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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

To use the British term, what a load of bollocks.

Are there constant rolling blackouts? Is there a currency crisis? Are banks collapsing? Is there a state of anarchy that lead to the deployment of the Military?

NI was much closer to a failed state during the hottest part of the Troubles in the 70s. NI in 2023 is nowhere near as bad.

There is so much First World "Woe is I" on HN. It's so damn ridiculous. Go join the Peace Corp if you want to see a semi-failed state (edit: not really. They don't deploy in unstable area, but absolutely do if you want to teach secondary math and science)

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>Are there constant rolling blackouts

NI could face blackouts by 2024 due to coal plant shutdowns. new gas plants arent scheduled until 2026.

> Is there a currency crisis

the pound recently dipped under the dollar and has seen rampant instability due in part to the mismanagement and inception of brexit.

> Are banks collapsing

not yet. solvency is to a great extent maintained by london at present however brexit is currently ushering a slow-rolling disaster. jobs and investment are declining at such a rate that the UK had to manufacture a fresh fruit crisis to divert attention from the transit trade sector which by all indication had collapsed.

> Is there a state of anarchy that lead to the deployment of the Military

id hate to sound like a dead horse, but EU membership legislation largely kept the peace after the troubles. no real plan was in place to assure it didnt slide back into a sectarian nightmare after the collapse of EU membership, and whatever is being endorsed currently is tentative at best and approved without a lot of thought.

> the pound recently dipped under the dollar and has seen rampant instability due in part to the mismanagement and inception of brexit.

This is not rampant instability in my book:

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=5Y

Try this on for size:

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=ARS&to=USD&view=10Y

Also, the power outages are a symptom of a disease afflicting the entire first world, not something NI specific. Politicians pushing policy that is forcing change faster than is economically wise to do so for politically fashionable reasons. It's the same exact crap here in Canada and it looks similar in many other first world spots.

As a Californian, I feel obligated to point out that:

(a) this isn’t necessarily about environmental policy, and

(b) speed of changes isn’t necessarily part of it.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–2001_California_electri...

I agree that a bunch of the regulatory pushes for clean energy seem to be poorly done. I would much rather see a carbon tax along with sensible regulatory changes to avoid excessive red tape when building new clean energy projects. (But even that could cause problems if the market fails to prioritize reliability — see the California situation above and the recent problems in Texas, both of which involved.)

(Also, for Pete’s sake, what’s up with trading credits for not producing carbon dioxide? Just tax greenhouse gas emissions already — if you don’t emit them, you don’t pay the the tax, and if you do emit, then you just pay the tax instead of paying someone else to supposedly reduce emissions.)

The speed of change I was referring to was putting in policies that force decommissioning before the replacement is ready(and/or replacing with a generation mix that isn't compatible with reliable grid operation yet but this isn't applicable to this specific situation) and it is an environmental related politically fashionable policy in this case (and in Canada's case). In the comment I was referring to the specific problem is they decommissioned the coal plants by 2024 while the natural gas plants won't be ready till 2026.

California is a really bad example because all their problems stem from environmental policy and the profit opportunities extremely bad environmental policy made possible. That place has it all. They have a legacy grid where they first tried to get rid of pollution that just moved most of the pollution just outside the state with large and semi unreliable power lines bringing the power back in. They had artificially low prices for consumer, which caused demand and reality to diverge. They had differential pricing at the import/export nodes that were ripe for abuse (that no other power grid did because it was obviously stupid and ripe for abuse). I am sure I am missing a bunch of stuff because it's been a long time since I looked at it, but CAISO is basically a story about how the path to hell is paved with good environmental intentions.

I agree with you on the carbon tax thing as the better solution. I would caveat that agreement with making sure other government policies are not causing undue inelasticity in demand for hydrocarbons that would make a carbon tax not work except for at crippling levels (i.e. North American zoning that basically makes a car a requirement would have to change to drastically increase density and make public transit/cycling/walking a viable alternative). In general, increasing elasticity of demand will make a carbon tax more effective at a given level and there are probably lots of government policies that could be changed to make demand more elastic, the zoning stuff being the very low hanging fruit.

> I would caveat that agreement with making sure other government policies are not causing undue inelasticity in demand for hydrocarbons that would make a carbon tax not work except for at crippling levels (i.e. North American zoning that basically makes a car a requirement would have to change to drastically increase density and make public transit/cycling/walking a viable alternative).

Define inelasticity?

In many places, and for many purposes, a car is effectively necessary, the distance driven is more or less fixed, and carpooling may not be an option. But there are multiple kinds of cars! EVs can emit very little carbon (and the tax would be built in to electricity pricing), and even among gas cars, there is huge variability in efficiency.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best/bestworstNF.shtml#noEVs

That’s a factor of more than 3 within the midsize class.

Inelasticity means large price changes do not change demand much. Your statement about a car being necessary is an example of inelastic demand. You need to make the carbon tax so high that peole become so poor they cant deal with a car i order to change demand.

Electric cars are a red herring at this point because they still cost so much more than an equivalent gas car that the break even point is a decade plus out for the bulk of people who are relati ely low mileage. (Don't say a subsidy makes up for it, subsidies are mostly bullshit. Its just making rich people pay for you buying an electric car nit making sense).

The better policy is changing zoning so we can build more like the netherlands, which makes public transit/biking/walking a lot more viable vs a car, which makestbe elasticity of demand for carbon higher and makes a carbon tax cause much higher switching off carbon at a given price level.

You’re not commenting on the efficient car options. They’ve been around for years, and they’re not that expensive. I don’t know how people would behave, but people could certainly (slowly) produce less carbon by purchasing cars that are more efficient.

Those efficient cars are part of the gas engine alternatives I was talking about that make electric cars a red herring currently.

I don't see a ton of good data out there for free but electric isn't the be all end all either. if I look at UK data published here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/comparing-the-carbon-footpr...

it looks like the rough progression is if you go medium car to small car you cut your co2 output in half, if you then go to electric you cut it in half again. Electric car is not as good as rail and if you walk/ride a bike you are pretty close to zero. If you're still driving your electric car everywhere you are still outputting ~ 25% of the co2 of just driving your medium sized car. The zoning changes I am talking about would instead make the option of walking/biking (basically zero output) or riding transit (lower than an electric car if done right) an option for a lot of current trips, while lessening the kms needed to travel. If you want to throw in a ride share electric car for the many fewer car trips you then need you can do that and your co2 output will be cut very drastically with pretty much no hardship to you vs the alternative of having the co2 tax high enough to make the wide spread between gas and electric cars make sense to purchase an electric car (and the commensurate increase in home heating costs that much larger carbon tax would cause, among other large energy uses that would be more expensive).

The EUR is below parity with the Dollar. Heaps worse.

> The EUR is below parity with the Dollar. Heaps worse.

Apparently it was, but not anymore. It's $1.07 now: https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EURUSD:CUR

Your use of the phrase 'to use the British term' implying you think that's clever and relevant (and not at all contentious) is the first indicator you don't know what you are talking about.

It would seem to indicate that he understands that there's a significant British element to Northern Ireland's history.

They weren't implying anything other than that the phrase may be less common outside of Great Britain

^^^ this. No one gives a shit about English vs Scottish vs Welsh vs Irish outside of the British Isles (and some parts of Boston)

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