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- Embed this noticeSigh. Ok, you believe in renewables and their ability to not only provide the electricity for the current needs but for what is necessary in the decarbonisation of ultimately fossil fuel-run industries. You believe that we're not already *not* reaching #peakrenewables (e.g., all current installed wind turbines worldwide will have to be replaced by 2050) but you think that societies will even be capable of financing that transition. (A recent McKinsey report estimates that for Germany alone to transform all its energy needs throughout all sectors until 2045 roughly cost € 500 billion annually.) Somewhere down my bookmarks I have the numbers and estimates of the fossil fuel and carbon emissions needed to extract all the minerals the world would needs to build all the renewables and storage systems. I won't get into that discussion tonight, but I don't see *any* chance to attenuate the climate crisis by adding more of the same, even if it comes with catchy phrases like "circular economy". (And in all of that we haven't even touched the issue that progress in one sector is pretty much erased by inventions in another – see, e.g., how the rise of cryptocurrency mining has wiped out the emission reductions reached by 30 years of PV deployment, or the projected electricity consumption of AI that will turn the goals of decabonisation into a child's play.)
"Circular economy" like "lesser material consumption for renewables" will turn out like "degrowth": Nice to have, but only possible on-top, and in that presupposing the full functioning of the system they intend to replace.