Excerpts from an essay titled "The Great Energy Transition Myth"...
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Forget everything you thought you knew about energy transitions.

In his new book "More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy," Jean-Baptiste Fressoz dismantles the comforting narrative that humanity has transitioned from one energy source to another. We never really transitioned at all. We just piled on more energy sources to the older ones, intensifying our overall consumption.

Take coal for example. While it became dominant during the 19th century, vast quantities of wood were still needed to support the coal economy – to build mines, railways and infrastructure.

This pattern continues today. Despite the rise of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, global consumption of fossil fuels remains at record highs.

"Transition" has become capitalism’s favourite disguise.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/the-great-energy-transition-myth [theclimatehistorian.substack.com]

Capitalism cannot be allowed to continue.

As long as capitalism is in charge, then Business As Usual is inevitable.

But Business As Usual can only lead to collapse — of the ecosystem, of the economy, of governments, and of modern society.

Collapse, starting slowly and then growing, means tragedies beyond anything you have ever imagined.

If capitalism is still the dominating force ten years from now, then it’s too late. Collapse will happen. It may in fact be too late already — but we will never know unless capitalism is rejected and #degrowth is adopted.
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Here we are! Another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored this time by Shell Oil, Koch Industries, and the US Army.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

Here is a short (13-minute) informative video titled “The Insanity of the Carbon Capture Deception.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrFtReaFMY

It’s about the lies we’re being told to justify continuing with Business As Usual, about the false promise of futuristic new technologies that will magically stop climate change and save us all.

There was a time not very long ago when talking about the possibility that global warming might reach 3°C above the baseline was considered alarmist. You couldn’t say that without being labeled as a Doomer.

But today it’s not just “alarmists” like me who are talking about 3° of warming. Now it’s the allegedly respectable adults in the room, like Morgan Stanley…
https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/114262652848236074

And like Barack Obama…
https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/113985510174651079

Except, stunningly, when those “elites” discuss such realities, it’s NOT to raise the alarm. It’s NOT to call for system change — which we so obviously need.

Rather, it’s to point out all the wonderful new possibilities for profit-taking. And it’s to calm everyone down. No need to worry, they tell us. Everything is under control. Capitalism has the solutions. We can live happily and even thrive in a 3°C world.

It couldn't be more clear, in the midst of a surging climate and environmental catastrophe, that we need to urgently make huge systemic changes.

But those who own the system are not interested.

So instead we'll just get more and more of the same — more drilling for oil, more fracking for gas, more digging for coal, more burning of fossil fuels, along with more pollution and even more greenhouse gases. Plus we’ll also get more gigantic government subsidies to companies actively destroying the climate, AND more outrageously high profits for fossil fuel executives.

Business As Usual must go on, baby!
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Let’s all celebrate another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored this time by BP, Walmart, and Volkswagen.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

Assuming our rulers stay on their present course, following the mantra of economic growth at any cost, then all the climate and environmental crises we're experiencing today will continue to worsen with increasingly disastrous results.

What will their response be to this?

Certainly not to end capitalism or even slow things down. That would be unthinkable!

Instead they will almost certainly opt for geoengineering at some point, using technology to alter Earth’s ecosphere in an attempt to allay the damage caused by technology altering Earth’s ecosphere.

That’s senseless and stupid. But that’s what they’ll do.

It may turn out, unfortunately, that some form of geoengineering will in fact be a necessity if we are to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global heating.

But — and this is a very big but — that prospect should NOT be used as an excuse to continue with Business As Usual. It should not be seen as a way to prolong capitalism’s reign over us.

We need #Degrowth now.

Why are corporations allowed to continue reaping billions in profits while ravaging the biosphere and endangering the future of civilization?

Why do so many politicians give only lip-service, pretending to be strong on the climate while doing nothing to stop the irretrievable damage of the corporations?

And why are almost all citizens nearly silent, seemingly complacent, while this chaos happens around them?

Because the system is operating exactly as intended.

Our rulers make sure we'll get enough to eat (bread) if we work hard for it, and they provide trivial entertainment (circuses) to keep us distracted from what's really taking place. We barely understand most of it, plus we're kept too busy to care very much.

The aim of the system is — and always has been — more money and more power for those at the top. To hell with the consequences.

The show must go on.
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Get ready for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored this time by Coca-Cola, Amazon, and McDonald’s.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

I’ve been posting weekly reminders about Business As Usual every Monday morning for about two years now.

But you know what? I could legitimately have been doing it each week for the past 30 or 40 years! Because that’s how long the ‘elite’ rulers of our society have been fully aware of what they are doing and yet continued pushing non-stop in a destructive rapacious exploitative colonial capitalist frenzy — completely ignoring the science and dooming the rest of us to a disastrous ecological breakdown.

All in the name of profits.
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It's time for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored by Toyota, Comcast, and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

For at least one capitalist corporation (actually for *most* of them), Business As Usual is continuing and maybe even getting better.

Drill, baby, drill? BP loves that idea! To hell with "net zero" and a Green Transition, which they probably never took seriously anyway.
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Oil giant BP has abandoned its net-zero plans and will invest more in fossil fuel expansion.

Five years ago, the company promised to cut oil and gas production to 1.5 million barrels a day by 2030. But oil’s falling share price and the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel policies have prompted a rethink, and the company now plans to increase production to 2.4 million barrels a day while cutting $5 billion from its renewable energy investments.

With deregulation making oil and gas more attractive to investors, BP has chosen to prioritise short-term profits over long-term sustainability — a move that could embolden other energy giants to follow suit, undermining efforts to curb climate change. It’s a bet against the urgency of the crisis — a gamble with far-reaching consequences for the planet’s habitability.

Trump's "drill, baby, drill" mantra and regulatory rollbacks — such as expanded drilling leases and eased restrictions on LNG exports — have made oil and gas a safer bet.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/bps-u-turn-betting-big-on-oil-and?r=1qy42b&triedRedirect=true [theclimatehistorian.substack.com]

With everything on the line – with modern industrial civilization poised to collapse due to ecological overshoot – can we finally get the changes we need?

Ha-ha, no.
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David Fotouhi made his career as a lawyer representing corporate polluters, helping the first Trump administration unravel climate and water protections at the Environmental Protection Agency, and then fighting the agency’s regulations on behalf of industry during the Biden years.

He is now poised to return to the EPA as its new deputy administrator, the second highest-ranking official at the federal agency tasked with protecting the public from pollution in the environment.

As a partner at global law firm Gibson Dunn, Fotouhi made nearly $3.2 million in 2024 representing a range of corporate interests against pollution cases and enforcement actions. His clients included Chevron, Sunoco Pipeline, and Energy Transfer, a major oil and gas company that is currently litigating a high stakes trial against Greenpeace, according to a recent financial disclosure report filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
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FULL STORY -- https://www.exxonknews.org/p/lawyer-for-polluters-set-to-make

For those of us here on Mastodon, what’s happening in 2025 does not feel at all like Business As Usual. But unfortunately WE are not the majority.

Some people actually *like* what’s going on — and most of the others are not paying close enough attention. They are either too busy, too distracted, or simply too worried about trying to get through another day.

And so, Business As Usual, or something even worse, just keeps going on and on and on and on…

Resilience and determination to continue #businessasusual and forget those nasty fires #ClimateandNatureCrisis #LAFires
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/02/oscars-anora-picture-actress-mikey-madison-sean-baker?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

In the face of an existential climate/environmental crisis, it is blatantly obvious that we must have SYSTEM CHANGE.

That seems unlikely, however, given the entrenched power of billionaire capitalists and the media and politicians they own, not to mention the current right-wing ascendance in Europe and the USA.

So instead we have this…
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Let’s hear it for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored by Microsoft, the New York Times, and the military-industrial complex.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

Plastic is everywhere. No matter how hard we try, it's virtually impossible to get away from it.

And why? Because the increasing use of plastic is almost single-handedly saving the fossil fuel industry from extinction.

Big Oil and their financiers and the politicians they own are desperate to do anything to keep the oil and the money flowing – even if it leads to *our* extinction.
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The oil and gas industry’s scenario for growth is making more plastics and more chemicals. Petrochemicals are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in global oil demand, according to the International Energy Agency, driven largely by the demand for plastics.

Plastic production has increased “almost exponentially” and is projected to triple by 2060, according to a 2023 report.

Petrochemical manufacturing is already the world’s largest industrial energy consumer and the third-largest source of carbon dioxide emissions.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022025/petrochemical-industry-thwarting-transition-from-fossil-fuels/

It's not only in Georgia, of course. This is happening in my state too, and in many others.

Big Energy — the suppliers of coal, oil, and gas — have found an excuse to continue with Business As Usual.
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Three years ago, one of the country’s largest electric utilities, Southern Company, made a splash when it announced it would retire most of its coal-fired power plants in the coming years, a major step toward the company’s stated goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

But now Southern Company is backtracking. They say they need to meet an extraordinary spike in demand for electricity, mostly from the large facilities packed with computer servers that enable intensive online activity like generative AI and cryptocurrency, known as data centers.
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FULL STORY -- https://grist.org/energy/georgia-was-about-to-retire-coal-plants-then-came-the-data-cen/

For BP, and for nearly all capitalist corporations, making a profit is FAR more important than having a livable planet.
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Oil giant BP has said it will "fundamentally reset" its strategy as profits dropped sharply last year.

It is widely expected to say later this month that it will scale back renewable projects and increase oil and gas production following similar moves from rivals including Shell and Equinor.

BP said lower oil and gas prices, plus lower profits from its refineries, has dented how much money it has made.
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Oh, no! We can't have that! Gotta get back to Business As usual right away!! More gas, more oil, more coal, more money!!!!

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30d4ernzqjo

Let’s all celebrate another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored this time by BP, Walmart, and Volkswagen.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

Most US voters, according to a recent survey, approve of the job President Trump is doing. That seems unbelievable, but apparently it's true.

People will believe a lie if it's told to them often enough. And people will believe what they want to believe if that makes them feel safe and comfortable, regardless of the underlying reality.

This applies to Trump and MAGA — but it also applies to the lies told by corporate Democrats about capitalism, and how it's NOT a grave danger to our climate and environment.

Trump is a disaster. No question about that. But our troubles did not begin with him.

Corporate Democrats are just as eager to sell us out and destroy everything for the sake of Business As Usual, Wall Street, and Big Oil.

Listen to the clip below from an interview Barack Obama gave last year.

He says climate change might be a problem, but we can handle it. Although there's no way now to keep global warming below 2°C, that shouldn’t be so bad. And if we work hard, we might be able to stay at around 3°C … but the important thing is, stop worrying! Don't complain about the system. Everything is under control.

This is absolutely criminal. That much extra heat will destroy modern civilization. Billions of people will die, along with millions of species of plants and animals going extinct. The world as we know it will end.

There still *could* be a way to prevent all that. But it requires system change. The end of capitalism. It requires #Degrowth.

And no one in a position of power wants to hear that.

https://youtu.be/jAYVKZSWXhY?t=929