That's where the ideological edge lies, I think, both in the "can't" (a form of conservatism with a small c) and the "won't" (big business lobbying / human nature arguments)

Perhaps we should add a fifth element to Jérôme's Creed: smart power usage

Excellent.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Perhaps we should add a fifth element to Jérôme's Creed: smart power usage - using and/or storing sporadic power when it's available, cutting back when it's not. Maybe we can recharge our cars and delivery vans when it's sunny, windy or when the tide's running.

I suppose that's included in energy efficiency/conservation, but maybe it needs to be a separate item, to flag that idea that using the same energy for the same purpose in different circumstances can make quite a big difference.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

where is it written that except for emergency rooms and the like, we have to have 24x7 electricity on demand?  we lived w/o it for 20,000 years, and now all of a sudden it is the end of civilisation if we have to fit our electric consumption into some kind of a schedule?

this idea that every human epoch prior to our own fossil binge was unrelievedly dark, dirty, smelly, cold, miserable and stupid I find historically naif and more than a wee bit arrogant.  we can't even match the lifespans of peasant farmers in the Caucasus, and we're the all time hotshots and pinnacle of human evolution?  but I bet the Romans thought the same, between swigs of Pb contaminated drinkies...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...