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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

One nice thing about what’s happening is that politics are losing to reality. I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?) but it doesn’t matter at this point anyway.

Eg. Texas is doing really well in renewable rollouts (see the amount of battery capacity they are putting in - https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-envi...

It’s certainly not because of Texan politics either. It’s just cold hard reality. Renewables won’t be stopped at this point. Even the executive orders to halt wind farms don’t make a dent in what’s happening. We may end up a few years later than other nations but at least it’s unstoppable.

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> One nice thing about what’s happening is that politics are losing to reality. I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?)

No, the right isn't meant to be pro free-market. It's meant to protect the interests, longevity, and demand-capture of its donor industries, primarily fossil fuels extraction, processing, and distribution, but increasingly large technology companies in monopoly positions in their markets.

All the "free-market" to "culture-war" rhetoric are just political/religious strategies to achieve that end.

At scale no group is against its own personal interests. It sucks and it’s hypocritical and annoying, but that’s humans.

> At scale no group is against its own personal interests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...

Don’t you think they thought this was self-interest?

I’m sure they did!

But it clearly wasn’t.

> At scale no group is against its own personal interests.

Of course they are. That's the whole point of scapegoating: convincing people that their problems are caused by another group while actually working against their interests.

Why is it inherently good for a group to be against its own personal interests? Whose interests should a group favor instead?

Programmers are, because we keep encouraging AI to replace us.

Yeah, I think the fact they are willing to dance to any new tune under Trump gives away the game completely. Whether it will make any difference to the audience is something I've stopped hoping about.

> It’s certainly not because of Texan politics either. It’s just cold hard reality.

one of the few good things Rick Perry did for TX was upgrade the grid so West Texas wind power can reach the main cities. Once West TX showed renewables could make a profit then there's not much anyone, left or right, could do to stop it. The lobbyists made sure of that.

Southwest Texas, where all the fracking took place, also turns out to be good for solar. It's very flat, sunny, and has pretty stable weather. I guess the grid is beefed up and accessible in that region because of the oil/gas industry, I've seen solar farms out there that are so big it's hard to describe. Imagine seeing a shimmering blue that looks like a lake on the desert horizon but then you get to it and it's just miles of solar panels. Again, the moment solar turned a profit there was no stopping it.

I suspect it's a left vs right issue because the right is the cheerleader of the military industrial complex, which is only justified by protecting oil interests. If oil becomes a curiosity useful for making certain consumer products and little else, the military industrial complex is oversized by any metric, hence the right is against that.

Or to oversimplify even more: it's the Bush dynasty's fault.

Yea I wonder how that battery capacity graph will look like post January 2026, since Texas's SB388 specifically excludes batteries from it's dispatchable power generation requirements. That doesn't necessarily prevent batteries storage from being constructed, but it does tilt the field pretty heavily in favor of natural gas.

AFAIU that bill did not pass and died.

Sadly they can be stopped. ~25% of US counties have adopted regulation effectively blocking new solar and wind (1). Up from 15% only a year ago!

Peoples stupidity and self sabotage truly knows no bounds.

1 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2026/02/2...

It became left vs right because the interests of the rich have an easier time exploiting the right wing's vulnerability to fusion identity. The right wing is defined by a collective appreciation for hierarchies and conformity.

A lot of folks are spreading the message 'it's not right vs left but up vs down when in reality its both.

> I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?)

Besides the whole petro money and lobbyism thing that drove the US politics since Edwin Drake?

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