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The US is choosing to make itself increasingly redundant. Increasing speed whilst in Reverse gear whilst talking as if they're highway cruising in 5th. It's ni
by BLKNSLVR 1y ago
The US is choosing to make itself increasingly redundant. Increasing speed whilst in Reverse gear whilst talking as if they're highway cruising in 5th.
It's nice to know that the rest of the world is still pushing forwards, up a steep hill, in first gear. I hope it can continue, and the hill shrinks.
- zdragnar 1y agoNot the rest of the world, but China. 80% of all panels come from there, and they want to keep it that way. It'll lead to sone interesting and unpleasant political fights in the future, I suspect.
- bytesandbits 1y agoUS is the only country besides China with significant solar panel manufacturing (although much much much lower). It's not that.
- softwaredoug 1y agoThey also lead the world in emissions and what the US does / doesn’t do won’t be a major driver. Our carbon peaked in 2007 It’s more an issue of US ability to compete in an emerging market IMO. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/?srsltid=AfmBOoruESUlM2QdO2gMuQm3elLKMJT5VQ1ks90GevamwPdiHh9vUAV9 https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...
- ciconia 1y agoThe US is today the biggest exporter of refined petrol products. It also consumes products manufactured elsewhere, including China. China is in some ways the world's factory.
- adrr 1y agoIf we exported even more manufacturing abroad we can keep dropping CO2. We could stop smelting steel, making fertilizer, and making cement in the US to drop us 15% to 20% lower. Though we’ll still lead the world in CO2 per capita though of major countries.
- wakawaka28 1y ago[flagged]
- esseph 1y agoI think(?) you missed the sarcasm. I may be wrong.
- wakawaka28 1y agoI think you're wrong but it could be a case of Poe's Law. I have met people who argued with me in this way though, in real life, as if per capita emissions is more important than everything else including our existence itself. They just didn't think it over.
- adrr 1y agoIts easy to convince the world that Americans are special because we won WWII singlehandedly and invented gas cars that we can output 3x more CO2 than anyone else. they should be grateful and change the way they live not us. They should focus on reducing their emissions so I can keep driving my ford F150 on my 20 mile commute to work.
- wakawaka28 1y agoThe fact is, the rest of the world greatly outnumbers us in the West. We could all die off tomorrow and it wouldn't solve the global warming problem (if you believe it is a problem), nor would it convince anyone else to live greener and give up their own progress. We have our own systems and way of life, are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy in the West as a whole, and cannot wager our existence as a distinct culture on the good will of adversarial countries around the world that greatly outnumber us and outproduce us. We can make gradual progress toward being green, perhaps, but most of the work must necessarily be done by the rest of the world. We don't owe them our lives.
- bruce511 1y agoIt doesn't really matter where the panels come from. Yes the manufacturer captures some of their value, but that's in the range of 20% of their overall value (and dropping). In my country there is no govt subsidy for solar. But math doesn't lie. A typical residential system returns 16% on capital invested. Not surprisingly residential solar here is now measured in Gw. The good news for the US is that it really doesn't matter if they fall behind. Solar can be installed so quickly that any lost impetus can be made in in a year or two. There's basically very little lead time required between decision and implementation.
- wakawaka28 1y agoIt does matter where critical infrastructure components come from. Whether you can call solar panels critical or not, China has a virtual monopoly on them due to lower production costs. The same story plays out with virtually EVERY product that we in the West need.
- bruce511 1y agoTrue. Given their lifespan it behooves folks to "get them while they can". A warlike country with a history of antagonism to China is probably less secure than countries that have chosen to behave like good neighbors. If you feel like panel production is strategic, which is an easy argument to make, and given that the US has a substantial ability to produce panels [1], perhaps a useful strategy would be to consume those panels as much as possible, subsidizing production to make it a growth area. Indeed it might become a surplus, allowing for export, which in turn improves foreign relations. And the simple existence of the domestic market leads to improvements, better quality and so on. I'm no economist but the above seems like a solid strategy to me. It would be most interesting to see the outcomes where a country pursued this strategy versus one that actively worked to marginalize solar, killing domestic production instead. I wonder if there are more countries in the same boat which could be used to see the long-term outcome of the various strategic options? [1] Solar systems comprise of more than panels. But the other parts are just electronics so not important in the context of managing solar as a specific product.
- gritzko 1y agoI was checking Google Maps recently. In such places as Islamabad or Cyprus, residential solar is big. I also hear, the price of panels is low % of the entire installation. What excites me is that solar works one level up. Coal is energy, solar is a source of energy. If you sell solar panel manufacturing equipment, you work in the second derivative. That literally levels up the game.
- parineum 1y agoCoal is storage.
- SlightlyLeftPad 1y agoIn the conventional sense, one-directional storage
- anothernewdude 1y agoBy the time re-industrialisation kicks in, the US will be well placed to replace China as a source of cheap labour, once living standards decrease to that level.
- kragen 1y agoWhat makes you think reindustrialization will kick in?
- pengaru 1y ago> By the time re-industrialisation kicks in, the US will be well placed to replace China as a source of cheap labour, once living standards decrease to that level. That's going to take some a serious baby boom, I'm not seeing it.
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoChina hasn't been where the cheap labor is for many years now. Cheap labor is in SEA (Mayasia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc) Bangladesh/India, Mexico, Brazil, and African nations like Nigeria.
- rayiner 1y agoThis is a funny accusation considering that the U.S.’s advantage over other countries has only grown over the last decade: https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2022/02/05/comparing-economic-growth-united-states-vs-europe/ https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2022/02/05/comparing-e... Germany’s per-capita GDP was 76% of the U.S. in 2015 and is 61% today.
- tokioyoyo 1y agoI hear that, but then you look at China’s GDP/pp numbers, QoL improvements over the decade, and can’t really take it that seriously.
- Hnrobert42 1y agoGDP per capita is not the only measure of forward progress.
- protocolture 1y agoI think when I was very young, the US briefly offered an appealing lifestyle. But its one of the few countries these days where I believe emigration would send me significantly backwards. GDP isnt an interesting metric for this conversation tbh. The US can be "Winning" the monetary accumulation race while still being a terrible place in most other aspects. Why dont you use "Adult literacy rate" as a comparison.
- yes_really 1y ago
- epistasis 1y agoThe US is being run according to what a weak and cowardly person thinks a strong person looks like. It's bad decisions again and again, fundamentally from insecurity and incompetence. It all with the idea of trying to impress some really scared people with blustery demonstrations of force, because the scared people imagine themselves using lots of force if they were ever to have power in their lives.
- Synthetic7346 1y agoA more apt analogy would be that everyone is going up the hill in 1st, and the US is going up in 5th, lugging the engine. It's a matte rif when and not if the engine stalls