YES! Exactly. We have to use the wealth we already have, and the cheap gas produced by fracking to build the replacement infrastructure that will make solar, wind, and sustainable carbon-neutral fuels cheaper than drilling! Hair shirt approaches won’t work and aren’t necessary anyway.
Unless the corporate-owned politicians stop him, Elon Musk is going to kill the gasoline car. He’s going to do it by making a better car, that costs less. That’s the right way to do it. We can have a better energy plan that delivers more for less. Wait, where’s @nimelennar’s cartoon… ah, here it is:
Exactly, but the point of the showing how much wealth the oil companies are expecting to extract ($10-20 trillion) is to show the size of the beast working against us.
While we can all hope for the plucky Elon Musk-like inventor is going to create the next energy revolution (still have my fingers crossed for Lockheed’s portable fusion reactors), the reality is that it is going to require huge governmental willpower and treasure to create a real green energy infrastructure that will pummel the cost of energy to the ground — here and across the world. Those trillions of dollars will go very, very far in making that effort almost impossible.
Global temperature rise is even less compatible with the American economic system. Any carbon neutral solution will be a portfolio of solutions. It’s silly to count nuclear out of a comprehensive global initiative because Americans can’t get their act together.
What do you think about the build-out and transition problems? Does it make sense to engage in a huge nuclear build-up knowing it would take decades at the least to get to the point of being net-carbon-negative and dealing with the fact that you’re exacerbating carbon emissions in the meantime?
Also, what do you think about the risk of the waste ponds vaporizing if we don’t build up the nuclear capacity quickly enough to sustain the entire economy?
This is still leaving out some serious drawbacks with nuclear, none of which are constrained to USA. We can discuss those too if you like.
IANAclimtologist, but the earth’s precession (the wobble that takes us through a cycle of different North Stars every 23,000 years) should be relevant and would fit on this chart.
A fair point - my focus was entirely on the USA, and I have not tried to evaluate the capabilities of other nations, like France or Sweden.
The leadership might, but the population sure doesn’t. Gallup says 54% of the US citizenry doesn’t want nuclear power, and that number only goes up when you ask people if they want it nearby, or if they want any specific corporation involved. And this is despite literally billions spent in pro-nuclear propaganda since the 1940s.
But that’s not really relevant. McCain’s statement serves well to show that private enterprise reactors are fundamentally less safe than Big Government reactors, which kind of reinforces @ActionAbe’s point, though.
@wysinwyg has pointed out that I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg regarding the problems with currently available (i.e. non-fantasy) nuclear power. The startup and decomissioning costs are extremely high, in terms of environmental degradation as well as raw dollars. We should continue funding serious research into fission and fusion, because of the tremendous theoretical rewards, but right now we’re better off investing in renewables.
And are they really wrong to think this? Doing something about climate change would likely require a level of global coordination of action that might well look indistinguishable to top-down control to the people on the receiving end (i.e. all of us). That, I think is the main problem with getting conservatives on board with climate change. Perhaps the only solutions involve giving up individual liberty for the sake of a collective future. Not an easy ask.
The scale of the problem is not encouraging. But there’s hope. A lot of work has been taking place recently on using nanotech to produce less expensive catalysts for the reduction of CO2. Here’s an example: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160728142921.htm
Of course, the other answer to your question is: plant trees.
True but, rhetorically speaking, there’s an easily exploitable double-standard involved there. Conservatives are happy to rail against the authorities when members of their tribe are on the receiving end (see Ruby Ridge, Cliven Bundy, etc.).
With climate control we are asking them to personally accept loss of control over what they do and the decisions they make. I don’t know how to get to a “yes” on that. It probably involves an appeal to self-sacrifice and pride; values that conservatives are more sympathetic to.
Does this mean I don’t have to feel guilty every time I have a campfire? I figured it was better to bury the wood so the carbon stays sequestered… but what’s camping without a nice fire every night?
I so love that cartoon. The guy asking the question highlights the difficult… sure, all the listed points are positives for everyone, but he’s so invested in the current system he can’t see these as anything but negatives.
I’m pretty pessimistic about changing his mind. Those with the trillions invested in the current energy model are going to resist change mightily.
So as long as you personally aren’t inconvenienced at all, you’re fine with making significant changes to try to save our planet and, by extension, the entire human race? Good to know.
Well, it is indirectly. Modern farming methods that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels and modern shipping that is also heavily reliant on fossil fuels have dropped the cost of food relative to the cost of everything else. Since food is required for life, reducing poverty requires keeping food prices low. No fossil fuels means not enough food means food is expensive means poverty is much more widespread than it currently is.
That’s right! Enjoy! Although it’s best to burn wood in a high tech stove, campfires are the least of our problems.
Unfortunately buried wood is typically rapidly consumed by soil organisms that generate just as much atmospheric pollution as a clean burning stove does. So it’s a very meager improvement over a good hot campfire.
If you want carbon from trees to be sequestered, use muscle-powered hand tools to make fine collectible furniture out of it.
I’m not sure which comes first. Most of the countries where women have achieved a semblance of political equality are those which have already gotten beyond the subsistence living stage.
