Comment by fwungy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fwungy | Hacker News Reader

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Same people are writing the energy policy here. Germany just was further along.

Climate change mitigation doesn't work if the fossil fuels just make it cheaper for other countries to use them. Russia and the Middle East aren't walking away from trillions of dollars in oil reserves and the BRICS aren't going to stop developing to keep the world from getting a couple degrees hotter in a hundred years.

If they really wanted to do something about climate change they'd be pushing next gen nuclear energy to the forefront, make clean electricity super cheap, and drive electrification by outcompeting fossils.

The energy policy we have now in the West was designed by scammers and morons.

T. Energy Policy PhD

Where is "here"?

Russia and the Middle East can try to sell their oil reserves, but eventually demand is going to crash as a consequence of vehicle and power grid replacement with renewables.

Oil will remain in certain energy dense and/or conservative applications for awhile (e.g. aircraft), but the two above sectors are a big chunk of demand (~50%, roughly).

Compared to renewables' zero cost of fuel, it's hard to balance refining and shipping oil around the world at any price, especially after the current system downsizes.

At this point the price for new solar power or onshore wind is cheaper than gas or coal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

Only in places that can afford to replace them. Liquid fuels are well understood and supported in the developing world because ICEs are relatively cheap and liquid fuels have amazing energy density.

A village with a tank of diesel can be amazingly self sufficient in the developing world while their grid central power are not reliable.

I understand the urgency of climate change, but doing something obviously unproductive like pretending the developing world is going to eagerly spend money they don't have to preserve the climate 75 years from now, isn't going to help anything.

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