An interesting analysis, with which I largely agree—but not entirely. While I would love to see a “Green New Deal”—a wholesale, system-wide conversion from fossil fuels to renewables, one question looms: where will we find the infusion of concentrated net energy necessary to build out this renewable energy infrastructure? Solar and wind energy are diffuse, and must be focused—by solar panels or windmills—to be useful. So their overall net energy is minimal or even negligible: you can’t build a solar panel with solar energy, nor a windmill with wind energy!

Our global industrial infrastructure and explosive economic growth over the past century or so was entirely dependent on a massive one-time infusion of fossil fuels—first coal, then petroleum, then natural gas—all of which have a huge energy return on energy invested (that is, net energy). And we will need a huge infusion of this dense net energy to build out a renewable infrastructure—energy to mine, transport, and manufacture the components of this infrastructure. Yet all these dense net energy sources are pouring CO2 into our atmosphere and causing our intertwined and accelerating global crises. And they are all getting depleted, which means they will eventually require more and more energy to extract them—resulting in less available net energy for economic and infrastructural development (including wind farms, solar arrays, electric cars, etc.) The inevitable result will be skyrocketing inflation—since money is ultimately a measure of available net energy, and the latter is the true foundation of any economy. So when energy becomes more expensive—as it must—so does everything else. Hence I see no alternative to the inevitable collapse of our global market economy.

Our best bet is neither “degrowth” (and here I agree entirely with you) nor shifting wholesale to renewables from fossil fuels (which, as we see, is energetically impossible). Rather it is progressive relocalization of commerce and regeneration of community. My home-brewed slogan for this is as follows: Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness—by learning, teaching, healing (our biosphere as best we can) and creating. This is my response to traumatized young people when they ask, “Whar can I do??”