G7 nations committing billions more to fossil fuel than green energy
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows. Our only success with fossil fuel usage reduction is that coal usage is no longer growing.
Growing wind, solar, and nuclear by 10x from the 2019 levels reported in that data set would put them (as a combination) on par with one of the three big existing fossil fuel sources. But this can only decrease fossil fuel usage if increased energy usage does not take up all those gains as it has always done in the past.
I do think though that reducing fossil fuel usage could be possible now only because of the shifting demographics of the world (most of the world is starting a population decline). The counter argument is that a large portion of the world will continue to grow economically (increases energy usage) and become wealthy enough to start air conditioning and otherwise dramatically increase energy usage.
While actively funding Nord Stream 2.
So there goes your green EU.
If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.
After all they all will be able to afford ticket to Elysium.
Actually it has been a way longer process starting in 2000/2001[1], with Fukushima having a significant impact.[2] It doesn't seem the Chernobyl series was responsible.
[1] https://www.terradaily.com/2003/031114130333.jlvf6wjx.html
The whole reason is historical, because of Chernobyl, Sellafield, the Fukushima. People have been wary for years. Netflix series Dark reflects this mindset pretty well.
The idea of nuclear energy being clean that we see repeated here in Hacker News is not as widespread as it looks, HN is just another bubble. People are not hearing about it. It will take a while for the population to change their mind, and longer still for the government.
German here. We Europeans also have another issue: where to put the waste. Unlike Americans who have lots of deserts where no one gives a flying f..k about anything you dump there because there is no human life in a hundred km range, Europe is densely populated and surprisingly people don't want to live near a nuclear waste dump.
Additionally, unlike Americans we have personal experience with nuclear disaster from Chernobyl - to this day, many decades after the event, you have to check wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria for radioactivity if you want to sell them. And current operators of nuclear plants haven't been exactly trustworthy, given many thousands of incident reports of which quite a number can be boiled down to shoddy construction or maintenance.
On top of that, we have had massive fuck-ups of our governments in the attempts to find a permanent storage site:
- former salt mine "Asse" which was used from 1967-1978 turned to be a colossal disaster - the barrels rusted and leaked, to make it worse it was known at the time that the barrels would only last three years, and now it's estimated to need billions of euros for retrieval of all the waste
- former salt mine "Gorleben" was inspected from 1979-2000 as a permanent storage site, but (again) it came out that the location was chosen for political reasons, not scientific
- former GDR site "Morsleben" is unstable, needing billions of euros to prevent collapse
- current projects to search a new final site are expecting to take until (at least) 2031 with finalization of storage in year 2095-2170 (!!!), at a total cost of 50-170 billion euros.
As a result of all of this - especially the last point, who can even guarantee there will be a German nation in over 150 years of time from now?! - German public is extremely skeptic of nuclear energy.
In other European nations, French and British projects for new nuclear reactors (Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, respectively) have managed to surpass the infamous disaster airport BER in budget and time overruns. Even if there were public support for nuclear energy, no one trusts government to complete such projects in time and budget anymore, further weakening nuclear energy.
Edit: Totally forgot about the boatload of issues involving power plants europe-wide, see e.g. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-ageing-nucl... for a list. You really have anything there, from fundamental construction issues over your run-off-the-mill accident and old age (many plants are 30 years or older) to outright gross negligence. To put it short: We Europeans can't operate nuclear power responsibly, no matter if organized under capitalist, communist or modern-ish government control.
There won't be much of a future for nuclear fission power in Europe, no matter what some of our bought-off leaders (Macron, Orban) spout.
We do not actually have that kind of issue, nuclear waste takes very little storage space.
It's just not yet economical to extract it out of the spent fuel for use.
You might say, well, hydrocarbon waste is much less dangerous. But that's negated by the fact that you need about 1,000,000x as much coal to replace the energy provided by nuclear. And in fact, the total amount of radioactive contaminants in that quantity of coal is roughly equal to the amount of nuclear fuel you would have required in the first place had you just used nuclear alone!
The problem is largely a political one.
As far as I know using the waste as fuel is only possible in new reactor types, which are still under development - and in the case of molten salt reactors, it's not even sure yet if these actually can be built because of material science issues (aka, how to construct piping that stays durable for decades when exposed to hot, aggressive molten salt).
It is simply not fair towards future generations to literally dump even more waste to them and hope they manage to figure it out, when we could alternatively also build out the European power grid and go fully renewable using wind, solar and ocean/rivers for generation, batteries and hydro for storage and natural gas/hydrogen for peak demand.
It is not impossible to get even faster buildout in the next ten years, all we need is politicians deciding to do so instead of giving billion dollar handouts to fossil fuel companies and actively impeding buildout!
>In other European nations, French and British projects for new nuclear reactors (Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, respectively) have managed to surpass the infamous disaster airport BER in budget and time overruns.
China has managed to build reactors using same EPR design on time.
It's the same as with tech debt, with the difference that your average startup's tech debt can't be turned into a dirty bomb by flying an airplane into it.
>unsafe "temporary" solution
There's nothing unsafe in this particular temporary solution. It's the other way, if something leaks, you can relatively easily fix it. It's only problem if you bury leaking stuff underground.
Also, proper solution is to use "waste" in breeder reactors, which only problem is political opposition to them.
1) Store the stuff above ground => risk terrorism, sabotage and "normal" accidents (e.g. lighting strike, earthquakes, corrosion leading to leaks), additionally: no one wants to live next to a nuclear dump so you won't get political support but rather fierce backlash from the people living near the chosen site
2) Store the stuff under ground => risk of collapse, of leaks and other issues as have already happened in the existing attempts
> Also, proper solution is to use "waste" in breeder reactors, which only problem is political opposition to them.
Breeder reactors IIRC have the problem of plutonium proliferation, molten-salt reactors aren't even close to being developed enough to be put into production.
But Fukushima is in Japan, and Japan and Germany feel much more similar, from a technological standpoint, than (West) Germany and the ex Soviet Union. Even though Fukushima was geographically much farther away than Tschernobyl, it somehow was "closer", politically.
"If it happens in Japan, it can happen here, too" - I know a few people that regularly vote / support the CDU (Merkels party) and most of them had this exact change of mind.
Chernobyl/Pripyat is in northern Ukraine, on the border with Belarus.
Ukraine is totally fine with nuclear power. Belarus plans to expand the existing plants. To the west, Slovakia's grid is mostly nuclear and is currently doing finishing touches on their new reactors. Hungary is also pro-nuclear.
The radioactive plume from Chernobyl then moved northwards, towards Baltics, reaching the populated parts of Scandinavia. Well, the grids in FIN and SWE are heavily nuclear-based, Finland is about to launch another 1500MW reactor.
So - the countries most affected by the Chernobyl disaster are unanimously pro-nuclear, while DACH countries, basically unaffected by it, are somehow in panic-mode whenever the word 'nuclear' is uttered.
Also, Austria did reject nuclear power in the 70s, before Tschernobyl, with one power plant (Zwentendorf[3]) already built but not yet running, via a very close referendum. So the anti-nuclear sentiment was already partly there (in Austria more than in Germany), but its very probable that Tschernobyl (and Fukushima) pushed enough people "over the edge" to give the anti-nuclear sentiment a comfy political majority across almost all political parties.
Why the other countries did not follow this trend, I don't know. They'll have their reasons :-)
[1] https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschut... [2] https://science.orf.at/stories/3206079/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
In the United States - many utilities gave up literal free money from the Federal Government on renewable deployment because it was creating problems with the grid at like, 2% of use.
Nuclear is a drop in replacement for coal or natural gas.
Just like all the consumers buying all that stuff and just like all voters not voting for politicians that would change something?
Yeah but sure, it's always "the elites" fault.
Yes, voters should take responsibility. But too much destruction comes from the elites. But feel free to support them. When this planet is ravaged by the effects of climate change, no elite will help you. They have their bunkers built and ready to move in.
As you said, there are good politicians. Its us that do not vote for them.
In Germany, it was always the same: in between elections, the Green party have really nice results in polls. However, when it comes to the election, people prefer reducing (or not increasing) taxes and stuff over fixing the climate.
People DO know about climate change. There IS good information available online. Its not that people have no idea what's happening. They just don't care to do something themselves - there's enough other people to fix it. Its like an email with lots of recipients, no one feels responsible to reply.
> But feel free to support them.
I never said I support them. I said we could easily get rid of them, of we only wanted to. The problem is (half of) the people around you, not the elites put in power by them.
The US senate is even more extreme. Wyoming at 578,759 people has exactly as much power as California with 39,512,223. Clearly a party aiming to minimize the number of voters it needs to please would avoid California. After all if you get the right 10% of voters you win and who cares about anything else.
I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-)
> The US senate is even more extreme.
Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.
Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways.
The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share.
> Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority?
I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.
Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already.
> Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency,
In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat.
That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.
Asking because that is why voting for the green party may be a huge turnoff for many (like myself.)
In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.
Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.
Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them.
Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
So in Germany, we are actually quite successful in managing the million that came in 2015. Most got a job and pay taxes. Actually quite awesome, fiveteen years ago everyone in Germany was afraid we'll run out of young workers.
> it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU
As far as I remember, the problem was that it was actually not possible to do a top-down decision, because each national government did whatever they wanted to do? I guess the only thing we did end up doing on a EU-wide level was border protection. Not sure though.
> Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?
We paid in 6 billion into the relief fund and are projected to get less than 3 out of it wrapped in some pre-determined financial instruments. It's like paying 10€ for a gift card that's worth 4€ and only works for some specific shops. People would call that a rubbish deal but what do I know.
In addition, our politicians lied very intentionally to us that this is a one-time fund, just for COVID purposes. Less than 2 weeks later after passing the vote in parliament, Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazia Visco is already marketing the fund as permanent and the future of a joint monetary EU strategy.
Excuse me if I don't share your optimism on this swindle, but then again unlike us, Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this. Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
England, for example, did only join the EU back then for economical reasons. Them leaving the EU now doesn't seem like an economical win (and it was probably not an decision made based on economics, I guess).
So I agree that
> Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this.
but I would argue that all countries in the EU are.
> Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies (...)
Which lies do you mean, for example?
> (...) and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
Well yeah. But if the EU would not manage these things, each country would have to manage them with each of the other countries, leading to much much more bureaucracy.
> Yeah but sure, it's always "the feudalism" fault.
M'kay.
We've just signed a new contract with our electricity provider in Poland. Renewable usage didn't even enter the discussion - none of us even realized there's a choice there. Only when reading the details of the agreement I realized the provider is committing themselves to deliver electricity from renewable sources. So now, I'm powering my computer with green energy, and so is likely my entire neighbourhood. Not because any of us made that choice - it's because the power company did.
Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us. Getting a power company to go green is much more cost-effective than trying to make an equivalent number of consumers to switch individually.
Although they'll have a pretty hard live if we don't do something against climate change. And yes, many people do not have the resources to do these tings.
> Because people have neither time nor money for any of this.
Many people do not have that, yes. But many others do, and they could start doing it and as they are probably the ones better off, their over-proportional influence as consumers would make a huge difference. Its a complete failure of the "middle class".
> Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us.
Well yeah, I agree that politics/elections are a better way. Its just that ... we do neither. We do not take our individual responsibilities serious, neither when voting, nor when consuming.
That is a false choice - unless electricity providers have wires all the way to your house you have no idea where the electricity came from. All you know is they buy enough renewable to cover what you use. However if you didn't use them the renewable power would mostly be generated at the same time anyway, just at a lower cost.
The above isn't completely true, as the higher price you pay does get a bit more renewable power into the mix. However overall it isn't a big factor unless most people choose the same provider.
And where is the problem with that? The coal plant you got your electricity from is the real sucker here because they didn't get paid and more people doing this is a real problem for them.
Consumers have more choice than you think; not everyone, but a definite proportion come into a position to make a choice on a continual basis. And economically, it is the margin that matters.
These "choices" are largely meaningless. The choices that matter are ones which reduce emissions or waste across society, not for one individual.
Upgrading to an EV does little to prevent climate change. Do all new EV owners have their old ICE vehicles responsibly destroyed? No, they mostly just sell them on. All you do by choosing to buy an EV and a house with charging is push the emissions onto somebody else.
The important choices, the ones that determine the overwhelming bulk of the outcomes, are being decided by elites and politicians. And they are choosing in the wrong direction.
Poor customers go with what they can afford
I was arguing that we can vote in politicians with a spine with respect to doing something about climate change, if the ones we have don't do their job.
I think it is really important to acknowledge how well the political system works, at least in Europe. Politicians largely do what their voters want from them.
Its the voters that don't want climate change legislation. Take Germany: the conservative party did rule now for 16 years, and they are certainly fulfilling their voters wishes by NOT doing something about climate change. Voters of that party don't want that.
> The average consumer doesn't think there is a point in changing behaviour
Unfortunately I have the feeling that the consumer just does not want to change behavior, no matter if it would change something or not. Afterwards, they'll rationalize their decision with such arguments, sure.
If they don't show responsibility, and we vote them in again and again, it is not their fault, its ours.
Stuff like: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?
The one problem with that is the equation is not that simple.
Most of our so-called leaders come from a completely different class than the rest of us, or were inducted into that class through their networks. They spend billions to make sure that everything goes their way. Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.
Voters are to blame, but those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value. That value is also mined from the public through careful manipulation.
Yes. And some are not, and we could vote for them to give them more influence. I bet once that happens, even more of such people would come into politics.
> Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.
Speaking for Germany (and I believe it is the same in many European countries), I don't see that. I don't see manipulation and propaganda on that level, and I do, for example, see quite a lot of good journalism providing good information.
Of course there's wild theories going around on social media and influencing people in really bad ways, but that's just people telling lies to other people, not a lot of the classic elite/leaders there.
> those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value
I absolutely agree. That's why its so depressing that we do not vote such people out.
This is not sustainable, it's not democratic, frankly it has to change.
PS: Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.
> it's not democratic
How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs do make different decisions? We can force them. Easily. Even better, we don't even have to force them, we just have to increase taxes on stuff we don't want and subsidize stuff we want. That, for example, worked extremely well to get renewables in electricity production to 50% in Germany (within 15 years, while the new government was trying to work against it).
We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation and laws that would force those CEOs to decide differently. There's no reason, nothing to keep us from doing it, no brainwashing, nothing. Just way too few people that think of climate change in the voting booth. It really sucks, but it doesn't help to blame anyone else than most of the people around you.
> Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.
If you're poor, your CO2 emissions probably are way lower than if you're rich.
Because the pollution of flying isn't adequately accounted for and priced as an externality. If we had a proper carbon tax (which I dislike the name, it's actually simply a carbon price) then green transportation would be cheaper than flying (and then all second-order effects would kick in: more incentive to invest in green transportation, more incentive to leave flying, etc).
> How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs
> We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation
Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy. It's not. Consider the following damning evidence:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
in particular Figure 1.
That would be awesome :)
> Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy.
I can only speak for Germany, where it does. Right now, the Green party has the least seats of all parties in the national parliament. Why should the parliament then do something about climate change? However, when they were in the government between '98 and '05, the put the "EEG"[1] into effect (basically just implementing subsidies for renewables), and now 50% of our electricity is produced by renewables (not including nuclear). And that happened even though the following government tried to slow the transition.
There's national elections in September in Germany. With some luck, the green party will be in the new government, right now they are 2nd in the polls. That will, undoubtedly, change national politics with respect to climate change policy.
As for the US ... not sure what your problem currently is. Does the two party/winner takes it all system lead to these problems? Or is it because the republicans basically stopped caring about the truth in the 90s to win elections, spoiling the whole political process? No idea ... however, still, under the last three democratic presidents, more was done for the middle class (and probably less wars were started) then under republican presidents, right? So it does definitely matter what party wins, right, making voting not completely irrelevant even in the US?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
Overall, a conscious consumer can maybe cut their carbon output in half compared to their peers, but their actions have no path towards actual carbon neutrality. That is a problem that needs to be tackled by politicians.
Because we have a government which uses threat of violence to exert extra power even if they don't have money, it's natural to blame them as well.
If we were living in complete anarchy, we would definitely hold the polluter accountable for polluting the world and demand some retribution, possibly using a private court system and some underlying threat of violence (which can be externalised through agencies specialised in that).
Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.
This ends up being a cop out. Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth.
Generally rich people get rich by selling stuff people want.
> Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.
And we can also blame poor people for putting those rich people in power and consuming their wares.
Which, of course, means that all this talk about blaming the rich are a distraction from one unavoidable thing: since most of the consumption comes from ordinary people and not the rich, any substantial decrease in consumption has to come from them too. It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Blaming the rich can't change that. Guardian headlines about how "just 100 companies" are responsible for most emissions based on counting all emissions from the fossil fuels produced by them as their emissions, regardless of whether they're being burnt in everyone's cars and to heat everyone's homes, won't change that either. All it does is hopefully distract blame from the activists trying to take things away from everyone.
Pretty dark view of the future. Its not that we have to lose all those things, we just got to change a little bit in how we produce things and electricity and how we travel. And got to insulate houses a little. We don't have to give up any of the comforts of modern life.
That's actually the worst part of it all: its not even that we would have to give up something in order to prevent climate change. We'd just have to CHANGE something, but even that seems to be too much to ask. That really makes me mad. So incredibly unnecessary :(
If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.
Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax, and pay out the money to people. Seems like this could be designed in a way those people don't suffer.
> If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.
That's why we can implement laws forcing them to. If they add insulation to the house, the cost for heating will go down. So we just got to make sure that the one makes up for the other.
> Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
But its an investment, isn't it? Its not like we're throwing the money out of the window. We're investing, we are building things that will have a positive net return in the long run. For example, solar and wind are so cheap now and don't require constant imports (or digging up of) fuel. So in the long run, we'll have a more robust and cheaper energy production. Or from above - insulating a house will cost money now, but we'll save money in the long run.
Where I live, there is a carbon tax already. It's going straight to the coffers of the state, and I have little hope that they'll let go of those money as it's used to finance other things.
> That's why we can implement laws forcing them to
Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible.
> long run
Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.
I agree that all those things would be nice and that they would improve the situation. If we ever get a majority in favour of such changes it might happen, but believe that'll take far more time than we'd like.
> Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.
Kind of sad. We could do it in a fair way, we just don't care enough. But was there ever a time when that was actually different? I assume not, and even though lots of things are crappy right now, we're probably still better off than ever (speaking for Europe, at least ...)
I'm pessimistic and don't think we should hope for more than damage control once the effects of the climate change start becoming more evident in a few decades.
But that's irrelevant metric. The nature only cares about absolute amount of consumption, and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor.
The fact that rich could have consumed a lot more according to our own measure of "wealth" doesn't make them less morally culpable, since this is not tracked by nature at all.
I realized I should also add, it's not just direct consumption, investment can cause emissions too. Investment often means building infrastructure, which nature counts as consumption regardless whether the investment is then recouped or not (if it's not, then it's a waste). Investment also drives consumption in other ways, often directly through advertising or people just realizing they "need" a new service or product that they didn't need before.
Even savings (richer people just keeping money in assets) are not immune from not having a side-effect on consumption. As assets prices rise, this sends the market wrong signals and the result can be for example building far more housing that is needed, again resulting in additional consumption of resources.
This is obviously not true
Emissions are closely tied to consumption.
So yes, when the distribution of wealth is enormously skewed towards the elites, and production follows capital, it is absolutely the fault of "the elites."
Don't give me astronomically less voting power than others and then blame me for not saving the world with my vote.
> If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.
I agree this is the inevitable end of this trajectory. Eventually there will be environmental extreme groups that will target fossil fuel leaders.
Controversially, ignoring the ethical aspects of this, it would be an incentives equalizer to precipitate real climate regulation. Currently there is no incentive to do so, this dynamics would change with a palpable fear of immediate injury/death.
One would need to restrict the allowed methods to safe and scalable ones (like extraction from seawater, not ocean seeding).
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWpFCjh0Fk for prices and methods + https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock... + simplistic back of envelope calculation (assumes cost scales up linearly)
Except companies will go for the cheapest possible solution that “counts” for carbon credits, which is probably entirely fraudulent.
Its like telling me that its ok if a company shits in my garden and then donates some money to the public cleaning fund.
I dont want to have trash in my garden or deal with shit from companies.
We are actively trashing this planet for younger generations. To feel good we say, no problem to companies if they donate some money to charities or organizations which do some cleanup.
Why allow companies to pollute in first place ?
Oh wait, because of lobbies.
Never Mind.
Politicians, backed by professional PR companies who in turn are based on sociology/psychology and years of studies, can pull on emotional strings of people who are already self identify into entrenched positions. Using emotions is clearly easier and more powerful way of getting votes. The only way to win is to play their game, and that costs a lot of money.
Its a fools game to try convince anyone with facts, it simply doesn't work. Thats why anti vaccines, flat earth etc are so rampant today. The more you reason with those type of people the more you entrench them.
do you mean plain jane A/B testing?
Regardless, writing X in a box every four years is hardly a “democracy”.
It's the same way that you can't say a child abuser isn't responsible for his crimes because he was abused himself as a child. Yes, that's a factor that contributed to his actions, but he's still responsible for his own actions no matter how difficult the decision is.
Yes, voting every 4 years is a democracy. It might not be direct democracy but direct democracy has serious problems and you probably wouldn't want it.
There's also the rather obvious conflict of interest between politicians needing/wanting money and politicians being supposed to represent the will of the people (rather than the will of those who can give them a lot of money). That police officers aren't being bribed doesn't mean we don't have corruption. We just have corruption with Western characteristics.
that tends to happen around here. valid points don't matter, only group think get upvoted
Its incredible how common it is that people picture themselves as self-thinking individuals who came to their conclusions by doing their own research ... and then repeat all the standard talking points by some other group.
It was the same old nonsense with no actual solutions.
- Nord Stream 2 is a project that will further allow Germany to burn more Gas cheaper (more emissions) and become geopoliticaly more dependent on Russian infrastructure
- The EU loses geopolitical strength if it is unable to cut ties with Russia as an escalation counter-measure (Because it's biggest net contributor actually needs Russian gas to keep the lights on).
- Just like you have had extreme groups and extremist recruitment/propaganda forming around other divisive issues, it is inevitable that some form of environment related extremism will evolve in particular when populations start to become displaced. The obvious target of such groups would be fossil fuel industry leaders and lobbyists.
There is too big of an asymmetry with the current situation: profits, tax incentives, lobbying, and regulatory capture. This is not something that the average person can address from within the existing judiciary system.
At the moment you will need either something that will make carbon emissions unprofitable, or an epiphany from those abusing the status quo, that would lead to de facto climate regulation. Neither of those will happen without some incentive (positive or negative).
If we both are on a cliff face and you fell off, and now you are dangling connected by rope to only me. Standard movie trope.
Now because of your weight my only options are to cut the rope - you die, or wait and we both die. This is more accurate example we are talking about here, not killing poor people because 'crime'.
Also I would like to point out that poor people are not root cause of crime. So you are not tackling actual problem, only applying band-aid solutions. But that's a tangential topic.
Neither is climate change, is it? Unless there's some research I haven't heard about, I think you're doing science denial misinformation spouting.
At this stage this is trolling.
(to be clear, I fully support the decommission of European nuclear plants, Europe is just too small and too densely populated to risk nuclear accidents, or for long term storage of nuclear waste)
Maybe, if we built new safe reactors it wouldn't be a problem.
That said, it's probably faster to go renewable -- so is it too much to ask that Germany doesn't build more cold fired plants?
https://www.powermag.com/germany-brings-last-new-coal-plant-...
Coal seems to be roughly on the same trajectory as nuclear, and since around 2015 on a much sharper decline:
If we started today with nuclear, we could trivially hit the 1.5C IPCC goal. Hell, we could likely hit it if the world started fracking and moved to wind/natgas plants (like the US is doing rapidly). But at least for now, nuclear and fracking are less preferable than >2C warming to nearly all climate change advocates.
Just wanted to point out that this is nonsense. We already have 2C of warming baked in, if we go to net zero today, which is a complete fantasy.
In fact we're likely to reach 1.5C of warming before those nuclear plants (that you propose we get started on) even come online.
Did you even look at the graph in the top post in the thread?
Hello. Would it be possible to have a conversation about climate change that does not involve the suggestion that humans be killed en masse, in the manner of diseased animals? Thank you.
“If you truly claim to represent the people of the future, Frank asks — people who have the exact same right to a livable planet that we do — doesn’t that mean you should be willing to kill in their defense? Not as a first choice, not as the only choice — but can you really take it off the table? ‘If your organization represents the people who will be born after us, well, that’s a heavy burden! It’s a real responsibility! You have to think like them! You have to do what they would do if they were here,’ Frank argues. ‘I don’t think they would countenance murder,’ retorts Mary, to which Frank replies, ‘Of course they would!’
The Ministry for the Future is thus a novel about bureaucracy, but it’s also about the possibility of a wide diversity of tactics in the name of a livable future that include fighting both inside and outside the system. Characters in the novel contemplate targeted assassination of politicians and CEOs, industrial sabotage of coal plants, intentionally bringing down airliners in the name of destroying commercial air travel, bioterrorism against industrial slaughterhouses — and they do more than contemplate them. How does it change what’s possible when we stop worrying so much about losing in the right way, and start thinking about winning in the wrong ways?” [1]
To be honest, I'm surprised we're not seeing more acts of eco-terrorism yet. There are only isolated incidents of infrastructure sabotage. [2] I think it will change if (when) we don't meet the 2030 emission targets.
1. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/of-course-they-would-on-...
2. https://theintercept.com/2019/10/04/dakota-access-pipeline-s...
People don’t work the way you think they do, yet.
> Why not ?
You are joking, right ? Or not thinking about what you are saying. Or not respecting that ugly thing - "history"...
You see, when killing starts it's do not stop. 1) goals are not fully achived; b) killers starts to "clean" their ex-own camrades... Soviet Rossia, French revolution are obvious examples; c) killers starts to live in fear of being killed and create despotic countries - that was what you wanted ? I thinked goal was just "protect environment"...
Now compare what achived Soviets and what that dirty Capitalists - who actually get civilized first ? You know that in 70's in UK main society parasites was unions ? - working class won too much. In the mean time: in CCCP and China and Nord Korea you had terror not "freedom for all!"
That's why you do not do things by killing - it dop not work.
Corporations want profit. People want jobs and products.
On October 28th 2010 the German government (CDU & FPD) voted to prolong the usage of its existing power plants for another 8 years. Fukushima happened on March 11th 2011. Put under pressure by an increasing poll numbers of the (anti-nuclear) Green Party and having a state election upcoming on March 27th the same government decided to close down the power plants.
Note that Germany's newest nuclear power plants were built in 1982, before the Chernobyl incident and before the merger of the West German Greens with the East German progressive movement (which made the party more politically relevant). This resulted in lifetimes of existing nuclear plants continuously being extended, which in terms of safety was much worse than building new ones.
There are six plants currently still operating, half of which are scheduled to be shut down by the end of this year, the other half scheduled to be shut down by the end of next year.
Ironically, the nuclear scares have not resulted in a massive expansion of renewables but in a strengthening of fossil fuels and especially coal (which is heavily subsidized and has even led to land being expropriated "in the common interest" to allow energy companies to harvest lignite).
As of 2018 Germany has vague goals about abolishing coal power by 2038 due to public pressure but in the most optimistic scenarios this doesn't involve shutting down any coal plants before 2035. That this is being discussed by (conservative and centrist) government officials at all is only the result of the Fridays For Future protests and related spillover movements (XR and more specifically "Ende Gelände", a series of protests directly targeting the surface mining sites).
Now that is a typo if I ever saw one.
(Personally I would have preferred to shut down coal first, but old nuclear plants are a risk and new ones are too expensive)
From the article:
> not yet investing at sufficient scale in technologies that support fast decarbonisation of their economies
The most effective "technology" is to consume less. What will do that is acting on different values, instead of growth, enjoying what we have, instead of efficiency, resilience, instead of comfort and convenience, meaning, purpose, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Human societies lived with those values for hundreds of thousands of years in some cases, and centuries in many others, with higher markers of health, longevity, stability, and equality than our culture until very recently, but those markers are going back down. And will drop precipitously if we don't return to those values.
Population growth may be leveling off in the most polluting nations, but it's globally growing and over sustainable levels. Economically we can sustain population decreasing and many nations have lowered birth rates with the opposite of the One Child Policy coercion or eugenics, purely voluntary, noncoercive, leading to stability, health, and abundance.
> “Every day, we witness the worsening consequences of the climate crisis for communities around the world – farmers’ crops failing; floods and fires engulfing towns and villages; families facing an uncertain future."
We can dance around sustainability issues all we want, we eventually reach both overpopulation and overconsumption, both driven by growth, both driven by cultural beliefs and values we can change. This community loves nuclear, but without considering your point, that we aren't using new energies to replace but to augment. If we ever expect to stop growing and instead shrinking our polluting behavior, the sooner the better, as in now, which requires leadership more like Churchill, Mandela, MLK, and peers, not new technology. It costs nothing and improves our lives. When we learn to reduce consumption, nuclear will help. With our current values, we'll keep growing until hitting its limits, back where we are now, but with more people and dependency, making reduction harder.
To quantify all this, I recommend Tom Murphy's book Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, which I wrote about https://joshuaspodek.com/the-science-book-of-the-decade-ener....
Considering we're going to see mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next 5-20 years I think that will happen even more quickly.
I don't know much about the field, but given the vast investments and land needed for country level solar projects I would argue the growth rate is much more likely to be linear, in which case it looks like it won't be overtaking oil this century.
It's relatively easy to make large percentage gains when the current amount is so small.
Looking longer-term there will be growth slow-down when wind/solar reaches a larger scale due to the intermittent nature of the energy unless we can figure out how to deal with this. Currently dealing with it requires lots of gas peaker plants, hydro (which has its own environmental damages) or batteries (the resources required to produce and continually replace these are not sustainable but hopefully the net carbon emission can stay low). Malaysia recently had to stop incentivizing solar because their grid couldn't handle it.
I point this out not because I think this history must be our destiny, but instead to raise awareness that much more must be done to avoid that destiny.
Also, our history of energy production is very short. I’d be disinclined to say that it’s impossible based on a mere 200 year sample.
That is a misrepresentation. The fact that a bunch of other people in another country use, say, more biomass now than in the past since there are more of them than in the past, does not mean that in your country there hasn't been a displacement of biomass with, say, coal. And indeed, coal had displaced biomass in many countries in the world. And natural gas displaced coal in some places.
We need to also keep in mind where energy is being used the most now and in the future. In the long-term Europe going 100% renewable by itself doesn't change the global energy picture much. The greater effect is the leading role they play demonstrating how it can be done and further developing renewable technology.
I'm having trouble finding whale oil for my vintage lamp...
If we found a comparable energy source today that checked all the same boxes as fossil fuels, sans climate change and plus energy density, we'd be all over it tomorrow.
Hydrogen for heating + for shipping + heavy duty transit -- more.
California has already decoupled increasing amounts of electricity use and emissions through a combination of policies to increase adoption of renewables and through codes and standards for home heating/insulation/good build practices.
So while your statement may resonate with some of the past - it does not handcuff us to a future trajectory. It is possible to change and it is happening - it just needs to happen faster and increase in its scale.
Also - we did stop using whale oil in the early 1900s so your statement is not 100%.
I agree that history is not destiny. But in this case only if we first understand history.
This is I think a riff on the Fallout universe, where the transistor was never invented and electronics still bloomed via it's predecessor, vacuum tube technology.
Which is why any efforts based on reducing energy use are doomed to fail. "Do more with less" sounds great but goes against human nature to expand and collect resources. The push should always be to make energy cheaper or more green, not to curtail energy use. An effort to power air conditioners using solar: good, people will get behind that. More efficient air conditioners that use less power: great. Telling people they must reduce air conditioning and just live in hot: bad, doomed to fail. So bring on the solar panels. The mob will support you. Just don't tell that mob they must do with less.
Speaking of visual reality checks, check out En-ROADS, which was built in collaboration with MIT to simulate different policy interventions. Check out the carbon price slider compared to everything else: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....
My favorite thing to do with the money from a carbon tax is to just give it back to everyone as equal dividends, to offset any regressive effects of the carbon tax without creating tons of loopholes with another more complex disbursement scheme. This is called carbon fee and dividend.
The IPCC finds with high confidence that we need a high price on carbon to stay under 1.5C. PDF warning: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15...
A policy framework without a carbon tax is not serious about getting emissions down.
US electricity and gasoline consumption has declined since 2010, despite a growing GDP and almost 20 million more people. Efficiency and conservation have achieved enormous gains, and every renewable source that comes online displaces an existing one.
This has occurred across every developed nation. Japan is using 20% less energy today than it did in 2000. Germany, France, Italy, Canada -- all below 2000.
As developing countries bring more of their population into more modern accouterments, of course the total is increasing -- for now -- but thankfully most are starting with a much greater mix of reasonable sources.
Displacing a global energy supply in one country keeps the resource available and the price lower so that another country may use more of it. We may have actual success with reducing global coal usage soon since it does not transport easily.
I can't find data to back up your claims about the US decreasing electricity and gasoline consumption. Do you mean per capita? Meanwhile natural gas consumption is increasing. I also suspect that the US has outsourced much of our energy usage to China in the form of manufacturing. China now uses much more energy that the US (although not per capita).
Developing countries may have a head start with renewables now, but AFAIK their overall energy usage still implies increased fossil fuel usage for the world.
I don't believe this means we are in a hopeless situation. I think it means that Europe and the US must prioritize using their wealth to further develop the technology for carbon neutral energy and to demonstrate it so that it becomes the default energy source for the entire world.
21 years later, with an improving quality of life, and almost 50 million extra people (almost 20% more), aggregate energy use for the entire nation is static and declining. There remain enormous opportunities for efficiency, a lot of it simply in normal ongoing modernization.
Wind and solar are already cheaper than any other source but natural gas, which itself is a precarious source that most nations aren't in a geopolitical situation to rely upon.
I find it odd that you question my facts given that there is literally nothing that claims otherwise.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
"But again, I would like to see manufacturing outsourcing taken into account."
Groan. This is going down that incredibly boring path where someone must "win" however strained and nonsensical their argument becomes.
Every developed nation has effectively capped energy usage and started to reduce it (despite continuing population growth). Every developing nation is starting with a much better foundation where they have extremely competitive options that aren't the catastrophe that prior ones were.
But the entire point of the chart in my original comment is that even if members of the developed world are reducing energy usage and lowering carbon emissions (which is at best marginally true of the US), the rest of the world by definition is more than making up for it whether or not they are also using renewables as well.
https://braveneweurope.com/alf-hornborg-a-globalised-solar-p...
Mainstream commercial electric aviation is probably a half a century away (provided we don't actually discover something even better that supercedes it).
The same goes for personal cars, the governments are all too happy to give money directly to the high-middle-classes so that they could buy EVs costing north of 40,000 euros while imposing very high taxes (when not banning them altogether) for 10 to 15-year old SH cars favoured by the low and low-middle classes (because that's all that they can afford).
The Financial Times has had a really interesting article [1] on this a couple of days ago from the perspective of those high-middle class people, some of them are worried that the low and low-middle-class people will revolt once put in front of these new realities (like the Gilets Jaunes have done in France), but imo they will most probably do nothing of the sort.
Edit: Nevermind, misread.
Also, I have a feeling that hydrogen got a disproportionally bad reputation after Hindenburg. After all, people do travel in devices that are loaded with gasoline and jet fuel, so it's not like it isn't possible to safely handle flammable material.
And your comparison of zeppelins to cars and planes is flawed. The former consists chiefly of an extremely flammable gas. Protecting it is a thin layer of canvas (which can also burn). The latter contain a relatively small container of liquid which is protected by layers of solid metal and foam and all kinds of valves.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/helium-hokum...
Getting into the article, I expected something more direct, like for example if they passed car gas subsidies.
I partially agree. If your subsidies are helping parts of the agriculture that are more polluting than the industry average, then you are increasing the environmental pollution.
But this does not apply to my argument for 2 reasons: 1. I am talking about bailouts. They rather don't influence the long-term prices of flights. They are one time thing, intended to help some companies not die. 2. Even the agriculture subsidies you mention I would not call "fossil fuel commitments", which is misleading. Better name for them is something like "subsidies that encourage pollution" or "subsidies that encourage increase CO2 emissions".
But again, doing regular bailouts is not necessarily tipping the scales in the anti-environmentally friendly direction. They can be neutral. They are neutral if they did not change the behaviour in relative flight usage comparatively to before the pandemic.
Using this reasoning for example will make flight subsidies anti-environmentally friendly and not neutral (if you also do not subsidies other modes of transportation).
Obviously this is hard to judge, but the article (from what I can tell) does not study that, so I wrote "a little misleading".
I think that's what France did?
> Using this reasoning for example will make flight subsidies anti-environmentally friendly and not neutral
We have to reduce CO2 emissions by 7% a year (Germany, according to the IPCC). So besides laws and regulation, I'd argue that a crisis and the subsequently necessary bailouts are a good chance to force companies to do more. Before going bankrupt, they'd probably agree to the deal.
I'd rather call it blatantly opinionated... taking to its full conclusion the logic of considering commitments (i.e. money alloted) through the way energy is consumed instead of the way energy is produced (the fuel you put into the plane's reactors was not produced by the plane, was it?), you may as well say that any natalist policy is a commitment towards fossil fuels because humans in the end consume fossil fuels. Tautology at its best.
If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power.
France went the nuclear path and their energy sector causes 50 million tons of CO2 per year.
Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2.
They were a bit less in both countries due to Covid-19 causing shutdowns of industries.
Although I agree that in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the short term, nuclear power seems like the best option right now.
Not really. They held on hard to gas and coal power. Of the latter, a disturbing amount is still based on lignite or brown coal, which is more accurately described as "somewhat combustible dirt".
Germany is not nearly as dedicated to green energy as they would like the world to think. They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy.
I do agree that nuclear power is something we should be more positive towards, but that does not invalidate renewable energy sources.
The Wikipedia article [1] on Germany's energy production suggests that fossil fuel sources have fallen slightly and the reduction in nuclear has been replaced with renewables.
Very strong statement but no evidence whatsoever.
Germany's a bad example, we're (that is: the government during the last 16 years) doing a lot to keep really old crappy coal power plants running and slow the transformation towards renewables. And still, 50% of the electricity is produced by renewables.
Production of natural gas is a somewhat inefficient, but infinitely scalable battery for renewables.
My cynical take is that there's no hype to be generated around power-to-natural-gas, and people hyping up hydrogen don't want the public to know that most of originates from breaking fossil fuels.
That's my understanding, too; amongst the technocrats and field-experts, power-to-gas is taken very seriously. However, amongst the public and the press, even the pop-science press, it's scarcely ever mentioned. Hydrogen, batteries, biofuels, carbon capture, and even fusion all enjoy vastly more attention. I cannot think of any explanation that wouldn't be cynical or sinister
These biofuels only look good when one forgets we need to put a lot of carbon back into the ground, and the latter is already one of the most expensive parts of the transition.
biofuels for air transport make sense, simply because there might be no alternative, and in conjunction with basically limiting air travel to trans-oceanic routes. But it absolutely doesn't make sense for electricity generation.
Right now the United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres.
Events like Chernobyl and Fukushima will certainly happen again and again.
Relative to what! Coal power plans spew out more radiation. You could screw over just one km^3 of earth putting all our waste there for hundreds of years. Localizing the damage like that is almost incomparably better.
Nuclear waste from power generation is solid. A typical plant products 3 cubic meters of solid waste per year, which is stored on-site in cooling pools. Compare that to hundreds of thousands of tons per plant of radioactive fly ash just spewed into the atmosphere and millions of tons of CO2. You're going to need a citation for the "108 contaminated sites that are unusable." Also a thousand acres is a little over a square mile; again, which I doubt. That is absolutely not how waste is managed in the US, and leaks like that do not happen.
And if you want to talk about slowly poisoning the biosphere, stop with the anti-nuclear hype and start talking about microplastics and pesticides.
That said, even with gaseous diffusion enrichment, nuclear power had much lower life cycle emissions per megawatt hour than any fossil generating source. Nothing is 100% "carbon free" over its full life cycle but nuclear power and renewables both have very low emissions compared to fossil combustion [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_stat...
[2] https://www.urenco.com/about/history
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...
France has a huge problem having to replace crumbling nuclear power plants with new ones being too expensive and too slow to build.
So for example, the federal is funding the suburban train system in Montreal, and the tramway in Quebec City. Those projects will have a huge impact. And the federal will not fund the absurd proposed 10 G$ tunnel that Quebec wants to build.
Trudeau uses the excuse that "infrastructure programs do not fund roads, only public transport, it's not my fault if I don't want to support the program", but that's how it works: the federal mainly proposes policies that meet certain targets, and then provinces get funding in exchange for implementing those changes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Imo a great way to get things done in Canada is at the municipal level, but the money often comes from the federal. c.f. Montreal's current admin (I did my small bit, even ran for office)
In terms of suggestions, the book Drawdown contains many. It lists 100 contributing solutions to climate change. I'm going to go read it again, but the gist is that there are no silver bullets.
Two things that were campaign and earlier year promises we've yet to see.. planting 3 billion trees, and ending fossil fuel subsidies.. those still haven't happened.
I take no issue with this. Keynes is right you need to prop back up aggregate demand, and keep people fed.
> bailed out companies indiscriminately whereas built basically no transit, no green infrastructure whatsoever.
That's the bad part. The demand-side stimulus should be indiscriminate because the supply-side policy should be extremely targeted. People buy whatever the good deal is, like an electric field pulls hardest on the stuff with the most charge. Its essential to to puppeteer the supply side so the environmentally good things are the good deals.
However, without a serious CO2 tax a lot of that money will be allocated to CO2 intensive consumption.
It's a great simple recipe; amazing how much ink we spill beating around the bush.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-09/edf-lifts...
[1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/finlands-spent-fuel-rep...
I'd be interested to see a good fair accounting of all the externalized costs non-nuclear energy is able to pass off. Global warming is clearly one of them. The thing about nuclear energy is that danger and risk is inherently concentrated, so externalizing these costs isn't really an option. You can't go pouring spent fissile waste into the air and pouring buckets into the ocean (unless you're Japan, apparently). People have seen the dangers with Chernobyl and the like. People know enough to know it's dangerous stuff they can't take care of themselves.
If you have an oil spill, well it's nasty but people are familiar with oils in their engine, natural gas, gasoline, ash, and all that. People kind of understand it and know a little bit of exposure typically won't kill them. You can pour motor oil on your hand and you're mostly going to be just fine (do it a lot and often and maybe not).
Pour fissile waste material over your hand and depending on radiation, you might die just by getting close or get cancer from short term exposure. People see the danger and you can't externalize that. Other materials you can sort of shrug off because long term effects you can get away with externalizing in our society. Let consumers, governments, and others pickup all the debt you're generating that no one is accounting.
So I think we need real fair cost assessments before we can handwaive away which energy sources are costly and understand the variance in these types of costs, especially if we're going to live in this world where economics and utilitarianism seems to rule the world.
https://learn.tearfund.org/resources/policy-reports/cleaning...
IMHO the analysis is muddied by the fact that most G7 countries decided to bail out their major Airlines during the pandemic. In case of Germany and Italy, those billions of spendings count towards a "fossil fuel commitment".
[0] https://learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/reports/2...
To fix the demand side we need technological advances and help from regulation. BUT. Regulation itself cannot solve the problem. That is the elephant in the room. Regulations come and go, and they are bound by borders, but once a technology has been discovered there is no going back.
Tesla's 250 mile car and charging network in 2010 was the reason that gasoline will die in the US, not the 7k tax incentive on a 60k car.
2020 was the first year the US exported more petroleum than it imported on an annual basis. But due to the sudden federal approved decline in 2021, US will now import more oil in 2022.
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/2/17/us-will-import-62-mo...
But if let’s say fossil fuel commitment has gone down, while green energy goes up, then that’s a different, more positive story.
A Georgist approach to this would probably alleviate many of the most pressing problems of global neoliberal capitalism.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
Buying bananas has no relevance to climate. Minimise eating meat, minimise use of cars and planes, and get a green energy supplier. That cuts your carbon footprint by half (depending where you are and what you do)
Other measures don't do much
Can you explain why? All the bananas in my UK supermarket are flown from Africa.
> minimise use of cars and planes
This results in a paradox where locally grown food, if it needs additional lights, spraying, ploughing, etc. is worse for the environment than food grown in perfect climage and transported to you.
https://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-loca...
It's probably still more efficient (both money-wise and GHG-wise) than growing bananas locally in UK; now that would need a lot of extra energy; but on the other hand it would be more efficient to eat food that normally grows locally in your climate instead of bananas.
All I am trying to say is that in the total carbon footprint of a person, they account for a miniscule part of the whole, and that things like a well insulated house, transport, etc. will be vastly more important
Focus on reducing fossil fuel usage.
>(1) The proposed effects on GHG emissions if people went meatless are overblown.
>(2) The claims about livestock’s water usage are misleading.
>(3) The claims about livestock’s usage of human edible feed are overblown.
>(4) The claims about livestock’s land use are misleading.
>(5) We should be fixing food waste, not trying to cut meat out of the equation.
www.patreon.com/posts/51285771
It’s not about anyone feeling superior.
Don't have children.
Green energy (by definition, sustainable) should be anything but scarce, and therefore would allow "weaker" countries to be more self-reliant.
This will never be allowed by countries that want to keep their "G"-whatever denomination
You probably want to diversify into wind too to reduce storage requirements. IIRC wind also produces a bit more power per square meter in Germany than solar. Right now there isn't enough storage to cover the windstill nights, but there are no technical reasons why we can't store the power either in batteries, as Hydrogen or Methane, as heat, or, where geography permits, in pumped hydro (or a combination of different storage technology). It's just a bit expensive right now.
The other factor is that grid storage isn't profitable because there is almost zero demand for it. Please wait until it becomes a problem.
Cut down on food wasting. Actually, why not cut down on all wastage, i think almost unbelievable gains will be rapidly made against poverty and towards the environment.