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>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego
by HideousKojima 5y ago
>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power
Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San Diego. Something about them going through an area full of endangered tortoises or something like that if I recall correctly.
- chrisseaton 5y agoIsn't environmentalists' argument that we should reduce our power consumption, rather than destroying the environment to keep providing so much power? That's not as crazy a position as you make it out to be is it?
- Teknoman117 5y agoIt's an absolutely crazy proposition because there are very few people who would choose to reduce their quality of life. It's far easier to switch to net-zero energy sources than it is to completely redefine society.
- chrisseaton 5y agoSome people think it's worth redefining society to protect the environment. I wouldn't agree with that absolutely either, but it's a logical and defensible position. It's not incoherent.
- pyronik19 5y agoThe problem is there position is completely irrational when you take the amount of damage down to standards of living to the negligible environmental damage done from PV panels. It's almost like the goal is to maximize human misery not minimize environmental damage.
- stickfigure 5y agoWholly impractical solutions are not defensible.
- roenxi 5y ago"The position is coherent" is a devastatingly low bar for the table stakes or redefining society that radically.
- ch4s3 5y agoIt doesn't seem particularly coherent to me for a few reasons. To draw a hard line between human activity/habitat and nature seems artificial. A human settlement is not so different from a beaver dam of ant colony in many ways. The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Native Americans were managing the land with fire in much of North America for at least 15k years and the whole place was a giant game park with archipelagos of agriculture and settlements. Early settlers remarked that upon arrival they could ride a horse through New England forests at a full gallop, which wouldn't be possible in a primeval/unmanaged forest. So redefining society away form managing nature would be a radical departure and it unclear what the end goal would even be. There is nothing to roll the clock back to really anywhere in the world, and even if you "re-wild" a lot of the continent it's not clear what you would get, it certainly wouldn't resemble the Americas of 1491 ecologically. Mostly these folks seem like neo-malthusians who just hate people and civilization. I'm all for increasing bio-diversity, pulling carbon out of the air, and cleaning up waste but I don't think any of that requires us to use drastically less energy. If anything we should aim to make energy so clean and cheap that those other things become cheap and easy.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Who are you replying to here? Who's argued this?
- ch4s3 5y agoThe point I'm making is that there's a certain type of activist who believes these kinds o things, and they're arguing for things like reduction of per-capita energy use to reduce society's impact on the land based on the idea that there was ever really land here that wasn't actively managed by people. (At least since the glaciers receded) I'm making the case that these neo-malthusians want to protect an imagined environment of the past that didn't exist. There are certainly things we're doing that are environmentally negative form the perspective of biodiversity, CO2, local water tables, etc but I don't think fixing those things necessarily means using less energy, or having a lower standard of living.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- isomel 5y agoYeah, humans have lived fine before fossil fuels so we can do it again, right? Just kill half of them. And let 90% of the remaining population work in the fields like slaves. Easy /s
- chrisseaton 5y agoWildest strawman I’ve ever seen on this site. I’ve never even remotely seen anyone argue for what you’re mocking. And it’s not even anything to do with fossil fuels - it’s about renewables.
- tyjaksn 5y agoWhile I agree that modern society requires significant energy inputs, there is a middle ground. For instance, if cities or the suburbs were more pedestrian friendly, walking, cycling, etc. would be a viable option meaning less use of fossil fuels by driving.
- Manuel_D 5y agoStandards of living are highly connected to energy consumption. Reducing power consumption without also reducing living standards is difficult to do. Furthermore, power consumption is going to increase as transportation and industrial processes become electrified.
- adrianN 5y agoElectricity consumption is going to rise with electrification. Power consumption is going down. A heat pump is about three times as efficient as heating with oil. An electric engine is about twice as efficient as an ICE, and so on.
- goodpoint 5y agoThe overton window of HN is skewed so far into techno-optimism that you get downvoted into oblivion for mentioning reducing energy usage. Edit: surprise, I'm also getting silent downvotes, as if I needed further proof.
- chrisseaton 5y agoPeople will advocate permanently destroying a habitat before they consider taking a bus instead of driving.
- andrewinardeer 5y agoHere in Australia, it can be argued that The Green Party's blanket ban and refusal to even consider let alone use nuclear has contributed significantly to more carbon in the air as we have instead relied on coal for the last 50 years.
- rgmerk 5y agoThis is just plain wrong. Absent environmentalism or non-economic considerations (hello Jervis Bay) no nuclear power would ever be built in Australia. We have way too much cheap, conveniently located coal.
- adventured 5y agoBoth of those things can be correct. Without environmentalist pressure, coal would be used indefinitely. And nuclear isn't being built or considered because the environmentalists won't support it. Accordingly they can get positive credit for the first and negative for the second.
- XorNot 5y agoDon't kid yourself though - no major party in Australia supports nuclear. The Liberals will say they'll think about it, knowing there's a couple hundred idiots who'll actually believe them and give them a vote while they greenlight Indian-owned coal-miners finishing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. Both major parties (Labor and Liberal) have huge donors from coal-mining concerns, as well as union support from coal-miners who - in a startling display of unification with the capital class - also oppose it because it's not coal-mining. The world will be building fusion reactors in 2050, or spacebeamed solar power or opening a portal to the Warp or something for limitless free energy, and Australian politicians will still be talking about how "we can't just give up on coal". Progress in this field is going to come from the private sector in-spite of the government who are already trying to kill solar power projects.
- rgmerk 5y ago
- Spooky23 5y agoEnvironmental people are a diverse bunch with plenty of charlatans and people willing to enrich themselves for “the greater good”. It’s pretty trivial for various interests to undermine and drive their agendas.
- Teknoman117 5y agoYeah, that one just boggles my mind. A few huge PV solar projects out in the desert in southern California and Nevada got stalled by environmentalists complaining about increased shading cooling down the desert. At this point, even if solar panels in the desert kill off a few species of lizards, seriously, what's the alternative? More damage will occur if we don't. It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even if it means damaging isolated areas intentionally.
- valarauko 5y ago> It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even if it means damaging isolated areas intentionally. I think that's an arithmetic everyone largely accepts, but they just don't want to be the specific ones paying the price while others seemingly get only the benefits. NIMBYism, if you will.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoIt's 100% NIMBYism. Just like the complaints about how higher-density housing may hurt 'the environment' for whatever city people live in. Like, if everyone blocks high density housing, those people don't just disappear, they're gonna end up living in low density housing, and that's obviously much worse for the environment: takes up more space, which means cutting into nature more, and generally takes more energy for the lifestyle too. But that doesn't matter to NIMBY's -- the important thing is that they don't have to see the environment changing where they live in particular.
- jibe 5y agoIt isn’t really NIMBYism to oppose remote desert solar plants, it is just people who care, perhaps without fully weighing cost/benefit, about any negative effect on nature. There is a rational case that the huge footprint of solar and wind ends up doing more damage than more compact nuclear or natural gas plants. I suspect most of those opposing solar also oppose nuclear and gas. I’d call it Nothing Is Good Enough Syndrome instead of NIMBY.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago> Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days? The problem is - the average "environmentalist" is not trying to maximize for anything. It's a broad bucket that almost everyone is falling into and there's almost zero common ground, no organization, etc. Of course there are going to be people that oppose almost everything that label themselves as "environmentalists". There's always people that oppose everything! And most people consider themselves "environmentalists".
- dahfizz 5y ago> Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days? That is not a self evident claim. At least, most people do not belong to environmental advocacy groups. The largest one is the Sierra club, with 1% of the US population as members.
- goodpoint 5y agoAdditionally any twitter bot or "crisis actor" paid by an oil company can claim to belong to the category. It's far too easy to blame "environmentalists" for everything.
- jeromegv 5y agoLots of NIMBY anti-development people would consider themselves environmentalist. They are in fact conservatives people that would rather keep the status quo and are against free market for housing and want their assets to inflate to insane prices.
- goodpoint 5y agoUnsurprisingly. Moreover, politicians passed unpopular laws e.g. ecotaxes or bans and direct blame onto "environmentalists". It can be a powerful tactic to drive a wedge between general population and "environmentalists". Ultimately to protect certain companies.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
- 908B64B197 5y agoI sometimes wonder if oil and gas companies even need lobbying: Environmentalists are the number one threat to any green initiative. If they could all agree on one thing just for once.
- eecc 5y agoLikely Shell is funding these “environmentalist groups” in what is basically the corporate version of shitposting. :)
- XorNot 5y agoRemember the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by BP[1] specifically as an effort to distract from efforts at systemic regulation that might effect corporations by making CO2 seem like an individual moral concern. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Origin_of_the_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Origin_of_the...
- r00fus 5y agoWould it surprise you to know that some anti-nuclear activism was supported [1] by the fossil fuel industry? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=3d4d4dc97453 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
- nradov 5y agoThe Endangered Species Act has become a blunt instrument that environmentalists and NIMBYs can use to shut down almost any major infrastructure project. No one wants to see any species go extinct but the time has come to make some hard choices. We may have to sacrifice the six-toed purple salamanders or whatever in order to preserve the rest of the biosphere.
- parkingrift 5y agoWe're not really saving these species, anyway. Climate change will eventually come for them. We can either make a few hard choices now or watch as a few... hundred... thousand choices are made for us.
- joe_the_user 5y agoIn this article, I don't see evidence for "environmentalists" being the ones block wind-power, sounds more like argument between levels of the French state [1]. But just as much, the mantle of environmentalist can be taken by anyone, notably just nimbys. There's not a copyright on the term. But it winds-up even worse when others point to these idiot uses of the term environmentalist and then try to push actually environmentally destructive projects. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/french-wind-energy-in-limbo-for-more-than-a-year/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/french-wind-ene...
- jibe 5y agoThe Green parties of Europe, which are the political face of the environmental movement, all oppose nuclear power. Perhaps most strongly in Germany, but The Greens in France oppose it as well.
- Brakenshire 5y agoThey don't oppose wind power, which is the complaint above.
- jsnell 5y agoThe Finnish Green Party no longer opposes nuclear power as of last year.
- inter_netuser 5y agoHow did that transition happen?
- jsnell 5y agoIt's been a gradual process over the last two decades. The cynical view would be that during that time they left the government twice to protest the government approving new nuclear power projects, and paid a heavy political price for that. They can't afford to do it a third time, and given Finland's position (can't rely on solar or wind during winter, can't build more hydro, can't depend on imports during the production troughs) it is highly likely that more nuclear will be approved at some point. The non-cynical view is that the world has actually changed over that time. Reducing CO2 emissions is more urgent than ever, and there's no longer time to hope that we can instead reduce energy usage which used to be their preferred solution.
- dmead 5y agotortoises and their back yards I'm sure.
- parkingrift 5y agoSeems that green Democrats would rather throw themselves into a volcano than accept anything less than their 100% absolute perfect solution. New York keeps shutting down nuclear reactors... and then offsetting the power losses with natural gas. No one could have possibly predicted this? https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 Congrats!
- ochoseis 5y agoAt some point you begin to wonder if environmentalists like this are indeed environmentalists?
- zjaffee 5y agoThere's a difference between conservationism and environmentalism as it relates to climate change, and this comes up every time there's a debate like this. Most environmental advocacy groups are much more concerned with conservation than climate change.
- stkdump 5y agoThe German greens, now freshly back in government, have greatly accelerated worldwide deployment of renewables when they were in government last time. Without them it would have easily taken a decade longer for prices to plummet to the current levels. Renewables wouldn't be the cheapest form of energy. Let's see what they can do this time around. When the economics favor renewables, then its a no brainer. This makes new nuclear projects even more questionable. Note that the promises are there since at least 60 years. Lack of investment wasn't a problem. Recently a swiss energy company said they don't want to build new nuclear. Why should they, it doesn't make money unless the government is willing to provide the profits, which is only the case in some countries.