Despite all the data about climate change, the thing that is actually shifting us away from fossil fuels is that solar panels are cheap.
[1] IRENA 2023 report shows that solar photovoltaic (PV) generation was 56% less expensive than the weighted average fossil fuel-fired alternatives, despite being 414% more expensive back in 2010. Bloomberg New Energy Finance found in March 2021 that "renewables are the cheapest power option for 71% of global GDP and 85% of global power generation."
What is the total cost for both scenarios?
Lots of bad things will happen from climate change, but we can mitigate the impact of many of those issues.
Long term, we need a combination of the following technologies to get to 100% carbon free electricity with 80% renewables: 1. Long distance transmission lines. 2. Some type of "clean, firm, dispatchable" power. Examples include: Nuclear fission, fusion power, deep geothermal, and space based solar power.
We can certainly use the cost savings from getting to 80% renewables to finance figuring out how to scaling production of one (or more) of the later technologies to lower cost. Simply reducing the regulatory burden on Nuclear Fusion can accomplish that if a society chooses this path.
Lot of work to do. And many economic powers would loose out from this transition (e.g. Exxon or Russia) but totally feasible to accomplish.
If you want to do a deep dive into cost scenarios look at the work of Christopher Clack or Jesse Jenkins.
If it makes folks feel better, there's a good chance you probably had no control/influence over this outcome if you were born after 1980.
https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-weve-underestimated...
People will haggle over it because of the unknowns, but when imminent social chaos becomes obvious, we'll be forced to pull the trigger on it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-are-cra...
Those are really expensive. They're part of the toolbox, but they're not tool #1.
> 2. Some type of "clean, firm, dispatchable" power. Examples include: Nuclear fission, fusion power, deep geothermal, and space based solar power.
If you're relying on that to supply power during those winter weeks without sun & wind then it has to scale up to 100% of power needs. And if it can do that, why build anything else?
To get to 100% carbon free with > 99.99% reliability for under $1T, your primary tool is modelling.
Then you reach for:
- source diversity. Wind is more expensive than solar, but it tends to be highest at dawn/dusk so is a great complement. - overprovisioning. Enough solar to supply needs on a cloudy winter day - storage. - long distance interconnect. There's never been an hour in recorded history where there's no sun or wind somewhere in the continental US.
But is that sufficient to handle the full load across the entire continental US? And how do you do that without the really expensive long distance high voltage transmission lines?
Where I live, bad winters can see us go for weeks of full cloud cover and little wind in January. If we really get away from fossil fuels and run heat pumps, that means electrical use in winter will rival that in summer.
Besides the examples you listed, there's also synthetic fuels. I don't know if they'll pan out, but the concept is intriguing.
Essentially, the argument goes that there's a critical solar price point at which synthesizing methane from atmospheric gas capture becomes cheaper than drilling. Said methane can be burned for power in existing plants (forming a closed cycle) or refined into heavier liquid hydrocarbons for vehicles and polymers.
The advantage here is that you don't need batteries or inverters - just dirt cheap panels - and the synthesis plants can be engineered to be productive despite only operating during the day.
I know one company is working on this with industrial scale in mind (Terraform Industries), and I believe SpaceX is also pursuing it on-site for Starship (which consumes ~1000 T of methane per launch, all of which currently has to be trucked in at great expense.)
I think the 75% aggregate over some period. If 25% of your total capacity is nuclear/hydro you will still have extreme shortages during peak times if there is no sun/wind.
That why it has to be gas/etc. which can be scaled up and down very rapidly (unfortunately you can’t “overload” a nuclear reactor to make it generate more power for a few hours on a regular basis..)
You could throw excess power away from an oversized reactor and not throw it away when it's needed. Financially not very smart, but technologically feasible
Re: the nuclear version, good chance none of it happens due to anti-nuclear sentiment of course. So far exactly zero of these small scale nuclear plants have been built.
Only if you need electricity during the day.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lcoe-and-valu...
(If not it soon will be.)
"China’s surging solar exports to the global south"
https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-briefing-3-april-2025-sola...
America demonstrating how expensive ignoring cheap renewables can be may well do the world more good in the long run.
It not like a few years ago where a country could "cheat" and get an advantage by avoiding renewables, now it's self-sabotage.
This is one of the best takes I've read about the fossil fuel versus clean energy dilemma. Maybe it's lucky for humanity that moving towards clean energy is becoming so cost effective, thanks to many past government initiatives (from all over the world) that added momentum, and the many green energy related businesses that are now in existence.
perhaps the word lucky isn't the correct one, since lots of people worked hard to push for the initial government programs that kick-started the economies of scale. And Tesla for making viable EVs both a reality as well as desirable for a growing chunk of the population.
It also requires the political will. Texas is showing us that the market is in fact not rational, and will absolutely do something that's universally contrary to everyone's best interests for the sake of grandstanding.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-markets/texas-bi...
Dear capitalists, this is not a bar:
The first thing proves the second. The market is a real thing that exists in the universe we live in, not just in academic research. The markets are never "rational", because they're just people. They may be "predictable" or even "stable" but humans are not rational. The fact that the market can be manipulated, means that it is manipulated.
Issue is, a significant proportion of Texas's budget comes out of NatGas and Oil revenue, so there's a perverse incentive when renewables end up pricing well below NatGas and Oil, and labor unions aligned to ONG like the UAW, ILU, and affiliates of the AFL-CIO like the United Steelworkers are VERY politically powerful.
This will be a major hurdle in energy exporting countries like the US, Norway, Canada, Netherlands, the Gulf, etc and it can't be handwaved away.
And no - rETraInInG doesn't work when much of the renewable industry is heavily automated, a major reason the ILU, UAW, and parts of the AFL-CIO ended up supporting the Trump admin's tariffs regime: either you drop the unions and cause tens of thousands to lose high paying jobs and radicalize a vast swath of Americans OR you do nothing and let the earth cook.
[0] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-b...
[1] - https://www.texastribune.org/2013/09/16/book-excerpt-go-get-...
[2] - https://www.masterresource.org/texas/george-w-bush-wind-ener...
A year ago I paid $8k for 7.8kw on my roof. My Dad just paid $5k for 10kw.
Neither of us will ever pay for power again.
Edit: Western, southern Canada for those asking.
The power we put in even covers the monthly connection fee.
I’m just about to hit 12 months with mine, 8 Mwh generated, never paid a bill.
In our area the cost of electricity is already Confirmed to increase 5% a year forever, so this will only get better for us.
A household uses up at least around 2MWh per year, most of which during the winter, if you don't use air conditioning in the summer and don't have an electric car to charge.
That means you'd need around 150 (!) Powerwall 3 units. At a price of around 10k GBP each, you'd have to shell out more than 1 million pounds just for the batteries. Not to mention the space that they'd have to take, and the increased risk in having something failing.
In the USA, homes are even less efficient (and depending on locale, people run AC all year round, and drive tens of thousands of kilometers on cars which also need to be powered). 2 years ago MKBHD published a video about his experience with the Tesla roof:
In it, he revealed that his yearly power consumption is 55MWh. His battery was able to tide him over the next cloudy day, and during the winter the solar panel wouldn't ever fully recharge again.
Expecting every household to be energy independent year-round via solar is patently absurd. Renewable energy tided over with massive batteries upstream? Maybe that could work, I haven't run the numbers... But you cannot hope to push that responsibility downstream to every household. Reliable baseline is still going to be necessary for the foreseeable future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43751178
> We use the grid like a battery, getting a one for one credit for everything we put in. So during summer/daytime we put in enough to then use up our credit in winter/nighttime.
> The power we put in even covers the monthly connection fee.
> I’m just about to hit 12 months with mine, 8 Mwh generated, never paid a bill.
And later the same commenter argues
> When that happens, I’ll get batteries.
If I have to get batteries one day, I sure as heck won’t get a whole years worth of energy. In summer I’ll only need enough to get through the night ( very little ). In winter I’ll obviously need more, and I would have to carefully look at how much the house is using and how much solar I’m generating, but something like one or two power walls would do it. In five or ten years that’s going to be cheap.
Solar and batteries works great in climates with highly predictable weather and where demand only exceeds supply during very short burst. Europe, especially the northern part, are prime example where this is not the case and where supply shortages can occur for months. This is the reason why a single month of energy can cost more than the collective sum of all the other 11 months, since market prices follows supply and demand. This is where government subsidies will hide things with government funded fossil fueled power plants (under the euphemism of reserve energy and grid stability), and they can also just straight pay citizens energy bill when the price hit certain levels. When the government is responsible for energy storage, the cost is placed through taxes or tax-related fees. A common red flag here is when grid connection fees start to become bigger than actually consumption cost.
In 12 months the 7.8kw system has generated smack on 8Mwh.
While the very short days, snow and cloud cover reduce output a lot, it still makes power year round.
It is not absolute zero, but it kind of close, and there is a large period that storage would need to fill. For Sweden it is also the inverse for the demand spike, with winter demanding more energy than during the summer.
November and January were 200kwh each, and October and February were 400kwh each.
So it’s very low in the worst of winter, but it comes back very quickly.
Using the power walls examples above, you then need around 10 units.
How and why does that change anything in any way?
Thats ummm extremely cheap.
So saying most people have an 80 year payback period just feels wildly off (depending on the assumptions in the calculation I think that implies less than a penny per kWh generated).
Before all this our power bills were smack on $100 per month, so I’ve got about a 6.5 year pay off. Electricity here is 13 cents per kWh, but is confirmed to increase 5% per year basically forever. So my pay off is less than that.
The panels are also a hedge against that uncertainty and provide self reliance
For places not already on the grid, using batteries instead of paying for a new grid connection is close enough to be a question worth asking, though from what I've seen not a definite "yes" or "no" in general.
I highly doubt there is anywhere in the world where you can buy the amount of energy specified by the parent as cheaply as you said. Like i think it would work out to less then a penny per kwh
If you are not accounting for amount of generation than this is an apples and oranges comparison.
$0.03 * 11,000kWh/year * 87 years = $28,710.
So either you're vastly underestimating the amount you pay in electricity, or you're using vastly less electricity in which case you obviously wouldn't get a 10kW system.
That’s the first I’ve ever heard this stat.
Right now I pay about $180 a month for electricity. So let’s round it to $2,000 a year.
If I got solar panels, I’d be spending average of $2k a year maintaining them? There are literally no moving parts anywhere. I can imagine having to replace an inverter here and there, or maybe even a panel at some point.
So my guess would be more line $200 a year average, if that.
They are saying the cost for grid running to your house, and for the hydro dams that provide power on a cloudy day are basically fixed.
Net metering doesn't scale at population levels.
That’s already happening with EVs. In my state in the US, since they are earning less from the gas taxes (used to pay for roads) from EV owners, they’ve raised the car registration fees for EV owners only.
And at superchargers they’ve raised prices to 45c/KWh.
So eventually I feel it won’t be much of a cost savings to have an EV anymore.
Don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same with Solar.
But there's an issue with solar most people don't talk about. Yes it can be variable due to weather and day/night cycles. That's obvious. But a real issue is power lines.
Power lines are built to deliver power to businesses and homes. The cost of that is amortized over the electricity purchased by consumers. If people end up purchasing only half as much power due to more energy-efficient building standards, the use of solar, etc then the cost of the power lines is still the same except now it needs to be amortized over less electricity sold.
This I think is why municipalities tend to limit how much solar power houses are allowed to have. How do you build and maintain a grid when houses are generally self-suficient? Should you? Is it acceptable to not have a grid?
[1]: https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-pr...
So China has largely invested in, deployed and perfected Ultra-High Voltage Direct Current ("UHVDC") transmission infrastructure. China has really shown they think 10, 20 and 50 years into the future with their planning.
As for grids, there are a lot of places that could be self-sufficient with solar plus batteries. A lot of remote towns and houses work this way already.
Seems optimistic? With 2 EVs and almost all electric utilities, I'm well past the ~26 KWH a day electricity your system might generate.
I'm also impressed how cheap your costs are. The install cost alone in the Bay Area is going to be past that. Panels getting cheaper just don't matter much.
Assuming the parent doesn't have EVs and uses gas, oil, or wood for heat, the cost makes sense. "Domestic" electricity usage, when you aren't using it for heat and cars, is quite low.
Just the electrician's part would be a good chunk of the $5k, where we live (East coast US) before you even get into placing the panels themselves.
I keep seeing cheap panel costs with a "look, now you can afford it!" thing, but for those of us who may be handy but aren't quite willing to do high-power lines & boxes, or confident bolting steel to a roof without either killing ourselves or ruining the roof, the labor costs continue to be very high, and that part's not going down. From what I'm seeing for online "average costs for 10kw in your area" I'd hesitate to pull the trigger even if it were $5k lower than it is, which would probably be an even bigger discount than if the panels and other hardware were simply free.
Couple that with the fact that Canada very likely has subsidies for people adopting solar power.
https://www.solarchoice.net.au/solar-panels/solar-power-syst...
When we had ours installed on a previous house, the roof installation itself was very fast - couple of hours maybe.
Beyond this, state and council/county authorities often have rebates/incentives to encourage take-up of panels and/or battery systems. Our council (county equivalent, I guess) has had group-buy initiatives, as one example, and a virtual power plant scheme.
I want solar panels, but i'm also a skeptic on the cost, and not enough time has passed to prove how things will go. While I agree the metered cost may now favor solar -- what is the TCO for the average resident? Some things on my mind:
1. Everything seems inexpensive at first, before you have to pay for servicing. Just like with cars, HVAC systems, plumbing systems, or any complex system where you are at the mercy of repair companies that are highly local. With plumbers in our area, you cannot even effectively get multiple quotes because there is a "visit fee" of $125, which gets credited to repairs if you choose the provider.
2. Roofs in general are expensive to maintain and repair. Here on the costs, i've never seen even a minor repair be under 1k. Major roof replacements cost 5 to 15k for average homes. This might be a greater-metro-NY issue though. Part of it is the liability insurance of workers being on the roof, so I'm not saying the cost is unjustified -- just that it is really expensive.
3. What happens when these solar panels need to be serviced? Many of these solar shops are fly by night, looking to cash in on govt incentives. Will they be around to service malfunctioning or panels? What will repair costs be? Who guarantees the warranty? As an example, here in NJ even minor tweaks on a leaking showerhead will cost $500 to $1000. I can only imagine what a broken solar panel will cost.
4. I realize this is a very selfish opinion -- but just from a systems boundary perspective, traditional energy complexity is all upstream and I consume the end-product. Solar energy complexity is all local and I take the risk.
I just got some quotes to replace a tile roof on my very average 2400 sqft house in FL: 50-60k. Asked neighbors - seems reasonable to them.
Where exactly is this? I have a modest, single story house (1600 sq ft) and most of my estimates are ~$20k. (SW Wisconsin).
Is there a lot of rebuilding or something going on around you?
My roof (1200 sq roof deck not house) would've been about 18, but that's because it had cedar shingles under the asphalt. I did it myself for 3 in materials and about 3 weeks of labour. These are all CAD prices.
2. Roof work has always been a huge cost as it's very labor intensive (I learned some flat roof maintenance from a roofer friend.) The issue is we have not developed a roof system that works in conjunction with solar panels. Until that happens roofs and solar will be orthogonal problems no one wants.
3. My work got semi-screwed by this. They used concrete blocks, around 60,000 pounds worth, to hold down metal frames the panels were bolted to. Total bonkers fly-by night operation company disappeared after 2 years and we had to maintain it ourselves. Roof was destroyed after 7 years as it was leaking all over and several cracks formed in the blocks around beams. It was deemed unsafe and the entire 75kW system removed. Building owner spent $200k on a new roof and building repairs then banned solar from being installed again.
4. So is your fancy HVAC system. I believe that electrical generation should become part of a homes infrastructure just like HVAC. It enables authority and autonomy over energy which is something I have wanted. Though I also believe if someone wishes to surrender that autonomy then they should be allowed to do so.
Millions of data points suggest your POV is unfounded.
My anecdotal understanding is that there are no such complaints from owners.
It's required 0 maintenance or repair since we've lived here.
I'm under the impression that CA either required - or it was just highly suggested - to only install solar arrays on roofs that were in good shape and less than 5yo. That said, we're about to do a remodel and the array will be removed and stored during the project and reinstalled afterward, with a few more panels and a couple of batteries. I'm not concerned about roof repairability relative to my electricity cost savings in California under pg&e.
A quick search shows: Forward Solar Roofing, a San Francisco, USA company (but they seem to have vanished?)
Another company with a similar approach (which is not Tesla) is: https://www.suntegrasolar.com/
Agree that's a concern for the other products in this space.
Discussion of what Australia is doing well here from a solar expert:
https://bsky.app/profile/solarchase.bsky.social/post/3lmz5rb...
"hypercompetitive and relatively low-regulation installation industry, roofs well suited to work without scaffolding, fairly standardized systems of average size ~8.1kW so not small"
My rooftop solar installation is about 10 years old, has long since broken even, and has required .. exactly one incidence of maintenance, to fit pigeon-proofing. Which could have been done at the initial install time, I just wasn't aware of how necessary it could be.
It has huge advantages against HVAC (and, by extension, all the plumbing-based systems like nuclear) in that it doesn't have any plumbing. The panel is a big photodiode. There is basically nothing to go wrong unless you have serious storm damage - and my panels have survived winds that took down nearby trees and fences.
> What happens when these solar panels need to be serviced?
To a first approximation, they don't. Maybe at the 20-25 "EOL" mark.
(even cheaper option would be balcony solar, but that requires legalization)
Three things to keep in mind: * I would definitely install after replacing your roof unless it's like just < 5yr old. * Most solar loans, PPA or leases have significantly bad financial terms so I recommend people to avoid them. * Make sure your utility has some kind of net-metering or you will have to install batteries to make it cost effective.
I'll say that one goal of the current administration, assuming they're competent enough to accomplish anything, is to dramatically increase US electricity production and I believe them. So with electric costs predicted to drop I suspect it is a bad time to invest in a solar system. China tariffs probably make this even worse as panels should rise in cost.
I would also defer a solar install until I got a new roof since replacing your roof means paying to remove and replace the solar system.
I'll admit that I am biased, generally, against residential rooftop solar for non-off-grid installs since my personal belief is those panels serve society better when they're filling commercial rooftops where economies of scale can make maintenance overhead per watt lower but I'm sure someone will contradict that belief with statistics. Just throwing it out there.
Surely that's the "rich idiot" fee. Plumbers charge more when the work is trivial and the customer is wealthy.
This is actually a victory lap for political activism, we just need a lot more of it.
[0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
It's not declining like the UK (efficiencies mean total electricity production is down about 25% this century despite population growth) but it's growing only a tiny fraction, like maybe 2% in a decade - much less than the amount of new solar and wind.
So it's definitely shifting, the biggest shift is away from coal. Coal is awful, it's too expensive and it's incredibly polluting, some of that shift is towards gas, which is also a fossil fuel but has the advantage that it burns cleaner and is often cheaper - but as we see in this data lots of the shift is to "green" sources.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...
Lucky enough for us and everyone else economy of scale kicked in. I'm taking it
The US bungled its lead in photovoltaics and politics prevented us from catching up - so like most other things, China leads the way, and we benefit.
The whole plan could have been snookered by the US similarly subsidizing their solar production 10 or 20 years into the chinese plan. Which would have put most of the cost onto China while we reaped the benefits of cheap power production.
But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty and US environmental regulations were always going to be a stumbling block. One used to be able to spot Chinese solar factories on satellite maps by looking upstream from deadzones, but apparently that has been enough of an embarrassment that even the CCP has started cracking down.
Basically DOE funded research pretty successfully but it only takes one failure for the loud voices to win
Same program funded Tesla as I recall
Example source: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/exclusive-controver...
There's nothing "fundamentally" dirty about it. It's not like fossil fuel combustion that inevitably produces a large stream of waste (CO2).
This is why the U.S. was able to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese solar without WTO interference.
The western world should have subsidized it too, now you can't dismiss it because it wasn't organic--because it NEVER would be organic.
https://www.statista.com/chart/1576/chinese-solar-photovolta...
Despite that dominance, prices continue to fall:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
As an addendum, the US also saw a rapid increase in domestic solar panel manufacturing in recent years:
https://seia.org/news/american-solar-panel-manufacturing-cap...
But that was due to government incentives that are now under fire from the Trump administration.
High prices caused an influx of investment - and silicone prices plummeted, which allowed China to get the crown
Thanks for the laughs.
it's european version of Cuba crisis - geopolitical enemy in the underbelly of nuclear power
This integration is what led to Germany's Russian gas dependency in the end.
...and how did that help solve the "european version of carribian crisis"?
ignoring reasons citing costs only expresses you having different values - but it doesn't solve the problem
there were attempts to make safeguards - to allow Ukraine into EU, but not NATO. Those failed
War is the result of those failures
Well it didn't, and that's my point. This was the diplomatic route and it completely failed. There was never going to be a diplomatic solution.
> there were attempts to make safeguards - to allow Ukraine into EU, but not NATO. Those failed
Yes, in 2013 Ukraine signed a trade deal with the EU and already at that time Russia pressured Ukraine to renounce this deal. Russia showed their hands at that point and clearly displayed to the world that it had nothing to do with NATO but rather about total control of Ukraine.
> War is the result of those failures
War started 11 years ago, after Euromaidan, at a time where Ukraine wasn't talking about joining NATO yet. NATO became a priority for Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion in 2014.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was about nuclear missiles only minutes from Florida. After the crisis, Cuba continued to host Russian fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and tons of other weapons until the USSR finally collapsed in 1991.
Ukraine had nothing of this sort, and to this day, doesn't have.
It is a lazy comparison thrown around to justify a textbook imperial land grab by Russia.
Europe was stupid as they let "green" political groups (often historically clandestinely backed by Soviet/Russian government) get nuke plants shut down to shift to coal/gas.
While Europe was incredibly naive to remain so udderly reliant on Russian gas, especially after the the annexation of Crimea and the shoot-down of MH17, the war is 150% the fault of the Russian government and nobody else (USA, NATO, Ukraine, etc).
It's also climate change that is pushing for an alternate method to make cheaper.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/US-sets-tariffs-as...
The fact that capitalistic greed has caught up with reality a decade later after most of the hard work was done and is now fighting on both sides of the issue is somewhat tragic.
Doubly so if you consider what it means about every other global problem we face that might affect a powerful incumbent's short term profits.
How dare you…
Goverments subsidize solar because of climate change.
https://www.sunsave.energy/solar-panels-advice/solar-energy/...
https://deepnewz.com/china/china-leads-global-clean-energy-i...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-wind-po...
The government funded research and market incentives preceded the mass manufacture.
> In terms of government policy, Trancik says, policies that stimulated market growth accounted for about 60 percent of the overall cost decline, so “that played an important part in reducing costs.” Policies stimulating market growth globally included measures such as renewable portfolio standards, feed-in tariffs, and a variety of subsidies. Government-funded research and development in various nations accounted for roughly 30 percent — although public R&D played a larger part in the earlier years, she says.
"Explaining the plummeting cost of solar power
Researchers uncover the factors that have caused photovoltaic module costs to drop by 99 percent."
https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112...
They're adding coal capacity quickly, but they're lowering the capacity factor of that usage even faster. Those coal plants are peakers that only run when solar & batteries are empty.
It was up 1.5% for 2024 compared to 2023: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-thermal-power...
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-cons...
Increasingly cheap battery storage, also built in China, is also being deployed rapidly.
It all makes a lot of difference.
[0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/02/02/chinas-new-pv-install...
Western transition away from fossil fuel usage is still a reduction in net fossil fuel usage when compared to no shift at all. In other words fossil fuel usage might still be growing, but it is growing at a slower rate. If we accept that fossil fuel usage should be minmized then it very much matters.
Aside from that; this argument reduces to an exceptionally bad moral stance which is: Someone else is doing bad things, therefore that justifies me doing that bad thing. Or as you might phrase the counter-argument to a young child: just because someone else is littering doesn't mean that it is ok for you to litter.