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Actually we do know what the trade off is. The trade off is we spend that money on fossil fuels. And therefore we spend the money on more air pollution, dirti
by addicted 2y ago
Actually we do know what the trade off is.
The trade off is we spend that money on fossil fuels.
And therefore we spend the money on more air pollution, dirtier rivers, dirtier seas, more heavy metals in our soils and air, etc.
So the comic absolutely works even if climate change isn’t real.
The only argument that’s left is the idea that we may possibly spend more money on clean energy than we do on fossil fuels for the same amount of energy.
However, renewables are already on par with fossil fuels pretty much across the world, and their costs are dropping considerably, even if we do not consider climate change impacts. For example, in the U.S., which is particularly unfriendly to renewables from a cost perspective due to expensive labor, new solar energy is cheaper than burning coal in an existing coal plant (so without even considering the cost of constructing the plant in the first place).
But the comic undersells its message even further. Due to the fewer steps it takes to get electricity from the energy of the wind or the energy of sunlight to your outlet, compared to getting the energy of oil or coal buried underground to your outlet, the actual primary energy we need will be lower with renewable energy. So the actual cost will be even lower than a direct calculation of the current total energy supply of the world to meet the same energy demand.
Your concept works in theory. What it fails to recognize is that in the real world, the primary factors keeping fossil fuels around are:
1. The power of the dominant energy companies which are trillion dollar business and include massive governments who have bought politicians to ensure they do not get disrupted.
2. Status quo benefits. The fact that they are the status quo provides benefits like people not being as comfortable with new tech, and the grid and other energy transport systems setup for fossil fuels. For example, gas powered cars being the status quo have led to tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in setting up networks of gas stations, networks of roads to carry the trucks that move the gas to those gas stations, and the many tens of thousands of trucks that have been designed built and are operated to carry that gas around. If we were starting from scratch, it would cost a fraction of that money to beef up the power grid to supply that power to electric cars in the form of electricity instead.
Ultimately the comic isn’t just right, it undersells its case, and the only reason we keep choosing the worse tradeoff even if we don’t consider climate change is due to market distortions caused by politics and the fact that the trillion dollar companies who traffic in fossil fuels are way more politically powerful than the future renewable energy companies, which are just little startups right now relative to the fossil fuel giants.
- gottorf 2y agoIt's easy to paint a rosy picture of an imagined better alternative. > the trillion dollar companies who traffic in fossil fuels are way more politically powerful than the future renewable energy companies Do names like Solyndra or Northvolt ring a bell? Renewables companies are also capable of being backed by popular politicians and raising billions of dollars in capital; that alone is no guarantee of success. If you're claiming that the diligence of O&G operatives in the shadows is what led to the downfall of these companies, well, that just sounds cartoonish to me, which I suppose is appropriate given the context. In general, there hasn't been an incumbent in history that was not more politically powerful than upstart startups looking to disrupt their business. That's what being an incumbent means. Yet Ford successfully put carriage-makers out of business, and Tesla took a lot of established carmakers' lunch money. It's a very dim view of the world to suggest that political power, rather than the real-life economics of a new technology actually being better than the old, drives change. > renewables are already on par with fossil fuels pretty much across the world, and their costs are dropping considerably If this were true, German industry would not be having quite such a hard time as they are now. > networks of roads to carry the trucks that move the gas to those gas stations Roads aren't built to carry gasoline trucks. That's a complete inversion of logic. There's not a single road that would be obviated in a full-EV world. Even the roads going to and from refineries! Plastics will still need to be made. > If we were starting from scratch, it would cost a fraction of that money to beef up the power grid to supply that power to electric cars in the form of electricity instead Some estimates are at $2-4T to go full EV[0]. That's hardly a small chunk of change. Have you tried adding a L2 charging port to your home? I have. It cost me about $550 in just the copper wires alone, and the labor of going around the attic adding conduit and pulling wires was a pain in the ass. Scale that up nationwide and I don't see a cheap or easy solution here. If you're really pressing the "starting from scratch" bit, well, that's an unanswerable hypothetical. > in the real world, the primary factors keeping fossil fuels around are [...] In the real world, a gallon of gasoline is roughly 11 kWh of energy (look up how big and expensive a battery of that size is), and I still haven't found a battery-powered mower that mows better than a cheap gas-powered one. [0]: https://energyanalytics.org/infrastructure-requirements-for-the-mass-adoption-of-electric-vehicles/ https://energyanalytics.org/infrastructure-requirements-for-...