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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

That’s what divesting from coal gets you, more expensive energy. Of course this hits the poor classes a lot harder compared to the middle-classes who pride themselves in recycling and driving an EV that costs several tens of thousands of euros but that’s unfortunately the way the world runs, the poor get almost all of the hardships while the better-off get to dictate the discourse. Still sucks, though.

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In most of the world fossil-fuel energy are more expensive than renewable energy, which is why more coal power plants are being shut down than built (in 02020, outside PRC; in 02021, in the world). The advantage of fossil fuels is mostly that they're more predictable. Britain (and the Netherlands, Germany, and a few other places) have a particularly bad version of the problem because they have so little sunlight.

But the problem Europe is hitting right now is not unexpectedly high prices, but actually running out. Blackouts, fuel pumps running dry, empty inventories, maybe a lack of natural gas. Such shortages can happen in one or another place because someone gambled and lost, but when they happen systemically, it's because of price controls; I wonder why those aren't mentioned in the article? The international LNG market isn't subject to price controls, but retail utility markets are typically heavily regulated, to the point of routinely forcing electricity distributors into unprofitability from time to time, usually temporarily.

Climate change is likely to cause a lot of hydroelectric disruption over the next century as rainfall patterns move the rainfall from where hydroelectric dams have been built to where they haven't.

> That’s what divesting from coal gets you, more expensive energy.

Only if you ignore its externalities and let someone else pay for them. Coal is wickedly expensive if you consider its costs beyond mining/transportation/storage/combustion.

I agree, but right now the externalities are also supported by the better-off, as they can also get cancer and what have you from dirtier air, that’s one of the prime reasons for this push. In the new regime almost all the weight falls on the less-off.

Almost all the cancer falls on the poor, not just because they tend to live closer to power plants (unlike carbon dioxide, CFCs, and even sulfur dioxide, the pollution that causes cancer is fairly localized) and work in coal mines, but because there are more of them.

Cheap gas over the past 10-15 years has driven divestment from coal as much as a push for renewables.

As for EVs: they require a tiny fraction of the maintenance of ICE cars and so they will eventually be far cheaper. Used EVs are already an incredible deal in many areas. Where I live you can get a used Leaf with 60-80 miles range (enough for daily commute) that requires basically zero maintenance for <$8000. Charge it at home or at work and the fuel cost is tiny too.

Most of the people in the world aka energy consumers are not wealthy, if the price doesn't impact the "poor" you can't make people consume less really.

The worlds poorest use far less energy than the worlds wealthiest. If we want a world where the worlds poorest can rise, energy policy needs to be softer on the poor, and the richest will have to pay more of the cost. The rich countries rose to the top on the back of historically cheap energy, to some extent.

"The average US citizen still consumes more than ten times the energy of the average Indian, 4-5 times that of a Brazilian, and three times more than China"

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access#per-capita-energy-c...

You know what will impact the poor a lot more than it will impact rich people? In the form of crop failures, desertification, water scarcity, land degradation etc…?

Climate change.

Of course individually they consume less, when talking about the mass and big numbers, ultra wealthy are a statistical anomaly.

Most of the poor energy footprint is not optional: commuting (most can't live in expensive districts), heating a single small apartment, basic food, buy a few leisure things.

Almost all the wealthy footprint is discretionary: air travel, luxury purchase, package holidays... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0579-8

Your "statistical anomaly" is not anecdotal, it's the very symbol of a broken system that was designed not to care.

In this situation, I cannot expect the non-wealthy to make big efforts to reduce their consumption while the ultra rich continues to casually destroy the environment. We're letting the rich take almost all the profit but we ask the poor to work harder only because they're more numerous. This can only end with violence or a catastrophe, IMHO.

Right, but then what are options? Everything hits the poor I agree but if you don't want to then we will just let the global warming to run rampant and watch?

Ultra wealthy aside, this is about comparing the world's wealthiest economies to the world's poorest. There's a 10:1 ratio of energy usage in USA vs India for example (per capita).

So they should market those measures for what they really are, i.e. regressive taxes/measures that, by definition, have a bigger impact on the poor than on the wealthy. The “let’s save the planet!” discourse controlled by the wealthy fails to mention that (with few exceptions, lately).

The poor, in democracy, will vote for their interests. So, unless you abandon democracy, you won't get the poor to vote carbon taxes.

How about we start by putting a $1000/flight tax? Seems only fair that the rich, mobile class start reducing their emissions. After all, it's actually the upper classes that consume (by far) energy in gross terms.

This just punishes those with family abroad and reduces economic mobility.

It'd be hard to tax private jets, so much like the EU has just done with fuel duty, they end up exempting the super-rich and hammering the working class with more taxes.

It’s actually more efficient for a person to fly 400mi in a reasonably full plain than it is to drive solo in an average American car

Poor people also were against EVs before they went mainstream, so does that count for anything? I would evangelize Tesla and EVs in general in 2010 and the overwhelming majority of people who thought that EVs were “dumb” were poor and lower class. A poor person has the exact same opportunity as a rich person to say the words “that makes sense, let’s try it.”

A poor person has the exact same opportunity to by a $100k plus Tesla in 2010? Surely you can’t be serious with this argument.

> to say the words “that makes sense, let’s try it.”

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