>If you eliminate the massive subsidies that are given to fossil fuels, renewable energy is probably already more cost-effective. Because there is a lot of sub

>If you eliminate the massive subsidies that are given to fossil fuels, renewable energy is probably already more cost-effective. Because there is a lot of subtlety in the way we contrast subsidies with normal tax deferrals, it may be clarifying to consult this fact sheet from EESI, which is a successor of the Environmental Study Conference caucus originally in the US Congress: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs... >Well, what’s the difference between the Green New Deal of today and the New Deal from the 1930s? Several things. One thing that’s different is large-scale labor action. It wouldn't be a Chomsky essay without a paean to the labor movement. I think that the "Green New Deal" is the wrong name. The "New Deal" was a principally economic initiative. Climate change affects the economy, but climate change is really about physics. The appropriate analogy would be to the Manhattan Project, not the New Deal. (Nuclear technology has also had a massive effect on the economy!) One unfortunate consequence of the naming trend "Green New Deal" has been an excessive focus on economic remedies which overshadows the most important scientific advances. Recently the most important advances have been in the production and price of lithium batteries. There are approximately 500 trillion pounds of lithium in the ocean, as well as many cheaper sources on land. The lithium iron-phosphate chemistry is not dense enough for use in cars or portable electronics, but on a cost basis it is quickly eclipsing all other forms of energy storage. At present, the development of this technology is limited mostly by low demand, which is utterly ridiculous when you consider that the widespread adoption of grid-scale energy storage is absolutely essential to there ever being a near-zero-carbon electricity market. The other key technology that needs to be developed further is the heat pump. Heating buildings with gas accounts for a large fraction of our carbon emissions and can't be easily replaced by Joule heating because the electricity requirements are so large. Therefore the near-zero-carbon replacement for gas heating must be some variety of heat pump, be it vapor-compression, magnetocaloric or otherwise. The current commercially available air-source heat pumps are limited to a minimum outdoor air temperature of about -20 C, which means that they are not viable for year-round heating in many large global cities, including e.g. Chicago, Moscow, Harbin, et cetera. Ground-source heat pumps by contrast have high installation costs which increase with the desired power output. Improvements in one or the other are needed to reach the necessary endpoint where nearly all of the human population can stop relying on gas heating.