by
Alexander Zevin,
Jiwei Xiao,
Kareem Rabie,
Leonardo Impett,
Marco D'Eramo,
Robin Blackburn,
Simone Weil,
Tariq Ali,
Troy Vettese
(editors)
A fully renewable system will probably occupy one hundred times more land than a fossil-fuel-powered one. In the case of the US, between 25 and 50 per cent of its territory, and in a cloudy, densely populated country such as the UK, all of the national territory might have to be covered in wind turbines, solar panels and biofuel crops to maintain current levels of energy production. While ongoing tinkering will improve renewable energy systems, they will never have the power densities of fossil fuels. It is land scarcity, rather than rare natural resources, that is the ultimate limit to economic growth: energy consumption must be cut.
a focus on land scarcity could be a strong plank of any left mobilisation tbh. look at how the rich people who own land use it now, with their mansions and fields and shit. it's so obvious to basically anyone that it's a suboptimal use of space, but if we tie that into an ecological agenda as well ...