Transition This, Transition That

 As a civilization, we don't replace prior energy sources; we add to them with better ones.

Clarification: Better means cheaper or denser energy sources that therefore packs more punch.

Clark also understands the reason that green energy, ostensibly so much "Cheaper" than their dinosaur competitors, have failed to reduce costs for consumers, either at the pump or on the grid.

"As energy use has grown, the global green surge has so far amounted to an addition to fossil fuels, not an emphatic substitute for them." No surprise there, since you're duplicating the grid with an inferior system.

Green energy sources aren't adding to our energy use, but their extra infrastructure and privileged rule framework make the rest of the grid and energy system work less well.

The impossibility of green energy isn't just the difficulty in overcoming technical obstacles in a few key industries, but the doubly impossible thing of wanting to invent something we don't have while at the same time replacing the energy sources that power civilization.

And all you’ve got to show for is a reduction in the energy ratio from 86 percent to 82 percent over thirty years.  

Maybe the Queen in Alice in Wonderland can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, but Lewis Carroll's nineteenth-century story is a work of fiction meant to ridicule and entertain - not a serious framework for how to think about twenty-first century energy use.

https://www.aier.org/article/transition-this-transition-that/