I couldn't use micro-hydro anywhere close to my house because it's so geographically dependent and it's not an option at all for almost anyone not living in a fairly remote area.
Fossil fuels put the poor at the mercy of global markets, disappearing and becoming more expensive every time there is a war or the wrong kind of financial crisis.
No reasonably foreseeable amount of small scale local power generation is going to change that fact. Even if I put enough renewable energy into my house to power all my needs (including an EV), that still won't affect the impact on of fluctuating energy costs on manufacturing, transport, and agriculture. Modern agriculture is basically the process of turning diesel fuel into food and nearly all our transport systems are tied to fossil fuels currently. What needs to be emphasized is that we need a diverse portfolio of energy sources to mitigate economic disruptions from geopolitics. An important part of this will be local generation (solar roofs, etc) but we'll also need technologies for transport that aren't tied to fossil fuels (EVs) and for fossil fuels to actually have to bear the full cost of the pollution they generate.
And yes you are quite right about one use plastics. That's a much bigger problem than most people realize.