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Compared to the seriousness of the problem I don't think it's extreme, but I also don't think it's quite the right approach. Instead of telling people to drive
by elihu 5y ago
Compared to the seriousness of the problem I don't think it's extreme, but I also don't think it's quite the right approach. Instead of telling people to drive less, or eat less, or not heat their homes in the winter (which isn't going to work), we can transition away from fossil fuel energy as fast as we can and replace it with renewables.
My usual (U.S. centric) suggestions when this topic comes up are to greatly expand solar and wind energy production, finance transcontinental high-voltage DC lines so that we can trade power with Africa/Asia/Europe and even out the day/night imbalance (we can keep fossil fuel plants around as an emergency backup and just not use them), electrify the interstate freeway system so that EVs can charge without stopping and make cross-country road trips without having to haul around huge batteries, and we should expand EV tax credits to cover conversions of existing vehicles as well as new vehicles.
We also need more battery production, especially of technologies like lithium iron phosphate (or whatever replaces it in the future) which are good enough and aren't bottlenecked on expensive materials like cobalt and nickel.
None of these things require people to change their behavior, though it would help if they did. It's probably also not enough to save us from pretty severe climate problems in the future, but at this point I think that's more-or-less unavoidable so we should just do the best we can right now.
- kossTKR 5y agoThe problem is that an old money power elite halts this progress. Big oil and polluting industries hold ginormous wealth and hire thousands of lawyers, PR people, astroturfing groups etc. to stunt progress. I'm sure this will eventually shift - as far as i know multiple golf states are heavily investing in "green tech", not sure what the US elite is doing, but i hope that a critical mass will be hit at some point. Until then there will be no governmental push to save earth because the richest elites writes the laws, and unless their wealth isn't dependent on dirty energy they will rather kill everyone on earth than give up their generational wealth. Stupid when the tech is literally ready and prices are falling so much. We need extreme global bans on all dirty energy 30 years ago, and stop using trillions of subsidies for family dynasties, military black budgets, and other black boxes that siphon money from everyone to a hidden elite in offshore tax havens - and instead take those money and subsidise saving earth / gren tech / neo manhattan like projects. Unfortunately the oligarchs, and especially the tech elites will rather flee to New Zealand and live alone in bunker than imagine any happy ending. It's dark. Maybe they don't count on the transition being possible and to be fair i don't either. The amount of energy stored in fossil fuels is so massive, so portable, so cheap that even with a revolution in batteries and tech everyone in the world will pretty much have to live as third worlders - unless fusion and batteries undergo a deus ex machina like event.
- elihu 5y agoI don't think it's just a handful of rich people that are the whole problem, though they're a significant part of it. We also have (in the U.S. at least, though I'm sure other countries have similar problems) a thoroughly dysfunctional democracy where very little significant legislation can happen without the consent of the minority, and an electorate where a substantial minority consistently votes for global warming denialists. Elections do matter. And while I don't like the idea of being in the "technology will save us" camp, we're at least at the point where renewable energy and electric vehicles can compete on their merits even when ignoring climate costs.