@Dude

Fortunately there are only so many sources of energy, and not many of them are cheaper than solar. Shut down the power plant, people burn gasoline instead. Shut off the gas supply, people buy solar panels from China and plant fast-growing trees for firewood. The job is done.

This entire scenario happened at a smaller scale during hurricane Helene. Power went down immediately, and gas ran out shortly thereafter. For two weeks, solar was king, if you had it. People adapt quicker than you think, you just need to pressure them.

I don’t know who you’re listening to, but they’re saying falsehoods. Low cost renewables have forced coal off the grid, and made it much harder for new gas plants to be built. Look at ERCOT, where Texas legislators are clearly pro-oil and gas, have 5x the safety setback to a wind turbine as a gas well, and over 95% of new generation on the grid over the past decade has been wind and solar. Coal plants have been forced to shut down because they are not economically viable, even fully depreciated plants that are only paying for fuel and basic operating costs. Gas plants are marginal at best, and even with state subsidy program giving $7B for new gas plants, the interconnection queue is still over 90% wind, solar, and battery.

You’re right that we need to change faster, but US and EU CO2 emissions have been falling for a decade, and China is expected to have peaked in 2024, with renewable installations exceeding 300 GW/yr and headed toward 400GW/yr. BUILD MOAR SOLAR.

Optimizing this idea a little, and making it a closer analog to creating plastic feedstock – plant bamboo plantations. Bamboo typically yields 30 tonnes dry mass per hectare per year, is readily converted into lumber or used directly for formed items like spoons and forks, and is high in cellulose, allowing bulk polymer production.

Until industrial CO2 extraction can rival Capital and O&M cost per ton of a plantation, or make some valuable, high quality output, it needs to stay in the lab.

It is possible to create and enforce a shortage

For a while, until people figure out alternative means to access energy, which are usually worse. Turn off the power plant, increase electricity prices to reduce demand and… whoops, now people are buying propane cylinders and using gas stoves in the kitchen again. Ban propane, now people are using kerosene and other fuel oils.

You need a proper police state to keep people from innovating when they want something.

Plants are also doing same… save climate more tree propagate!!

Lots of trees out there are a continuous coppice crop, or grow really really darn fast (and often both of those go together). Yes some of the most demanding uses we put wood to really does require that slow growing Oak to get to a giant size so it can contain the lumber desired, but that is far from the only option. For instance Balsa the tree is likely 10-20 years dead by the end of your estimate, and its growing to a giant size in 10 odd years – yes Balsa isn’t prime structural lumber but you can still do a great deal with it.

The capture and sequestering of CO2 like that is definitely not going to match capturing near pure CO2 waste from some other process and turning it into a plastic, but it is pretty much no effort process.

@c
Could you elaborate on the debunking of degrowth? I’m generally an advocate for lowtechmagazine type approaches and would be interested in seeing arguments against