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I don't think the USA is costing in the political risk of not converting to green energy. You do not want to be the only country emitting significant CO2 in a d

I don't think the USA is costing in the political risk of not converting to green energy. You do not want to be the only country emitting significant CO2 in a decades time when everyone else has transitioned. Partly it will be more expensive to keep burning fuel especially when the economy of scale decreases but also the political risk of sanctions will be very high.

jillesvangurp 1y ago
It's the long term economics that the US should be worried about. Just because the US is sticking its head in the sand doesn't mean the rest of the world is slowing down investments along with it. Other countries are investing heavily in becoming energy independent which means they'll be building the infrastructure to generate lots of cheap energy to power their economies rather than depending on expensive fossil fuel imports. Part of which currently come from the US. The recent tariff madness is actually speeding all this up. The US as an manufacturing and export country already doesn't make much sense. And that will only get worse. Industry depends on energy and if that energy is locally more expensive than abroad, that puts any energy intensive business at a disadvantage when other countries start running on really cheap renewables and battery. If you look at this globally, there are a lot of emerging markets that never imported that much oil, coal, and gas to begin with that probably never will. They'll be growing fueled by cheap locally generated renewables. And then there are countries all over Asia and Europe that are mostly importing their fossil fuels that are going to decimate what they import over the next decades. All of that will shift the economic balance in their favor. Any one exporting fossil fuels (including the US) is going to have a rather big problem with shrinking exports. Places like China are far ahead of everyone else here. And an increasingly large part of their economy is actually selling their tech to other countries to get to a similar level.
jayd16 1y ago
It'll be a long tail. The less people rely on fossil fuels, the cheaper it will get (until it gets so underused you start lose economies of scale). But even without any proper political leadership, America will follow the money and pick the most profitable choice.

jillesvangurp 1y ago

It's the long term economics that the US should be worried about. Just because the US is sticking its head in the sand doesn't mean the rest of the world is slowing down investments along with it. Other countries are investing heavily in becoming energy independent which means they'll be building the infrastructure to generate lots of cheap energy to power their economies rather than depending on expensive fossil fuel imports. Part of which currently come from the US. The recent tariff madness is actually speeding all this up. The US as an manufacturing and export country already doesn't make much sense. And that will only get worse. Industry depends on energy and if that energy is locally more expensive than abroad, that puts any energy intensive business at a disadvantage when other countries start running on really cheap renewables and battery. If you look at this globally, there are a lot of emerging markets that never imported that much oil, coal, and gas to begin with that probably never will. They'll be growing fueled by cheap locally generated renewables. And then there are countries all over Asia and Europe that are mostly importing their fossil fuels that are going to decimate what they import over the next decades. All of that will shift the economic balance in their favor. Any one exporting fossil fuels (including the US) is going to have a rather big problem with shrinking exports. Places like China are far ahead of everyone else here. And an increasingly large part of their economy is actually selling their tech to other countries to get to a similar level.

jayd16 1y ago

It'll be a long tail. The less people rely on fossil fuels, the cheaper it will get (until it gets so underused you start lose economies of scale). But even without any proper political leadership, America will follow the money and pick the most profitable choice.