> Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. There are lots of known ways to deal with this, including grid scale

> Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. There are lots of known ways to deal with this, including grid scale batteries and demand-response, both of which are now reaching the electricity market. What we need is the political and cultural shift to support massive investment in these technologies. There will be room for natural gas as a bridge fuel, but coal has no future. And yes, it's not happening fast enough, and no snap of the fingers will do it. > CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on Only if you're willing to ignore the clearly visible impacts of global warming amplified destructive events worldwide. The waters are rising and the global warming denial island is getting smaller with every passing year. > We need to consume less things. We need to consume less-carbon-intensive things (hyphenation intentional). We can start by consuming longer-lasting things, consuming things whose materials are more readily recyclable, and reducing waste (where no utility is derived from the consumption). But the first step is to reduce the carbon intensity of things we already consume.