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Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

The only way to even attempt to thwart climate change was to make green technologies economically viable. We have gone a long way with that; but we are not there yet. This shift could very well be the last nail on the coffin.

Another victim of the extreme politicisation of issues in the US.

We couldn't have had a worse hegemon. Saddening.

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> We couldn't have had a worse hegemon. Saddening.

The other candidates for hegemon are worse IMO. The Soviet Union could have conceivably replaced the US as hegemon, and China might yet do so.

Maybe the EU would be a better hegemon, but never really had the capabilities to take on that role.

Why have a hegemon better there is none as that builds competition. And in my opinion for the world China might be a better hegemon as it is interested mostly in its own population happy and not interested in making the rest of the world in it's image.

The age of hegemony is over. At least until WW3 or a revolution in US or China.

Why? MAGA?

Absolutely not. The US is choosing to make an entirely unforced "error" (that part is up for debate) to withdraw from it's global dominance. China is watching with barely masked glee at their luck. With a minimum of work, they will thrive for a hundred years, even with their demographic downturn.

China gained A LOT of street cred last Trump admin, and this time is so fucking bad (we voted with Russia against Ukraine in the UN) that even our allies are nervously looking at options.

China has basically nobody to oppose them, nobody to stand up to their bullying behavior. Everything the US did through the mid to late 1900s, like coups and aggressive economic strategies and illegal wars to blow up some far away place are now strategies fully open to China.

Start learning Mandarin I guess.

It’s only economically viable because we don’t price externalities correctly.

It should be cheap and easy to live a bike ride away from work in a well insulated home. Instead we’ve priced things completely backwards

Related to this I'm surprised how expensive still Tesla Powerwall is: ~$10k for 13.5kWh. Even Segway these days sell cheaper Portable Power Station Cube that is modular and stackable (upto 5kWh but IMHO much better design and useful) for $1k for 2kWh - and segway it's still kind of premium brand.

Not sure why Tesla still qualifies for 30% Federal Tax Credit if they been operating and getting this for a decade and didn't bring price down. Some people on youtube were buying Tesla Car battery and retrofit them to have equivalent of 5x such Powerwalls for the same price. It seems ironic that they made DOGE to reduce government spending but still running this tax credit that in Powerwall situation benefits only higher income class.

All those greedy western companies doing EV cars and residential batteries IMHO deserve to be eaten by chinese competition.

> economically viable

Or just regulation.

China and India are outperforming most of the developed nations in meeting their committed climate goals.

You cannot possibly compare the climate goals of countries with vast swaths of pre-industrial populations to western ones.

It would make more sense to compare the impact of Delhi to a US state for example.

Why? The challenges are quite similar.

I'd say "economically viable" is not useful pharsing. It's of course economically viable to slow down the climate catastrophe as the costs will be so vast also economically (in addition to humanly, morally, etc) and we have the policy tools to do it. But it's a collective action problem and it needs a lot of international trade coordination and govenrment regulation.

Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of generating electricity that we currently have and consequently they are growing very quickly.

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