3 ms·

Rishi Sunak delays petrol car ban in major shift on green policies

3 points by jasondavies 3y ago

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37583924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37583924 It got flagged because it was just speculation at that point.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
It's like a little mini-brexit of Rishi's own. Piss off all the corporate/business backers to win a few votes from angry Daily Mail readers, while shredding UK's reputation and damaging it's economy and not really making any coherent sense.
elzbardico 3y ago
It was never a realistic plan to start, let's be frank. And even if it was, what is the point, the UK is a small country, with a small fleet of cars, without very good options for powering such a fleet, and while they destroy their own economy, the third world will surely drink till the last drop of oil, and they will do that because they don't have other choice if they want to get out of poverty. We (as we the whole world) will stop burning fossil fuels when there will be no more fossil fuels to burn. We can pretend otherwise, but we are just making ourselves poorer, and becoming poorer is bad because we will need prosperity to mitigate and circunvent the effects of the inexorable global warming. And then we can get into the trap were we never thought how to adapt ourselves to some 2C more in one hundred years, because we naively thought we could avoid it, but by them we will be to poor to address this or even to develop the energy we will need when there will be no fossil fuels anymore.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  The point would have been to make the UK richer. Wind power has been the cheapest source of energy in the UK for a decade. The Tories effectively banned it, why did they do that if they're all about the money? Maybe because they're in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, and/or appealing to voters conned and disinformed by that same industry?
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Wind Power is the cheapest source of energy only in a very naive calculation that treats kW as if they were tomatoes. As most politicians and journalists don't have even a rudimentary understanding of how power generation, distribution and consumption works, they can peddle this lie ad nauseam until the society in general believes it. Of course, this begs the question of why the market needs so much nudging in form of punitive taxes and subsidies to adopt wind generation more widely, which is conveniently answered by the laughable conspiracy theory of the bad evil conservatives banning it because probably they are in the pockets of bad big oil (so, big oil competitors are destitute non-profit companies that can't buy politicians?). Every single time I hear people talking about the "pockets of fossil fuel industry", I wonder if they understand that there are other capital interests in the world, that selling alternative energy probably, and more importantly, financing this transaction have probably a far more tasty upside for big energy corporations and big finance than keep on selling a mineral commodity. You have absolutely huge derivative markets of carbon credits, and yet people act as if everyone is pushing this transition exclusively out of the goodness of their hearts, as if this transitions is not the greatest business opportunity for fleecing tax payers in centuries.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      > Wind Power is the cheapest source of energy only in a very naive calculation that treats kW as if they were tomatoes. I'd thought this talking point had been retired, great to see it out and about in the wild again after so many years. I'd love to see your source for this opinion. What does wind cost when someone who understands how "power generation, distribution and consumption works" does the sums? You're clearly not talking about * National Grid * Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy * Department of Energy * IRENA * Internation Energy Agency etc. etc. who've all been publishing very in-depth reports on this for the last decade or so and are firmly with the general consensus.
      - elzbardico 3y ago
        Yes, that explains why energy is so cheap in Germany and South Australia.

3 points by jasondavies 3y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37583924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37583924 It got flagged because it was just speculation at that point.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

It's like a little mini-brexit of Rishi's own. Piss off all the corporate/business backers to win a few votes from angry Daily Mail readers, while shredding UK's reputation and damaging it's economy and not really making any coherent sense.

elzbardico 3y ago

It was never a realistic plan to start, let's be frank. And even if it was, what is the point, the UK is a small country, with a small fleet of cars, without very good options for powering such a fleet, and while they destroy their own economy, the third world will surely drink till the last drop of oil, and they will do that because they don't have other choice if they want to get out of poverty. We (as we the whole world) will stop burning fossil fuels when there will be no more fossil fuels to burn. We can pretend otherwise, but we are just making ourselves poorer, and becoming poorer is bad because we will need prosperity to mitigate and circunvent the effects of the inexorable global warming. And then we can get into the trap were we never thought how to adapt ourselves to some 2C more in one hundred years, because we naively thought we could avoid it, but by them we will be to poor to address this or even to develop the energy we will need when there will be no fossil fuels anymore.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The point would have been to make the UK richer. Wind power has been the cheapest source of energy in the UK for a decade. The Tories effectively banned it, why did they do that if they're all about the money? Maybe because they're in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, and/or appealing to voters conned and disinformed by that same industry?
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Wind Power is the cheapest source of energy only in a very naive calculation that treats kW as if they were tomatoes. As most politicians and journalists don't have even a rudimentary understanding of how power generation, distribution and consumption works, they can peddle this lie ad nauseam until the society in general believes it. Of course, this begs the question of why the market needs so much nudging in form of punitive taxes and subsidies to adopt wind generation more widely, which is conveniently answered by the laughable conspiracy theory of the bad evil conservatives banning it because probably they are in the pockets of bad big oil (so, big oil competitors are destitute non-profit companies that can't buy politicians?). Every single time I hear people talking about the "pockets of fossil fuel industry", I wonder if they understand that there are other capital interests in the world, that selling alternative energy probably, and more importantly, financing this transaction have probably a far more tasty upside for big energy corporations and big finance than keep on selling a mineral commodity. You have absolutely huge derivative markets of carbon credits, and yet people act as if everyone is pushing this transition exclusively out of the goodness of their hearts, as if this transitions is not the greatest business opportunity for fleecing tax payers in centuries.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    > Wind Power is the cheapest source of energy only in a very naive calculation that treats kW as if they were tomatoes. I'd thought this talking point had been retired, great to see it out and about in the wild again after so many years. I'd love to see your source for this opinion. What does wind cost when someone who understands how "power generation, distribution and consumption works" does the sums? You're clearly not talking about * National Grid * Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy * Department of Energy * IRENA * Internation Energy Agency etc. etc. who've all been publishing very in-depth reports on this for the last decade or so and are firmly with the general consensus.
    - elzbardico 3y ago
      Yes, that explains why energy is so cheap in Germany and South Australia.