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Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable earlier or more seriously?)

The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted (not just refrigeration, but you might also include air conditioning, transportation, etc). And that if we did want the entire world to live a life that includes things like that, we just don't have the energy right now.

EDIT: I kept thinking about this and it doesn't stop at just basics. It's also things like living in a comfortable, well-manufactured home. Being able to buy toys for your kids. Taking airplanes to visit family or to vacation. Enjoying the consumption of meat, or food delicacies. The list goes on as you expand the threshold from basic necessities, to comfort, to luxuries, and you can decide where you want to draw the line.

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> Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable?)

Hear hear. The point is, for those of us living in developed countries, is that all wealth is energy wealth. The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy. When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries. That's why Europeans are currently terrified.

For those wishing to go a bit further than nitpicking the article, look up the following two concepts:

- Peak oil [1] - Energy returned on energy invested [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

>The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy

Eastern too

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

All life is dependent on cheap energy. It's the currency of the universe.

The Warlock series had this as the intergalactic currency - the kwaher or kilowatt/hour.

Recommended read?

The one by Stasheff? I didn't remember that detail, but haven't read it in a while.

Not just countries, inside the United States. It's amazing how Americans will turn a sympathetic eye and ear to other nations but not other states.

EROI is a physical measure, it doesn't deal with price at all so I don't get what it has to do with your first paragraph?

It is rather an economic measure to my understanding. Lower EROI will tend to raise energy prices. According to the Wikipedia article, it has been argued that falling EROI has been responsible in part for the collapse of the Roman empire. It has also been linked to inflation.

EROI doesn't tell you how much total energy you can extract nor how fast you can extract it, it just tells you how much of the energy you extract is usable.

> becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries

This is wholly unsustained. Yes, marginal luxuries will become less accessible, though not inaccessible. Flying, food variety, et cetera. But the sustainable cost of clean energy, and industrial processes running at those levels, is within traditional fuels’ long-term error bars [1]. The discrepancy in access to that energy will persist between the developed and developing worlds.

(EROI is difficult to calculate. Once you take into account shipping costs, the EROI of PV approximates that of oil.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricit...

LCOE does not take most important thing of renewables into account - when the energy is actually available. Turns out it's extremely unstable, not only in the day/night cycle, but also around the year. December is black hole in Poland, less than hour of sunlight a day and weak wind.

Nitrogen Fertilizer production is a base for the modern world that billions would die without, and with no identified economic replacement. It relies on fossil fuel to be produced. It is produced in the 100s of millions of metric tons a year.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nitrogen_fertilizer_con...]

The closest non-fossil fuel alternatives are various types of hydrolysis, which at current natural gas prices on the US are 3-10x more expensive per kg of hydrogen produced.

If you want world population to drop precipitously, make it expensive to produce THAT.

> When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries.

Western society is inefficient at a macro level, even though it may seem efficient from the financial perspective of a single company or an individual. People cover huge distances to work. Companies are moving goods, components and people from all over the world. People change jobs (losing focus) and their residence often, companies go bankrupt because of competitive market forces. This means a lot of wasted resources and duplication.

You can decrease the energy consumption significantly without affecting the quality of life in case of adopting a new political philosophy which considers these realities.

Europe has the resources to produce cheap energy they just decided to not exploit it and import their energy from Russia and others.

The conflict between Russia and the west is deeply rooted on the hegemony of rampant worldwide liberalism which creates the problems I described. It's a meat grinder which consumes not only excessive energy but people's livelihoods, too. It is certainly not a world I would want my son to live in.

I guess the world you want your son to live in is one of planned economies and great leaps forward. I for one do not. I would rather that innovation and competitive forces lead into the future of societies. As Stalin used to say: no people no problem.

The options are not as pure as you make it sound. There is a considerable amount of planning in the free market economies. This ranges from developing transportation networks to deciding upon funding for scientific research. Businesses that control a disproportionate amount of the market also make planning decisions to shape the market. When they make the wrong decisions, there are negative consequences. Arguably, that is what we are seeing at the moment with the supply chain problems. The question is how do you ensure that no single actor gains too much control over a segment of the economy? In many cases, the fallback is central planning. For example: one of the greatest reasons for public highway networks was to diminish the role of railway barons. In other words, centrally planned infrastructure supported a less centralized economy.

It’s not a planned central economy. It is self-reliant local communities within regional bounds, like a fault-tolerant distributed system. They would trade primarily with adjacent regions stuff that they don’t or can’t produce locally. Knowledge, information and education should flow freely everywhere, enabling peace. People should feel comfortable living in their birthplace and should have no motivation for economic migration.

How do you produce airplanes and silicon chips exactly?

Why do you need an airplane in a local community? Also, silicon chips aren't exactly the type of thing that you constantly need to buy every single day nor are they expensive to ship. Using the same phone or laptop for years instead of buying a new one every single year is highly viable.

Your present local community relies on massive quantities of silicon chips and other specialized goods that are ultimately brought in by planes trains and automobiles which themselves depend on specialized goods.

What's the better alternative?

A better alternative would be to have localised production and localised consumption of food and most basic goods. Stuff like not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea. People should feel more attached to their birthplace and the goal should be to develop their skills locally with one company preferably. Strong bonds with the local extended family which provides an additional safety net. If your region produces cars, you should be more likely (through education and culture) to become an automotive engineer and live there for your life. Trade for more advanced goods should still be there, but it would be more inter-region and less inter-global.

You are describing a world of slaves. How many people are you willing to sacrifice to achieve you vision?

Is participating jn an Amish village "slavery"? An Israeli Kibutz?

An amish village is a laughable anachronism that only exist in the context of a much larger whole that is antithetical to the very values and way of life it practices because no larger scale society so constructed could exist or compete with other societies practicing opposing values.

It's not a healthier better way to build a city its a tiny park on a corner lot surrounded by pollution and traffic.

First: yes, it is healthier for those living inside the park, compared to the alternative.

Second: the point is not to build "a larger scale" version of those societies, but actually to replicate the idea of localism in many different places. Less EU and one-world government and more independent nation-states, if you will.

Third: you can oppose the lifestyle and philosophy all you want, but it still is not slavery.

Can it survive against a larger-scale opponent that wants to take its resources, though? Without a friendly superpower enforcing peace with an extraordinarily powerful military, that is.

Switzerland managed to do it for centuries already.

Switzerland's wealth is built on plunder and money laundering. That's not a model we should want to replicate anywhere else.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/reading...

Well, good thing that I am not using them as example of "how to get rich", but only on "how to keep yourself small and still avoid being invaded by a stronger power".

But even if you want to talk about wealth of the countries, I'd be extremely eager to hear any example of any wealthy nation with a comparatively better moral ground than the Swiss.

There certainly aren't many, but Finland would certainly qualify.

Thats a primitive way to look at things, and incorrect on so many levels it would take few pages to list them all. To sum it up - their wealth is based on precise high quality manufacturing, and secondly on tourism. Banking is not even up there in top revenues for state.

Or, to put it in similar fashion - the wealth of US is based on plunder. The wealth of all western Europe is based on centuries of plunder.

See, the way you frame your posts leads down the conflict immediately. I've checked some of your posts, and kudos to consistency - you are not interested in rational discussion, just consistent trolling and largely baseless conflict.

Switzerland isn't by the prior analogy a park its a normal modern nation. It's a complete non sequitur

It's a modern nation that had very mighty expansionist empires on their borders. It's also the only country in Western Europe that never intended or desired to join the EU.

Yes but lest we entirely lose track of the thread its not an isolationist nation that foregoes the fruits of globalism or corporatism its merely been willing to do business with everyone including letting nazis bank the gold literally yanked from the mouths of murdered jews.

It's neutrality even in the face of abject evil has nothing whatsoever to do with any topic being discussed.

And this is how you arrive at needing walls and guns to keep people in - because we tend to vote with our feet and leave such sick authoritarian "utopias" at the price of risking our life - freedom is worth it.

Pretty much how all similar communist experiments had to change their country into a prison so that a "dreamer" such as yourself can have his "perfect" society.

You are still arguing the extreme version of a position of the argument, when I was arguing for the less radical side.

I am arguing for localism. Democratic governments that give more power to its people and their representatives in the lower spheres of power. People can (and should) vote with their feet, and communities can (and should) collaborate with each other.

Then nobody prevents you having what to want even today. This is the beauty of capitalism: it’s perfectly fine to have other forms of organizations inside it. There are communes and kibbutz you can join right now.

No, there aren't. I am not Amish nor Jew.

Anyway, that is besides the point. No one is arguing against "capitalism". The argument is against Globalism and Corporativism. Capitalism, by itself, is amoral. The problem is, e.g, Disney and the NBA kow-towing to the Chinese because of the "Chinese market".

There are many secular intentional communities you can join, right now. I used to live on one; it was great!

But you can’t actually achieve what you call localism for the majority of the population without severely constraining the options for that majority.

And it’s exactly those constraints, which you seem to repeatedly ignore in this and other threads, that people are objecting to. It gives people actually working towards a satisfying localism a bad name, being associated with involuntary ideological constraints.

As it happens, I would be happy to argue against capitalism. I agree no one should argue against markets, but capitalism isn’t markets, it’s entrenched power assigned to those who have accumulated capital for themselves, often justified by “it’s just markets!” when in reality the laws are helping the big capital holders more than is required by just “markets”.

But I won’t argue for localism as a power structure. More local control, OK, maybe, but you seem to think that would lead to more local self reliance. I doubt it.

If you're not allowed to leave, YES.

They are allowed to leave, dude...

> not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea

These isolated communities exist. Their quality of life is lower. But anyone can join them. From hippie communes to Amish communities, Luddism has a long tradition in modern society. (I’m ignoring the ethno-racial undertone in implying there can be an objective arbiter of what counts as true local cuisine and culture.)

The point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency. Yes, overall we would be poorer on average, but we would a lot less likely to see catastrophic events and a bit more equity among members of the same community.

> point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency

You’re arguing for something reasonable. The commenter I’m replying to quotes Dugin and alludes to something resembling a hermit kingdom. (Attachment to birthplace. Going into the local industry, skills be damned. Blood thicker than water and no “foreign” food.)

This is a recipe for nationalistic poverty. North Korea and Russia are going down this path. They’ll be poor and uninfluential. But if makes them happy, as long as they keep it within their borders, it is difficult to advocate for a shift from outside.

> North Korea and Russia are going down this path.

While I'm not sure which side of the argument I stand on, I do think it's pointing out that even if certain societies / countries do do the things, they unfortunately bare of the costs of others' decisions. A third of Pakistan being flooded is more likely a consequence of the West's energy usage and not due to their own doing. So it's a global effort to make these changes or limited benefits are seen.

"Yes, overall we would be poorer on average"

You first.

Already did it, twice. First time by leaving my (relatively rich and comfortable) upper-middle class life in Brazil and moving to the US. Also have absolutely zero regrets about leaving the US and coming to Europe. Salaries are lower, the tax burden is greater and I'm losing the opportunity of "wealth" generation, but the amount of money I left on the table will never be enough to buy the quality of life my family and I have here.

Now, your turn.

God, I’m glad I wasn’t born in the designated car production region, what a horrible thing to be forced to devote my life to.

You appear to be ignorant of basic economics such as Ricardo's law of comparative advantage.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.as...

What you have proposed is worse than what we have in every way. Transporting food and basic foods over long distances is cheap and very energy efficient. In fact it's more efficient than having a bunch of tiny factories in every city. People shouldn't be stuck living their whole lives in one place working for one company making shitty cloth or whatever.

It is cheaper, but less robust. One ship blocking the Suez Canal means that billions of people are not able to get their food and medicine on time, because everyone is too specialized to do anything that is not a desk job.

Please edit swipes like "you appear to be ignorant [etc.]" out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines, and you can make your substantive points without them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you about this many times:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120252 (Jan 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598017 (Dec 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935223 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18774141 (Dec 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175756 (Jan 2018)

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit? We ban accounts that keep breaking them. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to fix this.

The interesting thing isn't even your assesment of "west", but what values you assign to russia. They are absolutely wrong. It's (for someone, paradoxically) extremely individualistic slave nation with very deep hierarchies of power.

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

>He refers to this ideology as a 'timeless, non-modern theory' valid for all time.

Rubbish.

I can't tell if this would be the motivation of a Metal Gear Solid villain, or the motivation of a multi-disc JRPG final boss.

> It is certainly not a world I would want my son to live in.

What world? The one where Russia is shunned?

>the hegemony of rampant worldwide liberalism

You gonna define "liberalism" precisely? It's overloaded with mutually contradictory meanings.

What does liberalism mean in concrete terms and why is it bad?

The conflict between Russia and the West is that once upon a time they represented competing similar power spheres of influence with the most important singular difference being which country would sit at the top and all other ideological differences being secondary.

Their ecomic and military power collapsed but their ambitions did not. In a more rational world they would do what other former great powers do and talk shit but actually align their actual behavior with their factual strength because it doesn't pay to pick fights you can't win. Because their leadership has a unrealistic idea of their actual power they are locked in an immoral and unwinnable struggle to subjugate peoples and lands over which they have no moral or legal rights because that is what Moscow does they subjugate people that ethnically aren't Russian enough loot their treasure and use them as cannon fodder to murder other people they would like to subjugate.

Making this a response to liberalism is just complete nonsense. It's a last power grab by an immoral and acquisitive power who sees theirs draining away.

The conflict is between one-person/one-vote and a cartel that has hijacked a nation.

Shutting down all the nuclear?

Exactly, it's not like the energy supply decreased overnight due to natural scarcity.

Peak oil might be a reality, but it's not the cause of current problems in the EU.

Also, per capita energy consumption in the EU is 1/2 compared to the US due to more efficient commuting and buildings (still far from optimal though).

Per capita energy consumption in the EU is lower than the US mostly because they are poorer (on a GDP per capita basis). Europeans would consume more energy if they could afford it.

Mostly incorrect take. Two points for your consideration:

1. All European countries tax gasoline far more heavily than the US, usually to the tune of 100-200% of the wholesale price. That is an intentional policy to lower gasoline consumption, governments could easily remove it if they wished for more energy consumption.

2. Not all European countries are "poorer" than the US even by a GDP measure. Norway which is a petrostate has about half the energy consumption of the US (measured by per capita carbon emissions), Switzerland about a quarter! If anything richer countries in Europe are better than the poorer Eastern neighbour as well as better than the US in minimizing energy waste -- better-insulated housing, better rail and subway networks.

The benefit of this political philosophy is its fractally-flexbile. If we've solved every problem and the most efficient of everything is found, then "fully-automated space communism" is the most "efficient" because everything is directed rigidly in exactly the most efficient way.

That's exactly its fatal flaw though: it's so rigid (and what you call inefficiency is called autonomy by others). People change jobs for many reasons, often because they want something better. Companies go bankrupt often because they are less effective. On a macro level, when the terrain is unknown (as it is for our reality), more autonomy means more flexibility and finding efficient solutions faster.

> even though it may seem efficient from the financial perspective of a single company or an individual

The national highway system and 1950s’ surburbanisation are top-down policy choices, not emergent behaviour.

The national highway system was a military not economic or social policy designed to allow for easy transport of troops in the event of a way. That is why many cities have large beltways that surround them, the idea being that if a city is nuked the highway is outside the blast radius.

It can be all of those things.

The existence is a military policy. The fact that many of them cut through and decimated minority businesses and neighborhoods rather than just solely going around cities in a beltway fashion (as is done in Europe and was Eisenhower's original intention) was an intentional social policy to remove "blighted" areas.

Source? I've heard this, and I've heard it's a common myth / urban legend. There's a lot of similar myths, like that "interstates have a lot of straight sections to allow for an airplane to land in an emergency"

I did read a well researched book (The Big Roads by Earl Swift) on the US highway and interstate system's creations, and I don't recall that being mentioned as a primary motivation. The main motivation for beltways and such really was just "alleviating congestion"

I didn't bother looking this up yet again to reconfirm I'm not misremembering, but I think the onus is on you here since it's a weird claim even if oft repeated.

Edit: I immediately looked it up anyway. Military thinking did factor in in early planning/rabblerousing regarding highway construction, but this was very abstract and DECADES prior to the main effort of highway construction. There is not really a strong historical connection, and the military did not play a leading role or even much of a supporting one, at the time the interstates were actually built much later.

At the time most interstates were built, the main justification for Congress to spend the money was civilian use for alleviating congestion, which is why (Eisenhower famously was baffled by this) the focus was on intracity expressways, not intercity ones.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Plan...

I would guess the biggest reason for this myth is they were built under the executive sponsorship of Eisenhower, who at some point mentioned the anecdote that as a young man he had coincidentally been involved as a junior officer in an experimental military convoy from coast to coast in the 1910s. Ironically, Eisenhower's connection to both was peripheral. In one he was just one of many cogs in the machine, in the other, decades later in life, he was just the guy who did the politically expedient thing and signed on the dotted line for plans that had been developed and advocated by others. But there was no causal relationship between these two events.

Of course, people love a good story, so this quickly mutated into "General-turned-President Eisenhower remembered how bad the roads were for the military and masterminded the interstate system to fix that problem" which is a complete mischaracterization. He was a very, vey popular figure in his day so modest mistakes like that that made him look better were not likely to be corrected. For one of the main generals who "won world war two" it would have been a believable claim, as well as something one would _want_ to believe.

The reality is the big roads came about for the boring reason that cars were becoming more popular.

> who at some point mentioned the anecdote that as a young man he had coincidentally been involved as a junior officer in an experimental military convoy from coast to coast in the 1910s

Eisenhower whipped votes for the ‘56 Act on the basis of military mobilisation. It wasn’t a military project per se. And there were plenty of other motivations and votes. But the logic is far from urban myth. The 1910 convoys spurred the ‘21 Act, which was more limited and civil in nature.

That being said, highways are terrible for mass mobilization, mostly because they also represent pretty easy targets to bomb (for either attack or defense), and also because of how quickly they become congested.

They were amongst the first targets of the war in Ukraine, for instance.

That was part of the sales pitch. The main reasons were to improve travel speed into and between cities, and to open up much more land for development.

I suspect that is what people wanted as well (not only governments).

> adopting a new political philosophy

No thanks, I'd rather let market forces make that decision eventually.

All imposed political philosophy that run contrary to market forces and human desires will run into massive inefficiency and grift.

The market forces won't make many nice decisions if you don't let them. No negative interest rates mean companies and workers need to create artificial scarcity to pay the artificially high costs of financial capital.

> wasted resources and duplication

This is 19th century zeitgeist.

It failed to recognize fulfillment of human needs as an evolutionary process. "Waste and duplication" -- trial and error -- is necessary. You can't design for what you haven't discovered.

Here's a picture that always humbles me, representing one infinitesimal aspect of human thriving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#/m...

> You can decrease the energy consumption significantly without affecting the quality of life in case of adopting a new political philosophy

Does it involve telling people what constitutes "quality of life?" Why does this "new" political (in fact: economic) philosophy so often devastate so many lives?

Even if you presume to run human civilization as an ant colony (How dare you?), even with honest intentions, centralization is a bad idea. It lets you pretend you're making informed decisions based on a complete model, and not just running an experiment with global risk.

>Does it involve telling people what constitutes "quality of life?" Why does this "new" political (in fact: economic) philosophy so often devastate so many lives?

No it doesn't. It involves abolishing inflation and unemployment, inequality and endless runaway debt growth while simultaneously increasing wages, lowering the cost of living, discouraging corruption and rewarding long term thinking and human effort.

>Even if you presume to run human civilization as an ant colony (How dare you?), even with honest intentions, centralization is a bad idea

Well, good thing the solution doesn't require more centralisation but rather the opposite, extreme decentralization of power and decision making in the hands of everyone rather than the privileged and special interests groups.

> It lets you pretend you're making informed decisions based on a complete model, and not just running an experiment with global risk.

We've been running the same failed experiment over and over again and it has always resulted in the same predictable outcome. We should instead face reality instead of sticking our heads into the sand.

How would you propose to realize that utopian vision? And please don't waste our time with any cryptocurrency BS.

Planned economy. It did wonders! Just look at the USSR.

Let me guess what your alternative proposal is: everyone should live how you want them to live.

Thanks but no thanks. Even ignoring the untold riches & quality of life improvements that free market capitalism has produced, it's just a more free and thus moral system.

Edit: also you don't need to be a philosopher or genius to see that. Pretty much everyone moving out of free Western societies is rich or getting rich (e.g. paid well tax free in Dubai), and most of them keep a backup plan (Western citizenship to be able to come back).

Don't call it a free market. It is anything but free.

By simply knowing in advance what to do and how to do it, and what will come, we could make a fortune of all fortunes, outcompete everyone and create a perfect utopia. Good to know!

Ha? This is even dangerous! You're basically yearning for an authoritarian regime. With simplistic argument and some false assumptions you conclude it's more efficient bcz it does not waste basically trial/error. However, this has been proven times after time that such "alternative political philosophy" will defeat its purpose and become highly corrupt. Furthermore, we're in a incomplete information game, evolution is a must, and you can not 'design' things apriori.

Western societies, at least when it comes to political philosophy, are far more efficient than their eastern counterparts if you meant it.

That is a very naive viewpoint. You might think that economic central planning could allow us to maintain quality of life while increasing efficiency, but in reality that approach failed everywhere it was tried. That is historical reality, not mere political philosophy.

> The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy.

Western?! What about cities like Tokyo, Dubai, Beijing, Johannesburg, Singapore?

Tbfh, he's wrong. The modern (read: based on electricity and fossil fuels) way of life is dependent on cheap energy. China is currently the biggest emitter in the world. Not because they're particularly wasteful necessarily, no. Surprise, an enormous amount of energy is required for a modern society to sustain itself, especially when that country is home to 1.4 billion people. They've built more nuclear reactors than all other countries combined in the past decade, and they're still heavily reliant on gas and coal (62% coal, 5% nuclear). Nobody knows how to efficiently and cleanly generate that much energy.

For comparison, France, which produces 78% of its electricity with nuclear, only generates about 380 TWh per year with nuclear power plants (2019). China generates ~350 TWh/year with nuclear. 5% of their energy production produces as much as close to 80% of France's energy sector.

And before anybody chimes in with "but they produce everything for everybody in the West": Only around 10% of their production is exported. They have the biggest domestic market in the world and they have the largest middle class population in the world. They have money too and they consume like any other economic actor.

And all this is before considering things like how energy-intensive producing fertilizer is, and fossil fuels are a required part of getting the necessary ingredients.

This can't be solved by consuming/producing less unless a part of that solution is wiping out a significant part of the human population and getting rid of modern civilization. Solving the energy issue (and by extension poverty, resource conflicts, etc.) requires us to actually figure out how to generate enough cheap and clean energy for 8+ billion people.

One thing I’ve learned over time is that it’s just really, really difficult for most people (including me!) to reason about things that they haven’t directly experienced. Even harder to have empathy. So it’s very hard to engage with an argument or discussion that’s about the world as a whole, because all of us have such difficulty properly weighting and evaluating the things we have no experience with (which by definition, for everyone, is most of the world).

While difficult, it's I think within the reach of just about every individual in the developed world to empathize with and extend a helping hand to those who were merely unlucky to be born into poverty.

Giving What We Can is a community of thousands of people giving at least 10% of their pre-tax income to the most cost-effective charities they can find (consider GiveWell.org for research). I'm a proud member and hope more people join.

I'm happy to share thoughts on how to cultivate the empathy and gather motivation to act to help others as well.

Does Giving What We Can have a pledge to continue spending money on humans in extreme poverty? No animal welfare, no AI risk, etc.? Unfortunately the effective altruism branding has become toxic for me in the past few years due to the fact that they are deciding not to focus just on poverty.

From what I can tell you can choose where your donations go, so you can focus on poverty and let skynet exterminate us humans if you'd want.

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donate/organizations

I'm sorry to hear effective altruism (EA) rubs you the wrong way. Giving What We Can predates EA and does not insist on where you give your money, only that you do it in good faith, focusing on "improv[ing] the lives of others".

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge

Just because some EA people give to causes you don't agree with, why should it detract from or discourage you from joining the general mission: "focus[ing] on maximising the good you can do through your career, projects, and donations." You don't have to call yourself an effective altruist, but I hope you too recognize that focusing your efforts on what you have the most ability to control (informed by evidence you seek with an open mind) is a good thing to do.

I'm happy to chat more about this - it's one of my favorite topics.

My father grew up in a small village in western Africa. Visiting there as a child, with no running water or electricity, was such an impactful experience for me. It is very hard to imagine if you haven't experienced it, but it is certainly possible.

Weighing in on things you have no experience with is a Dunning-Kruger News… er, I mean Hacker News pastime.

We do have the energy.

The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration.

The US spends 28% of total energy consumption on transportation. 93.33 Quadrillion BTUs x .28 / 3142 (BTUs per kWh) / 365 (days per year) = 22.8B kWh per day.

BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles.

We could have the same standard of living and just not use gas-powered vehicles and save ~22.8B kWh per day.

If I'm doing my math right, that's more than enough energy for 3B households to have refrigeration.

The problem isn't that we don't have enough energy.

The problem is that most of the world is really poor.

In the simplest of terms - you can't get much cheaper energy at scale than $0.10 per kWh. A lot of households are living on $2 per day. They can maybe afford 5% for refrigeration - but a refrigerator only lasts 7 years or so and costs $200+. That's another $0.08 per day. That's pushing 10% for refrigeration. I don't think they can afford it.

And when you're that poor - you're probably not going to be able to get electricity reliably for $0.10 per kWh...

When you're that poor, $0.18 = close to half the calories you need for the day. I don't think you can just shift that to refrigeration. What are you going to refrigerate anyway?

> BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles.

I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV.

A much more realistic figure is 2x.

Which then ignores the efficiency of the generation of gasoline, which takes lots of energy input to refine it into the form useful for ICE vehicles..

You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.

My google doctorate says that energy efficiency of refining is 90%. And you ignored the energy efficiency of mining coal.

> You can play this game all day long

And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.

But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle.

If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.

Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% thermal efficiency (natural gas fired power plant) to NaN% for nuclear, wind and solar.

A BEV charging right this minute in the UK is consuming energy originating from 25% gas, 25% nuclear, 25% wind, 5% solar (its 6:30pm).

It could be more than 5x when you compare with ICE fuel supply / refinement / storage / delivery.

> But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle.

Right. Now factor in the losses in thermodynamic electric power generation to fuel the EV.

> We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.

Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%.

It's 10% or less for solar, wind, nuclear, etc...

>> Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%

What? There’s 70% loss in the process of generating electricity? Where does that occur?

Thermodynamic efficiency. Google says coal electric power generation is 33% efficient.

BEV’s run on coal power?

There's no magical barrier in the electrical grid that prevents charging BEVs from coal-fired power plants.

Parent is alleging 100% supply from coal since they claim there’s 70% thermal loss in the charging of BEVs

Coal is circa 20% of the supply in the US. About the same as nuclear or renewables.

>> A much more realistic figure is 2x

That sounds well off.

How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel.

How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport.

Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired.

I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.

See my other reply.

What other reply? You talk about refining. There's 10% lost in refining. X% lost in extraction and Y% lost in transmission (shipping, pipes, etc).

Solar => Grid => Car Battery is less than 10% lost usually. Obviously it can vary a lot - so can oil extraction, shipping and refining...

This means Solar => Grid => Car battery is >5x as efficient as Oil in ground => Pipes => Refinery => Pipes => Gas Station => Car.

Once the energy is in the car, we know the BEV is 5x more efficient.

We also know Solar => Car is SUBSTANTIALLY more efficient at transferring BTUs into the car than the gasoline infrastructure.

In reality, it's probably closer to 10x as efficient than 2x.

Solar and wind have so far not been nearly adequate to charge existing EVs, let alone what would be necessary if we all converted to EVs.

Given the reluctance to expand nuclear power, we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time.

>> we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time

Even if you never used wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc. then you’d still be ahead in the BEV case.

An oil power plant has around 42% thermal efficiency. A gas one 50%+ an ICE is only up to 35% but in the US it’s significantly lower on average.

Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE.

But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.

And you're going to get around 80% from your EV after round trip through a battery. EVs powered by oil power plants is not a good use of energy.

Fortunately, that's not what we are doing. I just wish EV proponents would stop pretending it is.

Is there a term for a self-inflicted straw-man?

>> around 80% from your EV after round trip through a battery

I didn't follow this part, there’s an energy loss in the process of charging the battery and there’s a loss in the process of converting from dc battery to ac traction motor, but it’s well shy of 20%. The high amperage involved in both charging and discharging mean losses are low (because if they were high, you’d generate so much heat as to make the system unusable)

>> EVs powered by oil power plants is not a good use of energy

It’s a huge step forward from ICE. You’ve cut disease rates in the population by moving tail pipe emissions away from population centres. You’ve swapped a circa 30% efficient process for a circa 40%-60% efficient process. Not to mention the emissions benefits of LNG over Gasoline or diesel.

It is not a 40-50% process. Coal plants run around 33%.

Power supplied is a blend of coal, oil, gas, nuclear, renewables and some other smaller sources.

40-50% is a conservatively low number.

> Even if you never used wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc. then you’d still be ahead in the BEV case.

Yes, but not by much.

A coal power plant averages 33% efficiency. Gas is 42%. Source: google

> Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE.

CO2 doesn't care where it's emitted.

> But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.

And nowhere near the power needed if everyone switched to EVs.

>> CO2 doesn't care where it's emitted

Disease rates (e.g. asthma) in the population do though

>> And nowhere near the power needed if everyone switched to EVs

You’re saying that if demand for electricity goes up, it won’t be met? Why?

Is asthma affected by CO2?

> You’re saying that if demand for electricity goes up, it won’t be met?

Yes.

> Why?

Because government does not price things based on supply&demand. Therefore, you get shortages (rolling blackouts).

Tailpipe emissions are far more harmful than only CO2 - which i suspect you know. I’m beginning to think you’re arguing in bad faith here

> And nowhere near the power needed if everyone switched to EVs.

This is pointless argument. We don't have enough EVs for everyone to switch to EVs.

It looks like the bottleneck will be EV production, not wind & solar adoption.

We only need to quadruple solar panels in the US to provide all electricity necessary for ALL cars to switch to EVs...

This looks like it'll happen within 10 years. We won't be 100% on EVs in 20 years.

> Solar and wind have so far not been nearly adequate to charge existing EVs, let alone what would be necessary if we all converted to EVs.

This is categorically false.

We already produce >10x as much wind energy alone that all BEVs in the US consume.

We already produce orders of magnitude more hydro electricity than we need for every passenger vehicle in the US to be a BEV.

> This is categorically false.

Yet California urged customers to not charge their EVs during peak hours because there isn't enough electricity available. And EVs are still only a tiny percentage of cars.

> hydro

is a doomed power source, because rivers are drying up, suitable sites are rare, and no new ones will be built because of environmental concerns. Existing ones get blown up.

https://www.nps.gov/olym/learn/nature/dam-removal.htm

BTW, a lot of PNW hydro power gets sold to California, which still has to tell people not to charge their EVs.

To be fair, Californians were asked not to charge between 4pm and 9pm. There’s plenty of capacity over night.

If we’d built car-to-grid infrastructure, EVs would be helping load shift, and they’re already not hurting in most cases, because we’re mostly not charging during peak consumption hours.

That's about right from my arithmetic, assuming you charge from a fossil fuel grid. I charge from onsite solar. Still, 2x is a big improvement.

You can either pump a kWh of oil out of the ground, or you can collect a kWh of solar energy with a PV panel.

Being EXTREMELY generous to gasoline and ICE - and realistic that most BEVs aren't charging using 0% fossil fuels - you can get to 3.14x.

To get to 2x, you'll need to assume the average BEV is substantially less efficient than a Tesla - that all gasoline is refined at the most efficient refinery - that all ICE cars get Prius mileage - that it takes 0 energy to extract and transmit / ship oil - and probably that the majority of your electricity is coming from coal.

There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them.

If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.

https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-th....

This compares gas -> motion with battery -> motions. To close the loop, we’d have to incorporate the generation efficiency. That will still yield an impressive number, but not 5x.

Solar => Car battery you only lose about 10% of energy.

You lose more than that in refining oil to gasoline. And a lot more when factoring in extraction + transportation + point of sale.

Closing the loop makes solar => car even more efficient, not less.

Sure, if we want to be dumb and extract oil to power inefficient turbines to generate electricity this becomes a talking point. But not many people are building new oil power plants for a reason...

> we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them

The consumer captures these purported gains, not the manufacturer.

this is key- peiple often think market will just magically adjust to most efficient solution, bur incentives must alight.

For example UK is one of the richest countries in europe, it has the most expensive housing in europe and it has the worst insulation in europe.

Landlord has no reason to imprive insulation, the tenant pays for utilities

What is more efficient than all the cars is electrified rail. That is an order of magnitude more energy efficient, more if you can manage to get near capacity high frequency trains.

A lot of our energy expenditure is lifestyle satisfying. Asia and the better cities in Europe demonstrate you can build dense cities with excellent transit as an alternative to car dependency, but the US fairly universally rejects it from both sides - white flight to suburbs and their perpetual expansion and the inability to actually build dense and transit oriented housing, hell most places use zoning codes to actively prevent its development.

We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything, but the willpower is very much not there, largely because of corporate interference that bred this climate that transit is for poor people and to own a car is to "succeed" in life. Its such an awful, backwards culture perpetuated by the profit motive over possibly the survival of the society.

>> We could do a lot of good for the world just stopping our out of control need to drive cars everywhere and for everything

You are absolutely right, zero emission private aircraft would be much better. Let's build a world where everyone can have that if they want instead of placing nihilistic limits on things.

Some of us prefer to live in reality

Things will get better, not worse. Just watch. Nihilists need to sit on the sidelines where they belong.

I'm not a nihilist, I believe in technological progress. It's just not a magic pill that absolves us of all responsibility.

I agree with you, but if you look at our current reality, plenty of it would've been unbelievable 100 years ago. 200 years ago and it's all magic. You have to dream a little big to innovate anything, and if it's feasible then it's a good idea, and if its not then let people try and fail.

I agree , innovation is the only way out of this mess. But progress is never a guarantee so you do as much as you can within the Current bounds of technology and change as the technology changes.

People always forget that it isn't a question of leaving American cities as-is and expecting everyone to give up cars. The solution starts with building walkable cities that have public transportation.

Public transit boosters usually understand that pedestrian friendly street design and higher density housing is also needed. The problem is NIMBYs who resist anything but single family house zoning. Not even duplexes are ok for these people.

I think trying to retrofit existing single family into urbanism is kind of a lost cause. Everything is built for it, and nothing is built for urban density and transit, at some point you might as well just stake a new city in the middle of nowhere (preferably off a major interstate and rail line that has water access) and build from scratch rather than having to bulldoze everything thats already there.

The Northeast US cities have the bones of urbanism still. Their grids were often laid before the car, so you have the narrow streets, housing without setbacks, capacity for mixed use and density to justify good transit infrastructure. The problem is outside New York the cities proper all depopulated - Baltimore and Philly peaked decades ago and have seen mostly population decline since mid last century. The problem is turning these places around requires a lot of investment to rebuild the decayed urbanism that is there and they both (the whole corridor) needs more transit that what it already has to support real urbanism growth when it starts up again.

These are places that have been systemically paracitized for a long time. Taxes are higher in Boston, Philly, NYC, Baltimore, etc than anywhere else in their respective states, and the actual cities are some of the only property tax revenue positive places anywhere - all that suburban sprawl is dependent on outside money to sustain all the roads and infrastructure in ways these cities are not. But that outside money often came from these cities, and we saw huge white flight last century as wealth fled to sprawling suburbs.

None of these places can really turn around the economic sackings they have endured on their own. Even NYC has huge budget problems supporting its metro. But good luck getting the broader fed to reinvest in cities in the 21st century... there are defense contractors pocketbooks to pad, companies to bailout, and techbros to give tax exemptions to.

100%. These things have not happened by accident or in a vacuum.

The trend is net migration from north to south, and east to west. Unfortunately this means more automobile dependent cities.

The problem is storing and moving the energy. We could theoretically capture lightning strikes (electrostatic discharge) and store those to power things.

There's plenty of renewable energy out there, we just can't capture it efficiently, store it very efficiently, or move it around very efficiently. As such as rely on power sources that provide output rates were good at capturing energy from: fossil fuels stored as energy, nuclear fission, solar (fusion, sort of, we're not that efficient at it), hydroelectric (kinetic/gravity, solar/nuclear from the sun), and geothermal (which is just partly just fission again).

A lot of stuff just dissipates into the environment and we only capture a small bit of it. With all that said I think humanity will always grow beyond its means in terms everyone having a desirable amount of energy and materials to meet a certain standard of living.

When you're that poor do you need a fridge, or do you 'just' need access to a fridge? It's a massive waste if you're living on such a little and you literally only need to keep a handful of things cool.

I wonder if you can have a community fridge with different sized compartments so you can pay for access to the amount of space you need; to me those is like using a launderette rather than paying for a washing machine.

You’re thinking too far down the line. The article mentions this but its worth repeating: even the people producing and selling food don’t have access to refrigeration so a lot of the food they have spoils and goes to waste. That’s the first thing that needs to change. After that better roads and transport networks would help even more. Those things can at least get them out of food poverty and will also have second order effects that will increase economic output and put more money into people’s pockets.

Household appliances come much later after you’ve established a working economy and infrastructure.

Is it economically possible to make these investments?

Something makes me think when you're this poor - investing in better roads isn't viable.

For one, wouldn't rail be way more efficient?

Check out the railways that currently exist in Africa and the ones that were built by China and get back to me on that.

It's good to remember how starved for resources some places are.

It's bad to take that resource starvation as the only/primary cause of poverty. The example I like using is that the life expectancy in counties in Alabama has been less than that in Bangladesh for a while. Here, individual's lack of access to resources which exist in the area is more the issue.

One of many articles on this: "Life Expectancy in Some U.S. Counties Is No Better Than in the Third World" https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/life-ex...

The most interesting statistic I've heard recently is that the United States uses more energy just for its AC than the entire African continent does for literally everything combined.

The gap is incredible.

that's an amazing stat, so I went looking for a primary source - what I found so far was a blurb in this Guardian article that links to another Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/how-amer...

"US statistics are bracing. A nation with 318 million people accounting for just 4.5% of world population consumes more energy for air conditioning than the rest of the world combined. It uses more electricity for cooling than Africa, population 1.1 billion, uses for everything."

I'd love to see some charts that break this down visually (energy consumption by region/type).

Vaclav Smil has written extensively and extremely well about this subject. His latest "How the World Really Works" goes into great detail regarding the importance of energy (and especially fossil fuel) in everything that keeps things going.

That's what carbon pricing is about. Of course it must be high enough.

But at least carbon pricing allows us to visualize the problem.

> The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted

Heck, within our own nation. [uncomfortable silence]

The American dream was never sustainable.

We do have the energy right now, though.

And we'd have more, cheaper energy if we deployed new renewables.

But the author seems to lose his interest in helping the poor if it didn't involve fossil fuels being used inefficiently.

Building renewables requires mining for precious metals and rare earths though, which is very energy-intensive. So to deploy these non-polluting renewable energy sources, you first have to pollute a lot. And it's not even clear if there are enough resources on Earth to do this.

Solar panels, batteries, wind mills and such do not appear out of thin air.

We're on track on a big part of Europe being energy-restricted this winter, so at least right now there's not an abundance of energy even for the current needs of the first world, much less for those who cannot pay much and would need not the same amount but growth.

In the long term many things are possible, but right now we don't have enough energy, and "if we deployed new renewables" is not an argument - we already are deploying new renewables pretty much as fast as we can, and even if we would deploy them twice as fast, it will still take quite some time to get to where renewables can create all the energy we need - especially if look at the market share of renewables in total energy which includes not only electricity but also heating and transportation.

RePowerEU plan is precisely for addressing this situation.

We're not deploying new renewables "pretty much as fast as we can". We're not even close to doing that. In actuality, we have ludicrously-rich power centers which are actively subsidizing fossil fuels and warring against renewables. Imagine if all that effort were redirected.

> Imagine if all that effort were redirected.

Well, we'd get there faster, of course. But that's still not right now, that would be still many years, especially for the third world which can't afford the investment.

Right now, we have enough energy.

If every home was insulated and had a heat pump, we'd all be richer.

Why havent we done that?

Why, when the initial Ukraine invasion in 2014 caused a gas price spike, did Bjorn Lomborg and other climate change deniers write an article very much like this one, in which he advocated against more renewables, and instead said we needed to invest in research to find the real solution.

So here we are again, 8 years later, and we're doing the exact same thing? Fool me once...

Can you elaborate why you're saying that right now we have enough energy ? Because to me it's obvious that the third world has far from enough energy (like, they'd need multiple times more to reach a first world stanard of living), and even in first world there's not really enough at the moment, as indicated by the EU energy crisis.

Perhaps the currently available energy is sufficient to meet all the needs in a fictional world where every home was insulated and had a heat pump, but I don't live in that world. Perhaps in some future after many years of infrastructure buildup I could live in that world, but that's not right now. And perhaps in a fictional world where 8 years ago more effort had gone into renewables, there would be enough energy for the current consumption, but I don't live in that world either - in the world I live in, the currently installed and immediately available capacity as of 2022 is far from sufficient for meeting our current needs, and if you're saying "Right now, we have enough energy" I am really struggling to understand what exactly you want to say with that. Are you implying that we should curtail our energy use to what's currently available (or less) and feel satisfied at that?

See my other comment for details.

People are trying to confuse matters by talking about Primary energy as if your quality of life has a 1:1 relationship with fossil CO2 released.

So, if we are actually talking about "primary energy" then we would have enough if we used it efficiently. But we dont. Because our politicians prefer burning gas to heating homes. Gas burnt gets them a kickback, warm homes don't.

Hence why all the solutions to this gas price crisis that don't involve burning even more gas get drowned out.

You can say "well we don't have well insulated homes now", yes I know. But maybe you should be asking "Why don't we have well insulated homes?" because that answer will explain more about how the energy crisis plays out than thermodynamics does.

>If every home was insulated and had a heat pump, we'd all be richer.

I live in an insulated house and am getting a heat pump, but of course, I can already afford my bills. My saving on my energy bill doesn't redistribute the energy to someone else.

Yes it does?

> If every home was insulated and had a heat pump, we'd all be richer.

Yes of course. If every person had a flying car we'd all be richer too.

> Why havent we done that?

Perhaps because the (energy, work) cost of digging heat pumps for every home is too high for us to afford?

How much energy is necessary to create a heat pump and how long does it take for it to pay off?

> We're on track on a big part of Europe being energy-restricted this winter, so at least right now there's not an abundance of energy even for the current needs of the first world

That's self-inflected and the result of poor choices. In a just world, Merkel would get more blame for cozying up to Russia, and the rest of Europe would as well for choosing austerity. As world events have shown, austerity is not robust in the face of events you can't control. It leads to a fragile energy system prone to catastrophic failure.

Poor choices, poor results. Europe can do better if they learn from this travesty.

Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations. At this point it’s obvious their military was all bluff.

This doesn’t even change the final outcome, it just speeds it up - USA won’t allow Russia to become China’s asset, and there aren’t that many options to guarantee that.

Or, more likely, Europe capitulates some time this winter and part of Ukraine goes to Russia. It seems pretty likely that Russia is betting they can survive sanctions longer than Europe can survive without gas. They don't have to actually win in Ukraine; they just have to insert chaos long enough for Europe to freeze.

There is no assumption that Europe would freeze this winter. The aspects I'm complaining about are the inconvenient and costly measures that would be required to ensure that the currently stored and otherwise available energy is sufficient to not freeze and not be pushed to make deals Europe does not want. And while Europe does need gas in the long term (as it's a key industrial resource, not only a source of energy), this is the last winter with a dependency on specifically Russian gas, the ongoing capacity building for alternate sources (e.g. LNG terminals) combined with other investments IMHO would be sufficient to not freeze in the next winter even if the war goes on for years, which I believe it won't.

There is plenty of gas in Europe, it is just mostly used for industrial purposes not residential heating. Somehow people assume that houses will go cold before factories will slow production.

> Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations.

Nuclear weapons foreclose many options.

Why assume this one Russian weapon actually works, if all others turned out to be shit?

Seriously, can we really expect a country that can’t even manufacture cars to be able to refurbish nukes?

Not to mention that the assumptions of MAD doctrine might not have been true for quite some time now. Which means, even if those nukes left their silos, they might not get anywhere near the targets.

You want to play Russian roulette on nuclear weapons? Are you listening to yourself right now?

We believed in Putin's bluff for the past two decades, and see what turned out.

> Why assume this one Russian weapon actually works, if all others turned out to be shit?

I haven't seen the new Jackass movie. Is this the plot?

> forcibly take the gas from Russia

Surely, you're not suggesting invading a nuclear power to seize their natural assets.

Of course not - it’s Russia who invaded the West. It would be merely a defense and peacekeeping.

> especially if look at the market share of renewables in total energy which includes not only electricity but also heating and transportation.

You missed my point. If that existing non-renewable energy was used efficiently, like a Germany and UK that used heat pumps for domestic heating powered by the exact same gas they squander now in poorly insulated homes with a COP 1/5th what they otherwise could have, the energy would be enough.

My second sentence was that on top of that we could have had even more cheap energy if they'd not basically outlawed wind farms, the cheapest form of energy for the last decade in Europe.

"All poverty is energy poverty" remember? So why did the government's not insulate and use efficient heating systems? Why did they "cut the green crap".

I see your point, however, I've seen a lot of local renovation projects for energy efficiency and my conclusion is that while they should be done (because they're cost effective), that is the slow, long-term solution since that effectively requires reconstructing much of the housing stock, which is going to take decades - so that's not a plausible solution for any short term problems, filling the energy gap with more generation is faster.

I think our shared point there is that all these things require years of infrastructure buildup - there is some blame on why earlier it hasn't been done as much as it could be (while it definitely has been done a lot over the last decade!), and a good argument that it must be increased.

But as soon as we're talking about "energy right now" (let's be generous and say within a year or two) then we need rapid solutions, and "becoming energy efficient" is not one of these, that's for a 5-10 year scale even if we're optimistic.

A second point is that effective heating and insulation is a big factor for the relatively northern parts of first world, however, it's not really relevant for the huge "energy poverty" of the third world, where most of the population is in warmer climates. For them, avoiding energy waste is not sufficient, they simply need more energy (much of it "embedded" in consumer goods that they would like to get) to go beyond their current standard of living, which they rightfully consider insufficient.

On Europe:

All the sensible responses to this crisis involved rolling out insulation in the short term.

REPowerEU: A plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and fast forward the green transition

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...

> Energy savings are the quickest and cheapest way to address the current energy crisis, and reduce bills. The Commission proposes to enhance long-term energy efficiency measures, including an increase from 9% to 13% of the binding Energy Efficiency Target under the ‘Fit for 55' package of European Green Deal legislation

A 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas

https://www.iea.org/reports/a-10-point-plan-to-reduce-the-eu...

> 4. Accelerate the deployment of new wind and solar projects

> 7. Speed up the replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps

> 8. Accelerate energy efficiency improvements in buildings and industry

> 10. Step up efforts to diversify and decarbonise sources of power system flexibility ("A portfolio of options will be required, including enhanced grids, energy efficiency, increased electrification and demand-side response")

What does conflict in Ukraine mean for UK energy?

https://eciu.net/analysis/briefings/uk-energy-policies-and-p...

> Despite not importing much Russian gas directly, a drop in global supply – Russia is the second largest gas producer (17% of global output in 2020) – will affect the international gas markets that impact the UK.

> As a result, bills in the UK (and likely globally) will soar because of conflict in Ukraine, potentially up to £3,000 in October 2022, (a £600 increase from previously expected levels). However, some doubt that bills will get this high as there are still significant data gaps needed to forecast future bill levels.

> Energy efficiency is an obvious near term step, as it could reduce the UK’s total gas demand by 7-8% and imports by 15% while delivering bill savings to households.

On Africa:

if they don't have the energy now, they need to build it. What is the cheapest available source of new energy? What is the best way to make that energy go furthest? None of these basics things are discussed, because tha article wants to shill for fossil fuels, and actively make these problems worse in Europe and Africa.

Who had outlawed wind-farms and where? There are offshore installations and I see wind turbines everywhere in the UK.

https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/uk-government-lifts-suppor...

> The UK is set to lift its controversial ban of onshore wind projects from government support, in a major u-turn by the ruling Conservative Party over a policy that sent new turbine installation figures plunging

Thanks for the link, but 'government choosing not to financially support installations' and 'installations banned' are very very different things.

The author seems to advocate for renewables and while we have plenty of energy available capturing it still needs work done. Some of the energy we could use now needs to go mining an manufacturing then we need physically build the infrastructure. The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink

> The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink

Well...yea.

It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy. If they actually got their way, we would see a recession/depression that would be the most painful of our lifetime.

We should be focused on raising the standard of living for ALL people. We can work towards that goal by generating as much energy as possible with the caveat of doing so intelligently and responsibly.

As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable. Having all of India's population reaching a European level of CO2 expenditure (about 4 tons / person / year) kills us. And renewables would only account for a very small reduction of that.

> As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable

This is defeatist bullshit.

No one is arguing that the whole world needs to immediately live exactly like the richest citizens.

Your attitude really disappoints and actually enrages me. Luckily, I can take comfort in knowing how counter to human nature it is. Humans will not accept a declining standard of living because a few people want to virtue signal. Try to force it on them at your own peril.

Thankfully, I don't really give a crap about your opinion of me, but thanks for the info.

I am not calling for declining standards of living, or saying that, fuck it, let poor people be poor. I'm the first person to push for more nuclear power plants, more renewables. Simply reminding people that the whole technobabble bullshit about how new things are going to save us is wrong. We're not going to save ourselves. We're going to raise our standards of living, and kill ourselves in the process. Good luck with your human nature.

Well we have enough uranium reserves to increase the world's energy output by several orders of magnitude and still last hundreds of years.

Right. And we could actually create a reliable grid vs. a shitty patchwork of unreliable power sources that require us to massively overbuild generation capacity.

I guess we don't do this because too few bureaucrats can grift if we build nuke plants?

No grid is 100% reliable, but in the present situation where renewables are cheaper than nuclear it's not hard to see why they're being preferred. You'd need a story where that price difference is artificial or temporary (both possible)

Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions. Ultimately, if you want to handle all of your load with only renewables, you're going to need to build about 3x what's needed, just to account for wind turbines not running, sun not shining, etc, and you're going to need to replace most of it in 15 years, with rare earth materials that will start costing a lot of money. Needless to say, it's a waste, and the solution that most competent people agree on is to have a nuclear/renewables mix. Nuclear is necessary to provide a massive, stable base load. Renewables provide people some temporary independence and the overproduction could be sold. But, go for too many renewables, and suddenly you're back to burning gas at night to keep producing.

> Ultimately, if you want to handle all of your load with only renewables, you're going to need to build about 3x what's needed, just to account for wind turbines not running, sun not shining, etc, and you're going to need to replace most of it in 15 years, with rare earth materials that will start costing a lot of money.

You're getting downvoted for living in the real world and opposing the approved climate messaging.

It is really a shame to see all the people that have been bamboozled by the "renewable energy" propaganda and refuse to see the obvious (very negative) implications of following through on that policy.

>> Renewables are cheaper than nuclear mostly because of large state grants and tax reductions.

That is simply not true, already in 2017(?) PV and wind was cheaper in utility scale kWh prices, un fixed project auctions and without subsidies, than the then most modern nuckear plant in Europe, Hinkley C in the UK. Those utility scale PV and wind parks are faster to build as well.

Until we figured electricity storagebout on a scale big enough to sustain our needs nuclear beats coal by lightyears so.

I don't want to jump on the bandwagon too much, but I think if you want to argue for decreased energy use you have to do it in a way that has a vision for quality of life improving. You might for example point out how much more efficient cities are, or how wasteful consumerism is and argue that people can grow to love having less. I'm not sure, but you definitely shouldn't basically say the only solution is to keep the developing world down and maybe shrink the pie in the developed world too. That just isn't a realistic option.

Also like the other commenters I'm not at all sure renewables can't do the job. Prices have fallen fast

> It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy.

Nothing naive about it, there are costs associated with production of energy and spending less energy is simply about lowering the associated costs.

Europe being big on energy savings and efficiency is now better off compared to what would have had happened if they lost the Russian energy without the achieved efficiencies.

Efficiency is not the same as negative growth.

There are actual, real-life proponents of policies that would have us shrink our economies and decrease the standard of living.

That's not because they hate energy but because they think it's not worth to tolerate the negatives associated with production of energy.

Energy production often impacts negatively the surroundings of the production area and that's why even those who boast for energy production at all cost are also NIMBY folks. Notice how wealthy prefer to live away from energy production sites, in prestine environment? turns out the poor and the middle class want that too.

Yes, those that would rather subsidize fossil fuels than efficiency and cheap renewables. They're suprisingly prominent and running many major economies.

Renewables are great and are absolutely the future, but energy security and current needs demand fossil fuels as well. We cannot simply shut off these sources and hope to make it. The transition includes keeping lots of legacy capacity before we wind anything down.

See Europe now for an example of how over-reliance on intermittent generation with no storage yields incredible energy instability.

Who wants a grid where your refrigerator can't run when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining?

That is not Europe's energy problem today. Their current problem is that a significant amount of their energy infrastructure relies on continuous imports; but a major exported has decided to stop selling to them for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. This dynamic has been a defining feature of geopolitics for the past half century or so. Whenever you hear talk about "energy independence" you are hearing talk about mitigating a problem that is almost exclusive to fossil fuels.

That's not the case? The big issue in europe is that electricity is expensive, not unreliable. With more renewables the current price spikes in fossil energy wouldn't hurt so much (or, admittedly, more local production capability of fossil energy).

You sure about that?

You can't replace base load with intermittent generation sources and expect fewer price spikes.

Ya'll better get busy building those nuke plants like NOW.

> expect fewer price spikes.

No. But depending on what you're replacing with how much capacity, you can get cheaper electricity on average (for example removing coal). And the nuclear exit in europe, apart from germany, happened (and is happening) more to the lack of replacement capacity than expectation of direct replacement by renewables. In germany, the exit was more-or-less driven by fear. New NPPs are really (and I mean really) expensive and there is little expectation that with conventional NPP that can significantly change.

And stability & price are not the same.

> Ya'll better get busy building those nuke plants like NOW.

Have you looked at construction times in Western Countries, even pro-nuclear ones like france? That's like the worst idea. It'd take at least 20 years with conventional technology. Modular reactors aren't ready right now (and I'd be surprised if they solved the issues that are leading to the reduction in nuclear generation we're seeing around the world, but that question doesn't have a firm answer yet).

The solution is building out renewables and investing in storage. Hydrogen and P2G both don't have any fundamental difficulties, the will to implement them on a large scale just isn't there right now. Even regular electrochemical cells should be doable if needed. Due to wind turbines producing more in winter, you only have to bridge the normal day-night cycle and low-wind periods in winter across the EU.

We'd already be in a better position if we'd have invested more in electrifying stuff, since that usually improves the efficiency (even end-to-end when looking at gas power plants).

I don't think solar would be very useful in Europe during the winter. Maybe in the countries furthest to the south, but there's really no point in the Nordics.

Much less than in summer. Luckily wind turbines generate more during winter.

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