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Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.
by boxedemp 2y ago
Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoEveryone needs a pollution tax, hardly anyone wants one
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoMancur Olson's work "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups" would suggest that lots of people want one, but only a little (they'd gain billions spread over half a billion people) while a few actors who it would financially affect directly really don't want one and the latter wins.
- michaelt 2y agoDepends on the type of pollution, I guess? To reduce carbon emissions, one would put a tax on gasoline, natural gas, coal, and electricity from plants powered from those sources. The thing is, that hits every single voter in the pocketbook. And what's more, a voter on $20,000 drives about the same amount as a voter on $200,000 - so if the gas tax costs both drivers $1000 a year, the former will feel it a lot harder. So our politicians are scared to do it.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThey're not scared of the reality as it is incredibly easy to directly offset that back to consumers in a variety of ways who then get to choose whether to spend it on fossil fuels or do something cheaper. They're afraid of the relentless propaganda campaign that will wash that reality away, funded by the concentrated forces that will lose business if forced to account for the damage their products cause. Also, Americans think carbon fees are impossible, yet they're implemented all across the globe, including several US states. It's a political dysfunction that is particularly evident in the US, not a fact of life.
- dv_dt 2y agoIts not so much people with little financial interest, but rather interest with more financial power. After all having a life cut short, or being uprooted by climate events or killed is of a huge cost - individually and socially.
- mmooss 2y agoEveryone pays it, but the distribution of costs depends on nature and not on rational policy. It also depends on having the wealth to avoid certain costs, e.g., by leaving dangerous areas.
- willvarfar 2y agoA lot of modern electricity generation is to power data centres and bitcoin mining. Quick googling found a stat that 1.6% of the whole world's electricity supply going on computing and also https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-big-tech-uses-more-electricity-than-entire-countries/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-big-tech-uses-more-... etc. And we need more! On day 2 of his presidency Trump pledged to fast-track new power generation to drive data centres in the US. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-ai-power-plants-data-centers https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-ai-power-plants-data-... Drill baby drill! Using electricity on compute is driving future dirty power generation.
- jajko 2y agoFuck future generations, fuck our kids... often touted by folks without any or at least somehow normally functioning family. I think we are back in 80s with current orange man defining direction like fashion, 'greed is good' at any cost mantra is certainly back
- sneak 2y agoGreed is why people are going to spend CapEx installing solar to reduce OpEx buying coal. Greed pushes people out of the status quo. Greed is why fusion reactors will be reduced in size, cost, and complexity.
- gnz11 2y agoThat’s quite the mental leap. Innovation and investment isn’t greed — especially not to what OP is referring to.
- weberer 2y agoWe've been trying to build more clean nuclear plants for decades, but its been ironically the self-proclaimed environmentalists who have been blocking it every step of the way. We could have had 0 carbon electricity production nation wide since the 1980's.
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
- palmotea 2y ago> Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation. Not when that "dirty electricity generation" was planned to be shut down before the data centers arrived: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/14/ai_datacenters_coal/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/14/ai_datacenters_coal/, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/datacenter_power_crunch/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/datacenter_power_crun..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/.
- kittikitti 2y agoYou can only trust Big Tech, make sure everyone else stops their AI research (due to environmental concerns of course).