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@Gustodon The price drop in solar has exceeded all possible predictions. It's really getting to point of "if you can hang a solar panel from it, do it".
I've seen people replace their boundary fences with racks of PVs because even though the panels aren't optimally angled, they still generate /some/ power and they're cheaper than the wood they would have used which generates none.
Tempted to do the same myself...
@benh This is addressed in the video. Essentially, the mining to support the fossil fuel sector is orders of magnitude larger and is ongoing (each barrel of oil can only be burned once). Drawing this down would be a net reduction in mining and the harm from mining.
The materials for renewables, if designed properly, are extremely recyclable to the point that it won't take long for the primary source of materials for solar PVs and batteries to become the previous generation of PVs and batteries.
While I absolutely encourage everyone to watch the full thing, the core takeaway is this:
Solar and batteries have changed everything. Anyone who says we shouldn't be maxxing out that capacity pretty much to the exclusion of non-renewables either hasn't grasped that reality or is lying to you.
Land use is a tricky balance and the USA has a very different mix from, say, Scotland but even here we could be doing a LOT more with rooftop solar, brownfield sites and marginal land to power Scotland with wind, solar and batteries before we have to touch prime agricultural land (and, again, even that neglects the potential benefits of co-use via agrivoltaics)
Technology Connections with one of the best videos I've ever seen making the case for renewable energy.
The really striking bit pointed out that if the land in the US currently being used for biofuels for cars was converted to solar panels and batteries and even if we neglected even more efficient land use like agrivoltaics, the USA could more than power itself (including EV cars) without impacting food production.