> There is a great conflict between two of the most pressing problems of our time: poverty and climate change.
This wasn't true in 2021 and has been getting less true over time.
Not one mention of Solar or Wind in the whole article.
This wasn't true in 2021 and has been getting less true over time.
Not one mention of Solar or Wind in the whole article.
Even though I believe that nuclear no longer has a role in energy (fuel sources, disposal, concentration of risk into few small units), the statement is still correct and it has another dimension:
There is a conflict between poverty, climate change, gravity of climate change harms and the speed at which we can reduce climate change impacts.
The problem is that there is a shrinking window to limit harm, and the harms will disproportionally affect poor nations which at the same time lack resources to mitigate. I'd definitely call that a gordian knot.
[1]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...
As the cost of solar plummeted and nuclear went up they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. For the last 5 years they've built several TW's of solar capacity and a similar amount of coal peaker plants to run when the sun isn't shining.
Now in 2024 they're starting to scale back coal and they're building massive batteries instead. IOW, batteries are now cheaper than coal to offset the intermittency of solar.
Also, the lithium shortage has come and gone already: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
Currently (June 2024) they're all the way down to:
China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.
China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.
China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).
From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
Which is quite the wind down from . . . ?
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
Now they're aiming for 18% by 2060, by which time they will also be net zero carbon.
And the article is about nuclear energy and the premise of it being a flop and why that might be, based on a book about the topic. I don't think it has to mention solar and wind. Though I can see, as competing energy sources, why it would be useful to look at their impact on political momentum for nuclear, or how they reduce economic demand for the extra energy nuclear can supply.
Defining poverty as "wealth relative to the richest person on earth" or whatever you're doing here is unproductive crab-bucket envy, not a useful definition. If you're talking about wealth, all that matters is if the baseline is going up. If you're talking about status, be honest and say that explicitly instead of dressing it up as a wealth issue.
Housing costs often aren't included in popular measures of inflation. If you do use an inflation measure that includes housing and all other everyday expenditure, then I think it's a reasonable to argue the baseline going up is good enough.
And you're right - this is possibly the single biggest issue that's a downgrade for people vs their parents/grandparents, and it's a huge one. But the problem needs to be attributed correctly.
Seems to be mostly an American problem, like many others.
I agree it doesn't necessarily mean rents rises. You might actually expect higher price to earnings ratio with more wealthy people competing to buy assets (see also stocks).
But it will lead to the shrinking of the home-owning middle class.
That's not to say there isn't also a problem with lack of supply.
On a world-scale we've been reducing the overall number of people below the poverty line each decade, however there is a discussion to be had around inflation and whether the poverty line itself needs to move (there a re lots of poverty lines used in analysis, I'm not referring to any single definition).
And I'm not talking specifically about wealth. Wealth is fine in a vacuum. Looking at excessive wealth and means to recirculating it can be helpful when addressing the issues the poorest people in society are facing.
And I'm not talking about status, no idea how you got that impression. I'm re-reading my comment and trying to figure out where you got that fantasy from.
As in, how can someone be both getting poorer but also enjoying increasing access to resources? Buying power is a pretty good measure here unless I've missed something?
(I'm talking about this in a global context where we can assume asset wealth is pretty much negligible, i.e. it's not a case of people burning through savings to access resources)
For a poverty line definition then, as I mentioned, we can observe fewer people being below the poverty line as time goes on, but we're ignoring inflation and buying power. Fewer people being under the $1/day poverty line is great, unless essential purchases have doubled in price.
What we've seen in recent decades has been a mix of inflation and basic resources becoming more assessible/cheaper. So when I say people are getting poorer, I'm saying poverty lines ignore this the access angle unless they adjust for inflation, but then also counter to that some essentials have become more accessible, like access to medicine, education and energy. So whilst buying power may get worse for some, they're 'wealthier' in terms of things that they have increased cost-free/low-cost access to.
There have been attempts to use definitions that do adjust for access but they're a lot more difficult to normalise across countries. Something like the Big Mac Index is a quick and dirty tool but obviously it focusses on a single item in a single category (food) so it can't provide a very detailed picture of access to resources, buying power, and poverty on the whole.
If your income is below 60% of median, you're in poverty per the government's definition.