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Dirty Lies About Clean Energy (www.currentaffairs.org)

submitted 1 month ago by wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23170535

Building “alternative” energy infrastructure isn’t enough. To avert climate disaster, fossil fuels need to be restricted, and energy consumption overall needs to fall.

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If everyone simply switched from fossil fuels to "clean" energy sources, and nothing else changed, that would actually be suicidal for life on Earth.

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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure, but if unforested land is artificially forested, or deforested land is reforested faster than would occur naturally, or human activity causes an increase in plant cover unintentionally (for example, if increased carbon dioxide spurs in increase in plant growth beyond the previous norm), then the photosynthesis done by those extra plants would be caused by humans, surely?

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

If historically unforested land is artificially forested, then that might be worth crediting to humans, but that has never happened on a meaningful scale, and realistically, I don't know if it could. If deforested land grows back (at whatever rate), then that is just nature cleaning up the mess as it always has, and the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered on that land is always going to be less than what would have been sequestered had humans not slashed and burned the vegetation in the first place. The forest has to recapture the amount of carbon dioxide released by deforestation just to "catch up" before it can continue where it left off, so to speak.