6 ms·

> Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will

> Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will have to opened on indigenous and treaty lands to satisfy copper and other demands. Yeah, it's not as if these are bought up constantly and exaggerated in every single discussion on the subject, and every single report on the subject lies about it by using 10 year old data to make it seem worse than it is and to minimise the efforts being taken to reduce those impacts. And it's not as if those issues are being completely minimized or ignored for other generation technologies. And there is definitely no PV recycling legislation like the WEEE, or legislation enacting traceability and lifecycle impact labelling requirements. Things can definitely get better (and they should), but pretending that everything a concern troll or media scare campaign or fossil fuel lobbyist can possibly draw the faintest shred of a connection to reality with hasn't already been weaponised is ridiculous.

defrost 4y ago
I note with interest (having personally spent several million line kilometres in the air doing low level continent wide geophysical sensing exploration work (and written a few million SLOC of related code)) that the option rarely talked about or seriously raised is consume less.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Yes. This is absolutely the main answer. But if you raise it to the people attacking renewables or prattling about a nuclear revival, they start screeching about malthusianism. Additionally, putting your life in the hands of a new energy oligopoly consisting of Urenco, Rosatom and Cameco isn't a great strategy for getting out from the thumb of an energy oligopoly with a history of causing suffering to increase consumption of their product.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    The reason I don't like "consume less" is that it only works for people who already live in excess, i.e. rich westerners. Telling the several billion people who don't to "consume less" just seems really shitty. I think there's a level of consumption (be it energy or otherwise) where you're just being a mindless consumer and playing status games, and I personally am not interested in that. That's why I find it practical and ethical to limit my own consumption not in extreme ways, but also not to squander. But telling that to somebody who barely has access to electricity or can't afford a car to improve his economic opportunity to provide for his family...
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      There it is. The world can get by and everyone can fluorish on about the current level of energy or maybe a little more if 1-10% of the population stops using 10-100x their share.
      - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        The problem is, of course, that there isn't a fixed pie for stuff or energy, and that we can't just ship stuff or energy for free. The Africans don't suddenly get free energy if I stop driving my Electric Hummer. They get energy if we give them the tech and loan them the capital to build power plants. If we just stop consuming as much energy, at least coal, oil, and to a degree natgas CAN be shipped to Afria. This is not true for energy produced from renewables. So we will actually set them back.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There is a very fixed pie for uranium and lithium and neodymium and ecological damage. Your hummer could be a thousand ebikes. Your 0.6kg of silver in 50kW of solar and 1t of concrete and 200g of neodymium in 20kW of wind could be refrigeration and basic services for 30 people. Your 200kg of uranium could be two less children in kakadu or niger with leukemia and 10 acres less usable grazing land.
        4y ago

defrost 4y ago

I note with interest (having personally spent several million line kilometres in the air doing low level continent wide geophysical sensing exploration work (and written a few million SLOC of related code)) that the option rarely talked about or seriously raised is consume less.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Yes. This is absolutely the main answer. But if you raise it to the people attacking renewables or prattling about a nuclear revival, they start screeching about malthusianism. Additionally, putting your life in the hands of a new energy oligopoly consisting of Urenco, Rosatom and Cameco isn't a great strategy for getting out from the thumb of an energy oligopoly with a history of causing suffering to increase consumption of their product.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  The reason I don't like "consume less" is that it only works for people who already live in excess, i.e. rich westerners. Telling the several billion people who don't to "consume less" just seems really shitty. I think there's a level of consumption (be it energy or otherwise) where you're just being a mindless consumer and playing status games, and I personally am not interested in that. That's why I find it practical and ethical to limit my own consumption not in extreme ways, but also not to squander. But telling that to somebody who barely has access to electricity or can't afford a car to improve his economic opportunity to provide for his family...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    There it is. The world can get by and everyone can fluorish on about the current level of energy or maybe a little more if 1-10% of the population stops using 10-100x their share.
    - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
      The problem is, of course, that there isn't a fixed pie for stuff or energy, and that we can't just ship stuff or energy for free. The Africans don't suddenly get free energy if I stop driving my Electric Hummer. They get energy if we give them the tech and loan them the capital to build power plants. If we just stop consuming as much energy, at least coal, oil, and to a degree natgas CAN be shipped to Afria. This is not true for energy produced from renewables. So we will actually set them back.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There is a very fixed pie for uranium and lithium and neodymium and ecological damage. Your hummer could be a thousand ebikes. Your 0.6kg of silver in 50kW of solar and 1t of concrete and 200g of neodymium in 20kW of wind could be refrigeration and basic services for 30 people. Your 200kg of uranium could be two less children in kakadu or niger with leukemia and 10 acres less usable grazing land.
      - 4y ago