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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

What also disgusts me are so-called environmentalists that stick their fingers in their ears and ignore reality. For example solar panels and wind farms aren’t going to get our carbon footprint to zero anytime soon - the technology is decades (maybe?) away to store and transmit this power to non-sunny and non-windy areas, and there is no solution for their intermittent power generation during extended periods of low-wind and cloud (or smoke!) cover. The only rational solution is nuclear power! But try putting that to a vote and see where it gets you.

Additionally scientists should be looking at bandaids to extract carbon from the air or reflect sun back to space.

Malthusians who wish everyone just uses less power are both irrational and immoral. We should be trying to give every person on earth as much power as possible with the least damage to the environment. Modern society needs power.

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Why is this an important argument to have now? As long as millions of voters believe the climate isn't changing or don't understand what kind of damage it's going to do, it seems like focusing on these details just adds to the noise.

No, because the organized environmental movement is convincing us that putting solar panels on our roofs and driving electric cars are somehow going to save the planet, when they won’t even make a tiny dent! Yet we are all expected to pay out the ass in tax rebates to subsidize these boondoggles.

I support rational and efficient energy policies, but our current system is bonkers! For example I got a 25% tax rebate replacing my skylight because it has a tiny solar-powered shade on it. The installer even joked to me that the $4k off the light was a scam! How is this helping the climate again?

Your skylight anecdote aside, the EV rebates are about subsidizing the creation of an entirely new trillion dollar industry around batteries and electrification. They are about moving up the “manufacturing learning curve” at an accelerated rate on this new technology. And they are also about geopolitically moving away from oil.

The relatively meager environmental gains along the way are dwarfed by the larger environmental gain that start really compounding after 15-20 years of investment on this particular technological path and energy policy.

Signaling alone is a powerful motivator.

It will make a tiny dent, and did you think this wasn't going to be expensive?

Thats the goal

"solar and wind aren't net positives" is a pretty tired argument. We're already in a second decade of both of these technologies being cost efficient and useful!

Perhaps it's not going to cover 100% of things. But it's a thing you can be doing and it doesn't make things worse.

Meanwhile even with the relatively low usage of nuclear there are two regions of the world that used to be populated with people that now are abandoned.

I think you're final paragraph is contradictory. I think the environmental impact of our limitless energy consumption so far is clear. Reducing consumption is the only way to reduce further impact.

Modern society uses a lot of unnecessary energy in part because someone gets to make a lot of money now and leave this life before the consequences of unfettered destruction come due.

You are using vastly more energy than a hunter gatherer did, or someone in the Middle Ages. Where do we draw the line? Isn’t it unfair that you use a computer, air conditioning, TV, etc. when you don’t really need it? And what happens when every other human uses as much power as Western citizens do? It’s quite hypocritical to say it’s ok for you, but not for the rest of the world.

I say, we should have as much power as possible, generated as cleanly as possible, and the lowest possible cost. This is how we move society forwards.

US CO2 emissions have been falling for more than a decade and are at 1990s levels, and will continue to fall.

Energy is the lifeblood of civilization. Reducing the cost of energy, and widespread availability of energy is responsible for saving perhaps a billion lives and bettering nearly 10 billion lives over the last century (that is to say, basically all of them).

The idea of putting a stranglehold on worldwide energy production or access is abhorrent when you look at the on-the-ground effects that such a policy would actually have on people’s lives. As you rightly point out, the most marginalized people worst of all.

Even if we could somehow stop industry from emitting even a gram of CO2 on 1/1/2021 going forward, the climate models still predict their 10 meter sea level rise just given the current greenhouse levels persisting.

The only answer is technological, and in my opinion it’s frankly not even going to be that complicated of a problem given the resources and technology available circa 2050 to deal with it.

Franky, solar shades seemed a lot harder of an ask pre-Starship. Looking forward to seeing SN8 reach for 60km in the near future.

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