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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

Good news: non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market. This has already started to happen with coal.

Bad news: Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any change of heart or international cooperation, it will just be due to mercenary calculations of cost, and technology. But all of us have to consider what will (not may, will) happen to places with very oil-dependent economies, when oil goes the way of coal. Imagine Saudi Arabia in the state that Venezuela is in right now.

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>Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any change of heart or international cooperation [..]

Pretty sure they've just been advocating for making the 'mercenary calculations' more accurate by pricing in carbon related costs.

Cynically: to first approximation no one lives in Saudi Arabia. Even if it devolves to a Venezuela style anarchy, we'd still be more worried about Venezuela.

Practically: Saudia Arabia is an oil source. Petroleum fuels are going to be with us forever. It's coal (first) and gas (eventually) which are being displaced by better electrical generation options. But if you want to fly an airplane, you really can't replace the savings you get from not having to carry 2/3 of the reaction mass on the vehicle. Oil wealth will be the very last to go, likely well after they're tapped out anyway.

And politically: "the Left" you postulate doesn't really exist anyway. You can be a raving socialist and still be pleased that technology solves your problem. You can be a market centrist and still believe that carbon regulation is a good idea.

You _can_, certainly. But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied that the carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in political beliefs or policies being involved.

As for Saudi Arabia: there's a lot more people living there, than did before there was oil. Yes, we will still use _some_ oil for many years, but if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be problems sooner rather than later.

> But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied

Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is continually dissatisfied, for all values of X.

I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that I don't think some kind of regulation is inappropriate or unnecessary, in particular because I don't see the revolution in the linked article as inevitable as we might hope.

Well you make a good point, it may just be the noisiest part of the left that will be dissatisfied, not necessarily the biggest part.

I am part of the political left. Not sure what kind of argument you are making, carbon emissions plummeting is good no matter what. If we can do it for cheap, even better.

In fact, mitigating climate change due to technological innovation and the free market is preferable than achieving it due to regulation and massive public spending programs. Why? Because unless you are able to enforce regulations on every country on Earth, what would happen is that energy-intensive industries would just shift to countries with lax regulations. It is not stable, in a game-theoretic sense, for every sovereign entity to have strict renewable energy standards, as any entity violating those standards has an immense competitive advantage over other entities.

The only thing I am dissatisfied about is the pace, because we are not transitioning fast enough to avoid some of the long-term effects of global climate change.

> if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be problems sooner rather than later.

They have a sovereign wealth fund to protect against this. Look to Qatar and the UAE to see where they want to go in the future.

Qatar has done a considerably better job of diversifying their economy, perhaps because (since they are smaller), the central leader is able to shift the national direction better.

Glad to know that at least some on the left will be happy with a technological solution. Don't be surprised if your political "neighbors" turn negative on solar and wind as it becomes commercially big.

> carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in [..] policies being involved.

Wow, you really go as far as saying government was not involved? The only reason prices for renewables have gone down to where they are now is due to government policies that promote that tech. Details available on wiki [0]. This only happens if parties do care about environment & co. Here in germany it was actually done by a centre-right party by local standards, though obviously that would translate to "Left" when compared to the current US political landscape. Just like pretty much all parties here. Btw, we have more than two... this makes it quite a bit harder to group all you dislike as "the other".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

Well there is no part of any industry without _some_ kind of government involvement, but solar has been dropping in price for 50 years, and that spans many different kinds of administrations, some of which were decidedly more or less favorable. Much of it is simply the fact that technology tends towards exponential decline in price as volume goes up, which feeds on itself. Commodities tends to go up as volume goes up, which makes more of an oscillatory effect.

Btw I don't dislike the Left, it's most of my friends.

Is that actually true? I just can't believe it is, when there is no backup source of power for overcast/windless days. can you show that this is actually accurate?

I can see where places with bad power supply currently, with the rolling brown and blackouts, might move to renewables, especially if 1st world countries subsidize it. "Oh, these are flaky and power is intermittent? So business as usual?"

But is coal really being moved out in the 1st world? Still the largest source of power in Germany.

The pie chart here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption shows that over 54% of the world's energy came from carbon. AFAICT as primary energy, that excludes motor vehicles (the graph above has oil higher than coal). I'm not sure if a reduction of 10% from carbon sources would represent a decrease in total carbon, given the rate of growth of energy usage world wide which https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi... demonstrates.

In any case, is it true that, globally, "non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market"?

The turning point is quite rapid. I like to get my updates on renewable energy from oilprice.com, because I don't think it has the "rah-rah" excessively optimistic bias on renewables that some other online new sources can. If "oilprice.com" tells you renewable is starting to displace coal, it is likely true.

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Ren...

Venezuela's problems are very little to do with oil and very much to do with mad Marxist style economic policy. They still have perhaps the world's largest reserves and oil prices are high. Saudi without oil would probably be more like Appalachia without coal. Or maybe Dubai.

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