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America (as a country that’s run by a very small number of people) clearly has 0 interest in “getting off fossil fuels.” If we did, we’d mostly be there by now.

America (as a country that’s run by a very small number of people) clearly has 0 interest in “getting off fossil fuels.” If we did, we’d mostly be there by now. It’s not fun to think about but it’s true. Fossil fuels are still pretty cheap. Any crisis can be solved with a quick war or invasion. Shit won’t hit the fan until everybody alive today is dead. What’s the incentive to get off fossil fuels? If it’s something like, “looking out for the future” ask yourself how well that is working lol.

virtue3 3y ago
I think economics will be a valid reason. Mostly as heat-exchangers continue to get efficiency gains, electric car prices continue to plummet, and solar continues to become more effective watts/$. While not all of these options will work for everyone, they will work for _most_. It doesn't make sense to spent billions of dollars securing oil when we can spend millions switching to electrical infrastructure.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  > electric car prices continue to plummet continue?
  - virtue3 3y ago
    https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/china-electric-cars#:~:text=The%20starting%20price%3F,which%20lists%20for%20about%20%2415%2C830 https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/china-el.... China is currently subsidizing electric cars pretty heavily and lithium-ion batteries are dropping in costs pretty dramatically over there. Also with current tax-rebates you can get a chevy bolt for like ~20k. Which is a lot less than such cars used to be with that kind of range. Prices might have gone up recently but if we compare EV prices from 5 years ago you are getting dramatically more for the money now.
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      Ah...good point. Comparing my 2014 bmw i3 (pure electric) and a 2024 bmw i4, which cost maybe 30% more: to your point, for a far more performant design and 4x the battery range one might expect far higher cost.
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    Tesla pricing over the last 12 years, some within the same model is the most citable.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bertil 3y ago
Electricity is getting cheaper as we go. It’s already passed close, and there are not a lot of incentives to pro-actively switch, but there is an incentive to get an electric car when you change; to get a heat pump when your heater stops working; better insulation, always; to buy a solar panel and a battery after a blackout… This wouldn’t need much, and the handful of people who control America, a lot of them are making money from some of those four changes. > Shit won’t hit the fan until everybody alive today is dead. That’s radically not true: millions of people have died because of the consequence of global warming already, but I’ve learned the hard way not to debate with climate deniers. The real incentive to get out now is to have people who suffer visibly and directly from the consequences of fossil fuel extraction: cancer alley in Louisiana; children who grew up next to highways and also have cancer; people poisoned by oil spills and pipeline leaks; people who lost their water table to fracking; those people have grounds to sue, a press that interested in covering their case. They will make exploiting oil more and more expensive. How much depends on lobbying–you are right about that. However, I suspect judges won’t all be compliant to suggestions that cancer patients are already dead, and asking businesses to pay their heirs real money isn’t ethical. The alternative will increasingly look like business as usual, and many more people will be sacrificed the same way. Each slap on the wrist will look increasingly appealable. Those directly affected will soon be joined by people who had their livelihoods destroyed by global warming through forest fires, floods, and hurricanes to join them. Individually, I agree that’s not very influential, but one of two things might happen: * Insurance companies are one of the really big players in this world. If they are forced to keep policies and pay, they might start some actual lobbying to prevent the worst. That means an all-out board-room war against fossil fuel. That sounds unlikely unless you count some big clients that can’t just ignore the problem, like Disney, or anyone with a big footprint in California, Florida, Louisiana, etc. That’s enough of the Fortune 500 to justify some coordination and to build an interest in not abandoning the coast to storms. * More likely, insurance companies will drop many of their smaller clients. A large grassroots movement might grow — not of toothless people in caravans on tornado alley, but real-estate promoters who can’t insure and therefore can build, resell, and renovate their property. They could and already do catastrophe adaptation. It works now, but that math won’t last long: they’ll need hurricanes to slow down, flood, and heatwaves too. They’ll also rapidly find that companies like McDonald’s care about not having their restaurants blown away too—and they are around the globe.
pengaru 3y ago
America sells a lot of weapons, the climate crisis will involve a lot of conflict. There's obviously an incentive to let the chips fall.
mlinhares 3y ago
If a quick war is this easy why is America hostage to the Saudis and OPEC right now? What a horrible take.
- falcolas 3y ago
  We’re not. OPEC makes up around 11% of our oil supply. A very different scenario than we had in the 70s.
- paulcole 3y ago
  It’s good to have an enemy.
tejohnso 3y ago
> If we did, we’d mostly be there by now. I don't think that's true. People can have much higher than 0 interest in something, but still barely make any progress toward it at all. And with nations, there are always competing interests. "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." -Ronnie Coleman
- paulcole 3y ago
  Yes, that is exactly my point. Nobody actually wants to be a bodybuilder, the same as America doesn’t want to get off fossil fuels. What you say you want doesn’t matter at all. Actions tell the whole story.

virtue3 3y ago

I think economics will be a valid reason. Mostly as heat-exchangers continue to get efficiency gains, electric car prices continue to plummet, and solar continues to become more effective watts/$. While not all of these options will work for everyone, they will work for _most_. It doesn't make sense to spent billions of dollars securing oil when we can spend millions switching to electrical infrastructure.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
> electric car prices continue to plummet continue?
- virtue3 3y ago
  https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/china-electric-cars#:~:text=The%20starting%20price%3F,which%20lists%20for%20about%20%2415%2C830 https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/china-el.... China is currently subsidizing electric cars pretty heavily and lithium-ion batteries are dropping in costs pretty dramatically over there. Also with current tax-rebates you can get a chevy bolt for like ~20k. Which is a lot less than such cars used to be with that kind of range. Prices might have gone up recently but if we compare EV prices from 5 years ago you are getting dramatically more for the money now.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Ah...good point. Comparing my 2014 bmw i3 (pure electric) and a 2024 bmw i4, which cost maybe 30% more: to your point, for a far more performant design and 4x the battery range one might expect far higher cost.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Tesla pricing over the last 12 years, some within the same model is the most citable.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bertil 3y ago

Electricity is getting cheaper as we go. It’s already passed close, and there are not a lot of incentives to pro-actively switch, but there is an incentive to get an electric car when you change; to get a heat pump when your heater stops working; better insulation, always; to buy a solar panel and a battery after a blackout… This wouldn’t need much, and the handful of people who control America, a lot of them are making money from some of those four changes. > Shit won’t hit the fan until everybody alive today is dead. That’s radically not true: millions of people have died because of the consequence of global warming already, but I’ve learned the hard way not to debate with climate deniers. The real incentive to get out now is to have people who suffer visibly and directly from the consequences of fossil fuel extraction: cancer alley in Louisiana; children who grew up next to highways and also have cancer; people poisoned by oil spills and pipeline leaks; people who lost their water table to fracking; those people have grounds to sue, a press that interested in covering their case. They will make exploiting oil more and more expensive. How much depends on lobbying–you are right about that. However, I suspect judges won’t all be compliant to suggestions that cancer patients are already dead, and asking businesses to pay their heirs real money isn’t ethical. The alternative will increasingly look like business as usual, and many more people will be sacrificed the same way. Each slap on the wrist will look increasingly appealable. Those directly affected will soon be joined by people who had their livelihoods destroyed by global warming through forest fires, floods, and hurricanes to join them. Individually, I agree that’s not very influential, but one of two things might happen: * Insurance companies are one of the really big players in this world. If they are forced to keep policies and pay, they might start some actual lobbying to prevent the worst. That means an all-out board-room war against fossil fuel. That sounds unlikely unless you count some big clients that can’t just ignore the problem, like Disney, or anyone with a big footprint in California, Florida, Louisiana, etc. That’s enough of the Fortune 500 to justify some coordination and to build an interest in not abandoning the coast to storms. * More likely, insurance companies will drop many of their smaller clients. A large grassroots movement might grow — not of toothless people in caravans on tornado alley, but real-estate promoters who can’t insure and therefore can build, resell, and renovate their property. They could and already do catastrophe adaptation. It works now, but that math won’t last long: they’ll need hurricanes to slow down, flood, and heatwaves too. They’ll also rapidly find that companies like McDonald’s care about not having their restaurants blown away too—and they are around the globe.

pengaru 3y ago

America sells a lot of weapons, the climate crisis will involve a lot of conflict. There's obviously an incentive to let the chips fall.

mlinhares 3y ago

If a quick war is this easy why is America hostage to the Saudis and OPEC right now? What a horrible take.

falcolas 3y ago
We’re not. OPEC makes up around 11% of our oil supply. A very different scenario than we had in the 70s.
paulcole 3y ago
It’s good to have an enemy.

tejohnso 3y ago

> If we did, we’d mostly be there by now. I don't think that's true. People can have much higher than 0 interest in something, but still barely make any progress toward it at all. And with nations, there are always competing interests. "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." -Ronnie Coleman

paulcole 3y ago
Yes, that is exactly my point. Nobody actually wants to be a bodybuilder, the same as America doesn’t want to get off fossil fuels. What you say you want doesn’t matter at all. Actions tell the whole story.