4 ms·
Does this mean the answer to global warming is to keep people in poverty?
by blhack 6y ago
Does this mean the answer to global warming is to keep people in poverty?
- option 6y agono, the answer is to use nuclear - a scalable technology which we have spent decades developing and operating. France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear.
- anohito11235 6y agoPeople are too frighten of a nuclear meltdown like in Chernobyl or East coast Japan. Sure, we have been productively making nuclear plant to be safer but it takes time to convince the population, i guess.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIs that even the issue any more? Most people probably don't remember Chernobyl, and forgot about Japan the instant it left the news. I think the real resistance, is the drug of indignation. Folks are manufacturing it all the time, latching onto anything they can find to get spun up about. With negligible attention to facts. Its the one constant in our brave new world.
- option 6y agoI actually grew up near Chernobyl and both my parents still work there. Pretty much anyone who knows even a little about nuclear energy and does not have a political position is very much pro-nuclear.
- vtail 6y agoAnd/or to have fewer people overall.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt means we give away solar, wind, and energy storage to the poor, and build all of the above as fast as manufacturing allows. You make it economically untenable to burn fossil fuels. Global PV production capacity is ~170GW per year, current fossil generation capacity in Africa is about 135GW. Not outlandish to get that replaced in short order while accounting for growth. Want it done faster? Build more PV manufacturing capacity. The product is glass and silicon with a hint of rare earths. PV panels are almost 100% recyclable. Overbuilt renewables should be used to sequester atmospheric carbon instead of curtailing (throwing excess renewables away when unneeded). It’s going to take an incredible amount of energy to stick all of that burned carbon from the last 100 years back into the ground. TLDR “You must construct additional pylons.”
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoThats not possible because we have the same capacity to produce product so there will always be a top % who use most of those resources. I think the real take away is that most gains can be made by fixing the processes of rich countries. Countries like Australia have massive amounts of underutilized renewable energy that are not being used to their fullest extent combined with an American like obsession with cars. We should be focusing on areas where easy wins can be made rather than looking at countries with the highest level of emissions which is a pointless statistic when they all have different population counts.
- 8note 6y agoIsn't that definition premature optimization? A ton of quick wins that amount to minimal real changes to total emissions isn't going to stop the earth from heating too fast
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoThese aren't minimal changes. Most of our greenhouse gas emissions come from energy production. We have solutions to this but they are not being deployed widely due to political bikeshedding, corruption and blame passing.
- imtringued 6y agoAlso we are going to shift a lot of chemical energy based industries to purely electric. Transport will require green electricity and reduce it's dependence on burning things.
- djrobstep 6y agoThe fair solution is surely that the rich should consume less, not the poor.