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Comment by wireprotocol | Hacker News Reader

Everyone wants to protect the environment. But I watch out for two important costs: economic, and centralization of power. Unfortunately, this seems likely to have high costs in both areas.

I prefer a decentralized approach. People nearly always underestimate the rate of technological change. Solar panels, battery tech, and electric cars are a winning combination. Some investments/incentives for public charging infrastructure and maybe some gas taxes will go a long way.

Once electric car total ownership costs get low enough, then gasoline cars will be worthless scrap heaps over night. Once solar power and battery tech improves enough, it will take over very quickly.

I don't see a case for radicalism here. It feels like a fight and will disrupt many lives, and it doesn't need to be that way. Resistance to clean tech disappears quickly when you show people that it works. Maybe just some minor policy tweaks to push it along.

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> Everyone wants to protect the environment. But I watch out for two important costs: economic, and centralization of power... I prefer a decentralized approach. People nearly always underestimate the rate of technological change. Solar panels, battery tech, and electric cars are a winning combination...

You do realize that these technologies you tout have all benefitted from serious, centralized subsidy and incentive programs from major economies like EU, China, and the USA, right?

Similarly oil, coal, cars, etc benefitted from those same subsidies in their turn.

Even though millions of people making local choices is the way to make macro changes, those choices are sensibly based on local, short-term criteria. If you think there's an externality not overt at the point of use, you need a large centealized solution to change it.

Even the markets for purely consumer products like, say, the VCR were unlocked by crucial central policies like refusing to kowtow to music/Hollywood in the 1970s and 80s. Mobile phones boomed in the 1990s...except in the US where the government was uninterested in making the policies that unlocked those markets. Credit card infrastructure in the US is primitive because the clearing cartels aren't interested in fixing things....while their entire business would not exit had the government not mandated certain rules on card acceptance, cash discounts, and locus liability back in the 1960s.

Etc.

Sigh.

First-world governments start war and topple governments to secure fossil fuel resource, and spend $$$ to build infrastructure to handle it - infrastructure that will be managed by governments or multi-national conglomerates.

But we can't have carbon tax or solar subsidy, as they will lead to centralization of power.

It's the same kind of logic that leads to people asking "Why do we need centralized project X when we can have highways?"

Again and again.

I agree. Technology always makes progress, so it is inevitable that clean energy will be dominant in the future. The question is whether that will be too little too late.

> gasoline cars will be worthless scrap heaps over night

This is true if the market is allowed to operate freely — “free” should not be confused with “unregulated.” Unfortunately, when it comes to energy in the US, the market is cleverly controlled to push the inevitable rise of clean energy back several decades. It has been this way for a while now. The regulation here might seem heavy handed, but that’s the kind of push that clean energy needs to win the uphill battle it’s fighting. If we hadn’t rigged the market for so long, then the natural progress of technology would have addressed climate change in time. But now we’ve waited to long, and we need hard hitting policies to peddle back the pace of the damage.

> It feels like a fight and will disrupt many lives, and it doesn’t need to be that way.

This is where you won me back over. The truth is that it is a fight. But it is important to note for those of us who want to address climate change that how we fight is important. Unlike some other markets, we haven’t really had the opportunity as a country to see what a regulated, climate-focused market looks like. So, if we push some policies that take away jobs from people who have been working in coal mines their entire lives, then that’s going to be the headline. Everyone for so long has been saying that clean energy is too radical, and it will kill the economy. We have the opportunity to implement a comprehensive plan for a gradual transition. Bring clean technology to the forefront while helping those that will suffer to slowly transition into retirement. If we can address climate change, create a new sector of jobs, and let an old market die gracefully, then the naysayers will have nothing of substance to complain about.

I prefer a decentralized approach. ... Once electric car total ownership costs get low enough, then gasoline cars will be worthless scrap heaps over night. Once solar power and battery tech improves enough, it will take over very quickly.

Let's see. Capacity of a Tesla battery: 85kWh. Let's say 1m^2 of solar panel can produce 200W in good sunlight, and we'll handwave away all other conversion inefficiencies. Let's say we get 8 hours of good sunlight a day, so in a day 1m^2 of solar panel will give 1.6kWh. So with 54m^2 of solar panel, we can get 1 Tesla charge in a day. Maybe that could work outside of a city where everyone has a big backyard, or can cover the roof in solar panels, or both (I don't think my roof is anywhere near that big at least on its south-facing side, and the back is in shade). Maybe you can buffer it in a vanadium-redox battery so you can actually charge the car overnight. But with the cost and the amount of solar you need if you can only get 100W/m^2 for 4 hours a day, that's going to get real big and hence expensive. And that's when you will really need the vehicle because maybe the weather is too bad for alternatives.

Electric cars in cities are going to go on being powered by a central grid forever, basically, because physics.

Few people are putting 85kwh into their car everyday. Their daily driving requires just a fraction of that, more like 10-15kwh. In the summer my solar panels generate 2-3x that amount easily.

You are correct that there's still a need for a grid. But that grid can be cleaner and more efficient with renewables and energy storage that gives everyone similar benefits to solar panels on their roof.

And that central grid in places like California is already 50% non-carbon and improving rapidly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California

"California is the only state with extensive deployment of wind, solar, and geothermal energy. California's venture capital investments in sustainable energy are greater than the other 49 states combined, at $2.2 billion in 2012. In August 2018, California's legislature passed legislation that mandates completely carbon-free electricity generation by 2045."

Most people drive under 20 miles a day. which is about 350 watts * 20 = 7 kw. or using your path 54 square meters covers the energy needs of 85/7 = 12 cars.

This is the same idea as you don't use up a full tank of gas on most days.

> Once electric car total ownership costs get low enough

What does car ownership have to do with two billion people around the globe moving one mile inland? Why would car prices help during a bread riot?

Strawman much?

GP comment was clearly directed in support of a decentralized "winning tech will win without the need and costs of centralized government planning".

My Nissan LEAF is wildly cheaper (~40-70% cheaper) to operate per-mile than my wife's very sensible Honda CR-V. Her car is wildly cheaper all-in because it's a 2005 vs the 2015 LEAF. Give it 5 more years for the common electrics to be readily and plentifully available on the used market and this will even out. The electric cars are already coming. Quickly.

This is all happening without the need for a government program to guarantee a job with the government for anyone who wants one as the article pitches as an essential part of the "Green New Deal". (What does a government job have to do with sea level rise either?)

> This is all happening without the need for a government program to guarantee a job with the government for anyone who wants one as the article pitches as an essential part of the "Green New Deal".

If we're going to decarbonize the economy at a decent rate, we most likely will need to find a just solution for those whose jobs will be disappearing under them (e.g. workers in the fossil fuel industry).

See the riots in France for what happens when you give tax cuts to the rich and try to make the working classes pay for decarbonizing.

Some kind of federal job guarantee could be a way to guarantee some amount of income for displaced workers.

How are you going to decentralize planning around rising oceans?

IMO, by setting desired outcomes and incentives, not by mandating specific solutions and certainly not by creating a government jobs program to create the solutions that the government dictates are "the winner".

I don't want ocean levels or carbon levels to be the next Joint Strike Fighter...

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