I’m 42 and I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t obvious that we needed to phase out fossil fuels. Global warming was already known. The 70’s oil crises had even convinced conservative politicians that “energy independence” was an important goal even if they couldn’t grasp the concept of an energy transition. The Exxon Valdez spill happened when I was in elementary school. (We did a “science experiment” where we put canola oil and water in containers and used different materials to remove the oil.)
Fossil fuels have been obviously awful for at least 5 decades. Imagine how much less CO2 would be in the air if in 1985, we got on the good timeline instead of the “Biff becomes president” timeline.
Have you ever considered that first world nations are just going to use whatever energy source is the cheapest until it is no longer the cheapest?
I live below sea level and have a degree in economics. I have definitely considered the fact that I’m paying for the negative externalities of fossil fuels each time my flood insurance rates go up.
For the record, my house is raised above sea level and I have solar panels. No one has to chime in with “just move” overly simplistic arguments. We’re better prepared than most Americans since we already deal with it.
Fucking mermaids on Lemmy now smh
Poor unfortunate souls.
That’s not possible, nobody could be better prepared than Best Countrytm!
Then we’d be doing fission. Fossil fuels aren’t required to pay for their externalities the way nuclear is, not to mention that the fossil companies have spent decades lobbying and campaigning to keep from having to be responsible for their own bullshit, as well as campaigning to make other forms of energy seem / be less viable (either through PR messaging or regulatory capture).
Nuclear fission is not paying for the biggest externalities either, it’s waste products. That for some reason seems to be the people’s problem. And even then there doesn’t exist a permanent storage solution for it as of today anywhere on the planet (yes, I know Finland thinks they have it figured out next year, but at a capacity of 5500t it will only hold the waste of the 5 Finnish reactors). It’s absolute insanity to me how this gets brushed away so easily.
Should just bury this shit in a subduction rift and let the earth eat it
The problem with that is that the subduction rifts generally also have volcanoes that spew a bunch of that material back to the surface/atmosphere. It might take a few centuries for it to go through all that, but IMO better to bury it in one place and risk future people not understanding it (they’ll figure it out quickly enough if they are human or similar intelligence) than to put it somewhere where the Earth itself will eventually reject it violently and people affected won’t have much choice or understanding of what happens as a result.
Usually but not always.
And that’s how you get Godzilla.
Are you saying that nuclear is cheaper than renewables?
In the alternative universe we’d have been building fission power for decades when it was cheaper than renewables, and it would still be running today.
In this universe we didn’t though, I’m not sure why the multiverse is relevant here.
We were talking about power strategies from the 1980s and the person above said it would just be the “cheapest”. If countries really were just building the cheapest, it would not have been renewables back then.
We were already talking about a counterfactual.
I guess. If we’re in this hypothetical alternative universe then those plants built in the 80’s would be at the end of their lives and we’d be looking to spend a fortune to replace them with new nuclear or we’d be saving money by building renewables.
I’m still not sure what this line if discussion is accomplishing though.
Maybe cheaper than renewables and grid scale batteries over the lifetime of the reactor. Perhaps you could correct me, but my understanding is that grid scale battery facilities don’t even exist yet. Given the current state of battery technology, you’d need to replace the batteries at that facility in, what, seven years? Ten is really pushing it, right? That’s not going to be cheap.
Or you could take a page from the Soviet energy strategy and build a bunch of pumped storage plants or their equivalents, no batteries required.
Nuclear is 2-4 times more expensive and grid scale batteries (the most costly way of storing power) are already being used.
Grid scale batteries for solar day/night cycles can work. There is no good solution for seasonal fluctuations. Of course, a very large part of Earth’s population lives in close proximity to the equator with far less seasonal influences. It’s just unfortunate that those that pollute most (per capita) do not.
Wind works great at higher latitudes but what we need to be looking at is high voltage DC lines to transfer power over long distances with minimal loss.
I know people who say that global warming is a conspiracy to not let the developing countries develop. Everyone will try to use what’s cheaper while we’re considering money to be the biggest deal
They can make energy sources cheaper or more expensive and even do so.
How?
Funneling subsidies and tax breaks from fossil fuel to sustainable energy sources. In the Netherlands alone, the around 40 billion euros are spent by the government each year directly or indirectly subsidizing fossil fuel.
Kerosine airplane fuel is untaxed for example, while consumer car fuel comes with a 20% (ish) tax.
Subsidies don’t actually make something cheaper, it just shifts the burden to the taxpayer.
Taxing fossil fuels to the point where they are no longer the cheapest option is a nation shooting itself in the foot, which is why none of them do it.
It’s not just about price for the individual. It’s about economic expansion.
Sure it shifts the burden to the taxpayer and I would like my tax money to be spent on other things please.
Companies aren’t going to change their policies voluntarily, it’s up to governments to make better decisions with my money and make other options more viable.
Charging them for the negative externalities. Like coal kills way more people than nuclear but there’s no tax on coal plants for the harm caused.
Then you’re artificially increasing the cost of the fuel.
It’s still going to be absolutely cheaper than alternatives.
Allowing fossil fuels to not pay their use costs is artificially decreasing the cost.
I totally agree, but nations won’t understand that because they are modern-day fiefdoms.
Their main purpose is to support their ruling class. Funnel as much money as quickly as possible.
Putting a tax on externalities isn’t artificially increasing the cost of the fuel. It’s fixing a market failure.
Putting a tax on externalities isn’t artificially increasing the cost of the fuel.
I’m sorry, what?
Let’s go even further back. We had a lot of environmental activism in the 1970s. We got the clean air act, the clean water act, started recycling efforts for at least bottles and cans, and paper. Solar panels were a hot topic and President Carter installed some at the White House. My parents were part of a trend toward all electric houses fed by nuclear (what a disaster that was). Cars got a lot more efficient.
We had a great start. Then Carter lost his second term, and Republicans went ham on our future
Thank Nixon for the epa
Leave it to conservatives to destroy the planet by inventing fake regulators they can control.
Clean water act actually helped.
Only under Democrats. It is hamstrung, bypassed and suffocated under Republicans, just like the EPA. When conservatives have power, regulation becomes a weapon for them. There is no regulation a conservative will not pervert for their own benefit.
Nothing good in history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
Dude if Bush jr didn’t steal the elections backed up by the republican supreme court, we’d have Mr Fusion in every device
No we didn’t. This dog and pony show was put on so everyone can take in profits while signaling to the public that they are “working on it” and “we’ll get em next year” so we don’t storm the castle.
Bingo. Look who all was involved in this thing and who was hosting it for fuck sake.
K, I guess we can revisit this topic in a decade when the house is actually on fire and we need to abandon it. So, that’s good I guess.
40 years ago i had a t-shirt that said the world was running out of time…
Time won’t help any more
the house is on fire. we don’t f’ing care. By ‘we’ I mean the oligarchs and their sycophants.
All these fossil fuel addicts don’t realize that their home-countries won’t support human life anymore in a few decades. And they have so much money, that pivoting their investments to renewables would be no problem, even profitable for them and their offspring some financial experts might say. But they won’t because the wells aren’t dry yet.
The rulers of today have already bought nice chunks of London, Paris, New York. They’ll be fine.
Those are also locations that won’t support human life in the future.
The only place will be Antarctica.
Ive lost hope in humanity changing and actually solving climate change a long time ago.
Fair enough. Climate scientists have been warning for the past half century, and now that we are starting to feel the effects, slowly change is starting to come in. We are wayyyyyy too late. Of course we should keep up our efforts but the world and biodiversity as we know it is beyond saving.
I don’t believe we ever did, no.
Tantalizingly close to a deal that would inevitably fall apart anyway…
See:
"Every one of the world’s leading economies, including all the countries that make up the G20, is failing to meet commitments made in the landmark Paris agreement in order to stave off climate catastrophe, a damning new analysis has found.
Less than two months before crucial United Nations climate talks take place in Scotland, none of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries have made sufficient plans to lower pollution to meet what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord."
There’s a small chance something devastating won’t happen before big changes happen to try and reverse climate change but odds are a lot of shit is gonna happen that’s gonna lead to a lot of people dying. Not end of the world shit, but a lot of people are gonna suffer because of greed and lack of improving the world
Sadly it affected profits.
We can not put an end to scorching the earth, because a Sheik wants to build a 170-kilometre-long and 200 meter wide city in the desert.
Doesn’t matter because it would’ve been non-binding and they would have failed to do it even if it was.
Don’t let this stop you. Wind and solar is cheap - often the biggest barrier is NIMBY not allowing construction, so demand your local/national political climate stop that. Allow solar by right on any roof. Allow wind turbines by right on all ag land. Encourage your utilities to put in storage systems to use that renewable energy “when the wind doesn’t blow”. Encourage good programs to buy renewable power over fossil power (everyone should pay for their share of the power lines and storage batteries - this is a large part of the cost of power)
Electric cars are already becoming popular. There are many things that you can do to encourage that. Better yet, your can encourage great transport in your city (most cities don’t have great transit!)
There are many areas already running their grid on a majority renewable power. We know this works.
The above measures won’t get rid of all fossil fuels, but they get rid of the vast majority. They work with today’s technology as well, and are affordable without subsidies!. No need to invest anything new/more. Just ensure that laws don’t get in the way.
beep beep. freeze some embryos and program bots to thaw in a thousand years. books on tape ftw
Just make sure no one named Ted Faro gets anywhere near the project.
I HATE him. Who Ruins the species twice. Worst person to ever exist in any fiction. If him, hitler, and Stalin were in a room and I had 6 bullets I’ll put all 6 in Ted and continue to beat his corpse.
Raised by wolves or horizon zero dawn was like that.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ultimately, draft language explicitly calling for the phaseout of fossil fuels was stricken from the final text of agreements brokered at this year’s climate talks.
It mirrors language in a recent letter addressed to participating governments from COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber — who also happens to be the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The UN’s decision to hold the summit in the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas producer, wound up giving the fossil fuel industry unprecedented access.
Then the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sent a letter to its member states pressuring them to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”
“This text is a step forward on our path towards phasing out fossil fuels, but is not the historic decision we hoped for … given the overwhelming momentum among countries in support of a renewable energy package and a long overdue fossil fuel phase out, we needed a far more ambitious result.” Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns for environmental group 350.org, said in a statement before the draft agreement was finalized at the conference’s closing plenary.
Leading up to the conference, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters — the US and China — committed to working toward that goal together when each country’s climate envoys met in California in November.
The original article contains 1,223 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Not the outcome I hoped for but 💯 the outcome we all expected
