One of the rationales of sane people regarding alternative energy sources is the cost of using “more expensive” energy sources when cheap (at least for the time being), albeit more polluting, alternatives like coal and natural gas are readily available.
The argument is that if Country A switches to full renewables, in the time it takes for the prices to become low enough to be competitive against coal, Country B, which is unscrupulous in its development and continues using coal as its main energy source, would gain a significant advantage over Country A.
You could even argue that for Country B, switching to alternative energy sources would be unfair, considering that Country A enjoyed decades of rapid growth and development using cheap coal, whereas Country B would not. Since Country A won’t fully switch to alternative energy sources to maintain its supremacy, and Country B won’t change for the sake of its development, we’re effectively in a deadlock.
Personally, I think all countries should work together and switch to renewable energy sources to reduce the impact of climate change. Unfortunately, the world is not so simple, and the conflict is more nuanced than simply “keeping profits vs. creating a better world.”
If only all the countries could come to some kind of climate energy agreement. Maybe they can meet someplace like oh say Paris or something and sign an agreement like that. 🤔
It’s just long term vs. short term thinking really. And the question of who pays.
It costs an insane amount of money to have wars to secure the oil supply. But it’s not the oil industry that pays that cost. So oil is only “cheaper” from a very limited context, but in a broader context, it’s insanely expensive.
From an economic perspective, investing money into the infrastructure needed to eliminate dependency on oil is a no brainer. It’ll probably cost less than the next oil war, and once that cost is paid, there is no need for multiple future oil wars.
Given the US pays for most of the costs of oil wars, you’d think the US would be leading the charge towards transitioning off of oil. But instead there’s a lot of resistance in the US for this. There’s a strange denial that leads people to simultaneously demand the government to make gas cheaper, while also being against wars in the middle east. How do people think the government makes the price of gas cheaper?
We’re already at the point that renewables are far cheaper than the alternatives. It’s just the capital costs that are higher (compared to keeping existing FF), but that’s not a huge issue for rich, developed countries.
So rich countries can massively invest in renewables and press their advantage. Ideally, these rich countries also subsidise renewable energy in developing countries (and to some extent, they are). But even without that in many cases it’s cheaper to just skip building a whole FF industry altogether and go straight to renewables.
Yeah but have you thought about woke? /s
But then I won’t be able to race my black-smoke-belching rolling-coal truck with my manly man buddies :(
wtf is this ? a locomotive ?
Steam locomotives burn far cleaner than whatever the hell this is. An efficiently running steam engine effectively consumes its own smoke and only exhausts waste steam.
Yes, in that it’s a motive for locos
From Lemminary’s link
An increasingly popular phenomenon at the time of the incident, coal rolling happens when a driver of a diesel truck floods the engine with more fuel than it can efficiently process, emitting a thick black plume of exhaust across the road. The emissions systems of diesel trucks are strictly regulated under federal law. But some truck owners modify their exhaust systems with illegal aftermarket parts, or fail to fix broken exhaust systems. In the 2010s, rolling coal became a kind of defiant act, an aggressive backlash against the increasing regulation of fossil fuels. People using forms of transportation that don’t burn oil—namely, those riding bikes, walking, or driving an electric vehicle—became targets. Social media apps such as TikTok helped drive the #rollingcoal trend. Videos with captions like “POV: You roll coal on every bicycle you see,” showing the engorged tailpipe of a diesel truck expelling a bubbling smoke, accrued thousands, even millions of views.
Actually if everything else was fixed we could probably still allow things like monster truck rallies etc right?
No reason (other than a weird attachment to breathing in exhaust fumes) you can’t have an electric powered Monster Truck.
In fact it makes a lot of sense. Can have Monster Truck rallies in indoor stadiums. Electric motors are really powerful. Monster Trucks aren’t driving hundreds of miles so wouldn’t need batteries that are all that big.
Hate to break it to you, but they already have monster truck rallies in indoor arenas. That way everyone can hot-box the exhaust.
Yeah I should have said safely have monster truck rallies in indoor arenas.
I meant like continue letting people have their hobby cars with ice, just have to regulate it somehow. This is like in a utopia where the majority of the world isn’t using ice and we have renewable energy solutions.
They want that mad max life style
Rolling coal is one of the most mindbogglingly stupid things I’ve ever heard of. Truly, it makes it seem like Idiocracy didn’t go nearly far enough in their hyperbole. Nobody could’ve predicted people being this aggressively dumb.
Speaking of doing stupid shit and rolling coal…
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a60747401/waller-texas-coal-rolling-cyclist-crash/Damn that’s horrific, stupid and completely unnecessary.
Ignoring the tragedy of the actual situation, the way the title is parsed for the link implies that a diesel powered bicyclist crashed while rolling coal and that imagery makes me giggle.
If someone put together a diesel powered bike that could coal out I wouldn’t even be mad
idk about diesel, but you can get a 2-stroke to run pretty dirty without much trouble
I pictured a cyclist with anthracite wheels.
Americans truly are a different species
Lead poisoning is one hell of a drug.
I’m convinced some of these people have some kind of brain damage.
that what happen when companies rule the country, and propaganda runs without regulation, who thought that protecting multimillionaire bribes would be a good idea
who thought that protecting multimillionaire bribes would be a good idea
The ones who made billions because of it
Where I live (Midwestern USA), there are guys who drive around just to roal coal on cyclists. It has happened to me a few times.
I worked with a guy who got run off the road on his bicycle by a couple rednecks in a pickup truck and was severely injured. That was 30 years ago, in Texas.
It’s fucking insane how those manly man with a beer gut feel endangered by cyclists. You get assaulted by a weak little wimp in his tank for choosing a different mode of transportation.
When I see hiw insanely stupid people can get I don’t believe in any hope for humanity.
It costs the shareholders money and destroys many billionaires empires.
The having fewer billionaires is always left out and always the reason none of the other stuff seems to matter
Why would renewable energy necessarily mean fewer billionaires? Major solar/wind generation plants have to be built by someone and somewhere, it seems like the best you’re doing is making billionaires pivot their investments/changing which people the billionaires are.
It’s called ✨nationalised/socialised utilities✨.
Imagine not being able to even, well, imagine, a world where profit isn’t the one and only motive for human behaviour… 🙄
The absolutely unthinkable: financial losses for the people who have been making money by covering up the fact that they are destroying the planet for their own profit.
Add in one of the best-financed propaganda/obfuscation campaigns maintained for seven decades and public opinion mirrors what it gets fed from big-oil-owned media outlets.
Yeah this is the answer right here. The fossil fuel industry and their conservative allies (as well as far too many liberal politicians) have been feeding into a propaganda machine that has been fear-mongering climate change policies, telling the public continually that all those policies are going to do nothing but raise the price of gas or remove some convenience they have. I remember that time when Republicans were fear-mongering that the Democrats were coming after people’s gas stoves, as if that was something that was even remotely likely. It was so fucking stupid but people were like “You can’t take my stove!!!” like a bunch of dumb shits. I remember one dingus on Fox News who strapped himself to his gas stove like there was a demolition team coming to his house to take it down any minute as an idiotic publicity stunt. Literally no one but the drones who watch Fox News cared.
The stove thing was in response to legislation that passed here in California. The law says that no new residential construction may include gas appliances.
That was not a complete ban. They are still allowed to construct houses with gas fixtures for gas stoves and appliances. But they are mandated to include electric fixtures for electric appliances and heating so effectively you would have to pay for the installation of both if you wanted gas.
Though it should be noted there is a plan to pass a law in 2030 fully banning natural gas installations in new housing.
And honestly, IMO it is quite a stupid ass move. California has massive power issues and the idea that they’re going to increase their load before they have a sufficient supply is just moronic.
Thanks for the clarification, clearly I conflated the two pieces of legislation.
Umm? Power problems? We managed to hit 100% renewable power production for the state several times this year. We don’t need fissile fuels, except as a stop gap.
I will fully admit that due to my excessive amount of solar production, and battery backup, I don’t ever know when there is a power outage. So if they are having issues, I wouldn’t be aware of it despite living in San Diego
https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-blackouts-power-grid/story?id=89460998
Literally the entire State has to walk on eggshells power wise during the summer in order to avoid a cascading failure or having controlled blackouts in order to prevent a cascading failure. And they’re proposing to add even more power demanding appliances to that grid. I’m sorry but this is a poorly thought out plan of action. Maybe if they built a couple more nuclear plants they could manage but wind and solar farms aren’t going to cut it.
Edit: all of this on top of the fact that our climate is getting hotter year after year so even more power is going to be necessary for air conditioning in more and more areas within the state even those that don’t see such hot Summers previously will start to put a strain on the grid trying to keep cool in the summer. All of this on top of the likely dwindling supply of power from the Hoover dam due to the receding Colorado River, also due to climate change BTW.
Big Cringe in response to minor cringe
unstable countries with bad human rights
those are always preceded by a us coup, to extract oil cheaply and in peace.
They can’t help but take a hit at MENA countries. Who destabilized them? They neve mention that; and as if your human rights track record is any better, just different. They also never mention that the US is the biggest producer of oil.
There is really a strong argument that energy independence should have put renewable energy as part of the defense budget and been rolled out a long time ago if not for this stupid culture war that has formed around it. Let’s rectify that issue already.
Could you imagine if…
We would be so far ahead of everyone on this planet. it’s not even funny.
But the defence budget isn’t actually about securing the country, it’s about making sure there is conflict.
We made the world a better place for NOTHING?
Bbbbut… cOmMuNiSm
The argument (I say this as a midwesterner who has lots of relatives and such who are regurgitating the prepublication lines) always comes back to “the tech isn’t there yet” “you can’t recycle panels or turbine blades” “panels and turbine blades don’t last worth a damn”.
Whether or not any of that is true idk so how can I argue? My plate is pretty full on reading material.
So find the arguments they’re using and go from there.
Oil rigs don’t last forever either. Oil refineries are insanely complicated and are very costly to maintain.
Everything you own will break down without maintenance. Even with maintenance, it’ll have to be replaced eventually.
Don’t try to argue that wind turbines and solar panels are magical things that will solve all problems. Talk about them as they are… machines. But unlike the machines that run on oil, the cost isn’t dependent on resources controlled by unstable countries. They’re producing energy from local resources. No need for the government to invade a country to keep the price of oil down.
Isolationism tends to be a something people want but with oil you have to be involved with the politics in the Middle East. Sure the US might not be a net importer of oil, but if the oil companies can sell a barrel of oil to another country for a higher price they will. That’s just how capitalism works. Unless you want a socialist oil industry? If not, oil prices will be determined by the global market rate, which means if you want cheap gas you need to care about the politics of the Middle East.
So it’s a choice between the complexity of oil rigs, oil tankers, oil refineries, or the complexity of wind spinning around a turbine or a solar panel collecting photons. It’s all complicated machinery in the end, but some of that machinery means you gotta be pals with Mister Bonesaw and using the other complicated machinery (Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, etc) means we can all tell that lunatic to go pound the sand above the oil underneath it that we don’t care about anymore.
Cowboy Bebop or Firefly reference?
“the tech isn’t there yet”
tell them to get a solar quote for their home and compare it to their power bill. Very likely the monthly solar payments will be lower even with financing.
“you can’t recycle panels or turbine blades”
you can’t recycle coal or natural gas either.
“panels and turbine blades don’t last worth a damn”
neither do fossil fuels.
But think about all the billionaires losing profits!
We made a better world for nothing 😡
Exactly. We expect immediate and tangible rewards.
Give that oil rig worker a better job with bigger benefits and they’ll jump ship on the spot. Promise them a cleaner future and they’ll just laugh at you.
But Exxon Mobil said I’d get hair on my palms and go blind.
