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I think it's just that politicians always knew that any real push would be expensive and raise energy prices. Everyone wants to go green, but if that involves d
by fy20 5y ago
I think it's just that politicians always knew that any real push would be expensive and raise energy prices. Everyone wants to go green, but if that involves doubling energy costs, then how many people are still going to say yes? That would not be popular with their constitutes, so bye bye political career.
Nobody could make the hard choice and they hoped that technology would solve the issue eventually - which to be fair, it did look like that was going to happen.
On the other hand, we have this situation. In my country natural gas prices have risen 40% in the last month and some items in supermarkets are close to double what they were a year ago.
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoIn reality it's probably my increasing interest in and exposure to politics as opposed to any cultural change, but it feels like "we" are increasingly sacrificing big in the future for small in the present. It's probably always been like this in politics though.
- boringg 5y agoThat is the probably with politics and the wall street quarterly cycle - you always sacrifice the long term for your short term gains. There have been some moves away from this but largely the system rewards/punishes people who don't operate on the short term. Switch to renewables is such a huge win for everyone (less oil producing nations). Cheaper, cleaner electricity (unlocking new manufacturing capabilities on price), lower social unrest impacts from climate change, better water quality, less reliance on foreign oil, etc. Costs are now starting to hit the point where it's far cheaper to go renewable - if we could get some political will power to push us further we could get continued wide spread adoption and massive scale up.