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We can consume more. We just have to get energy from things other than fossil carbon. IMHO a big problem with this debate is the austerity framing. Austerity i

by api 4y ago

We can consume more. We just have to get energy from things other than fossil carbon. IMHO a big problem with this debate is the austerity framing. Austerity is a political loser. Always has been, always will be. Frame something as requiring austerity and it's guaranteed to fail. It's not necessary either. Nuclear and renewable energy can power modern society and then some.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
>Nuclear and renewable energy can power modern society and then some. If it were that easy, it would have happened. Other sources of energy have downsides, such as price, convenience, portability, etc. Mainly price, I would assume. Which goes back to the original point, that if the thing people want most is to live in large homes in far flung suburbs with large pickup trucks and SUVs and vacations to tropical destinations, they are not going to vote for policies that make those things less possible. If 50 years ago, we had voted to make gas $10/gallon, then maybe those alternatives would have been feasible to develop and implement. But even today, $5/gallon gas will cause the incumbent politicians to lose elections. No one is going to touch that issue and win.
- api 4y ago
  > If it were that easy, it would have happened. This idea of automatic progress is one of the great fallacies of our time. Things don't get done unless action is taken. Progress is volitional and requires effort whether it's at the scale of a single individual or an entire global economy. If action is not taken the status quo prevails by inertia. It might be cliche but I have to cite SpaceX and their reusable rocket cores as a classic example. Here is a video of a VTVL rocket called the DC-X created and flown in the early-mid 1990s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 We could have had reusable rockets by 2000, but unfortunately the project was cancelled. Instead we endured another 10 years of paper studies supposedly "proving" that reusable rockets couldn't be economical. These studies were funded and produced by people with a financial vested interest in disposable rockets. Nuclear and renewable energy absolutely can replace fossil fuels. There is no physical reason this can't happen and with scale they could be cost competitive or perhaps even cheaper. It's not happening because nobody is pushing it hard enough to overcome the inertia of vested interests and... well... plain old inertia. Edit: another way of thinking of this kind of thing is the common "has anyone called the police?" scenario. Imagine someone gets shot on the street. A crowd of people gathers around. Nobody does anything because surely someone has called the police, so the victim dies waiting for help.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > Things don't get done unless action is taken. Progress is volitional and requires effort whether it's at the scale of a single individual or an entire global economy. If action I am under the impression that there has been much R&D towards fossil fuel alternatives. Perhaps there could have been more investment from the government side, but it is 2022, and a fossil fuel Toyota Corolla still has no electric alternative in terms of the utility per price. But innovation and technology take time, and resources, and are not foolproof to produce an alternative to all of fossil fuel’s uses. But more importantly, low fossil fuel prices keep demand for alternatives low, and demand for fossil fuel high. The requisite action that has to be taken is reduction of use of fossil fuels, regardless of progress in alternatives. Nature does not owe us the excessive use of fossil fuels in the mean time.

by api 4y ago

lotsofpulp 4y ago

>Nuclear and renewable energy can power modern society and then some. If it were that easy, it would have happened. Other sources of energy have downsides, such as price, convenience, portability, etc. Mainly price, I would assume. Which goes back to the original point, that if the thing people want most is to live in large homes in far flung suburbs with large pickup trucks and SUVs and vacations to tropical destinations, they are not going to vote for policies that make those things less possible. If 50 years ago, we had voted to make gas $10/gallon, then maybe those alternatives would have been feasible to develop and implement. But even today, $5/gallon gas will cause the incumbent politicians to lose elections. No one is going to touch that issue and win.

api 4y ago
> If it were that easy, it would have happened. This idea of automatic progress is one of the great fallacies of our time. Things don't get done unless action is taken. Progress is volitional and requires effort whether it's at the scale of a single individual or an entire global economy. If action is not taken the status quo prevails by inertia. It might be cliche but I have to cite SpaceX and their reusable rocket cores as a classic example. Here is a video of a VTVL rocket called the DC-X created and flown in the early-mid 1990s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 We could have had reusable rockets by 2000, but unfortunately the project was cancelled. Instead we endured another 10 years of paper studies supposedly "proving" that reusable rockets couldn't be economical. These studies were funded and produced by people with a financial vested interest in disposable rockets. Nuclear and renewable energy absolutely can replace fossil fuels. There is no physical reason this can't happen and with scale they could be cost competitive or perhaps even cheaper. It's not happening because nobody is pushing it hard enough to overcome the inertia of vested interests and... well... plain old inertia. Edit: another way of thinking of this kind of thing is the common "has anyone called the police?" scenario. Imagine someone gets shot on the street. A crowd of people gathers around. Nobody does anything because surely someone has called the police, so the victim dies waiting for help.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Things don't get done unless action is taken. Progress is volitional and requires effort whether it's at the scale of a single individual or an entire global economy. If action I am under the impression that there has been much R&D towards fossil fuel alternatives. Perhaps there could have been more investment from the government side, but it is 2022, and a fossil fuel Toyota Corolla still has no electric alternative in terms of the utility per price. But innovation and technology take time, and resources, and are not foolproof to produce an alternative to all of fossil fuel’s uses. But more importantly, low fossil fuel prices keep demand for alternatives low, and demand for fossil fuel high. The requisite action that has to be taken is reduction of use of fossil fuels, regardless of progress in alternatives. Nature does not owe us the excessive use of fossil fuels in the mean time.