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As pointed out in he comments below, the climate crisis will reduce political stability. And stability is essential to ensure that there will be a strong enough
by tda 5y ago
As pointed out in he comments below, the climate crisis will reduce political stability. And stability is essential to ensure that there will be a strong enough society left to properly decommission a nuclear plant when it will be EOL in 50 years. Decommissioning is likely to be vastly more expensive than initial construction, and after that you still need to figure out how to make sure no one will want to touch the waste for the next few thousand years.
For the current crisis we need to put a cap on carbon extraction now, and quickly bring extraction rates down to zero. Let the price of oil rise and capitalism should sort it out. Only when fossil fuel prices rise to say 500 USD per barrel will people and industries start effectively reducing consumption. Other than on extremely energy intensive activities (transatlantic flights) fossil fuel prices are just a rounding error.
- lake_vincent 5y ago"capitalism should sort it out" Oh, you sweet summer child!
- tda 5y agoWe can at least try putting a price on fossil fuels. Actually the 1973 oil crisis had a profound effect on behavior, so yes a capitalistic system is perfectly capable of responding to something being (artificially) scarce. OPEC should really get their shit together and start another oil crisis "in order to save the world"
- GVIrish 5y agoIf you can't sell people on nuclear power, there is no way in hell you're gonna sell people on extreme taxes on oil. And even if you could, the base load problem will still be there. Maybe if carbon were heavily taxed it would incentivize energy storage solutions but as of right now cost effective solutions are no viable yet.