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Climate change isn't driven by human defined borders either. It's driven by total CO2 emissions. If a per-capita rate is non sensical then border based emission
by tock 11mo ago
Climate change isn't driven by human defined borders either. It's driven by total CO2 emissions. If a per-capita rate is non sensical then border based emissions are even more non sensical. Greenland only emits 0.001% of the total. Greenland is 12000x a better country than the US wow. This is exactly why per-capita is used.
- im3w1l 11mo agoYeah and this is clearest when you consider federations. Imagine if you count the US as 50 separate countries, suddenly they are much more climate friendly! That's of course absurd.
- mulmen 11mo agoClimate change isn’t driven by borders but energy policy is defined within them.
- tock 11mo agoAnd no policy is gonna willingly reduce energy consumption which is directly co-related with QOL when other countries have much higher per-capita consumption. Politically humans need fairness.
- mulmen 11mo agoWe don’t need to reduce energy consumption. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- tock 11mo agoWe know. There are many reasons why countries choose more polluting sources of energy. Part of which is costs. The world runs on incentives. Maybe rich countries like the US can subsidize clean energy for poorer countries like India. Because consumption is definitely not going to come down.
- immibis 11mo agoSolar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas. You know the conspiracy theories about how the oil companies are keeping perpetual motion machines hidden? Solar panels are literally that. With the caveat that they only work in sunlight. So they're not great when you need energy at night. But even if you triple your costs to account for only working 8 hours a day, they're cheaper than anything else.
- reliabilityguy 11mo ago> Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas. Cheaper before the incentives?
- mulmen 11mo agoYes. Even if you count the fossil fuel subsidies.
- reliabilityguy 11mo agoCan you share the source? I’m very curious.
- mulmen 11mo agoFirst search result: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-energy-are-cheaper-than-electricity-from-fossil-fuel-plants/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-en...
- nradov 11mo agoFor a lot of industrial processes, being limited to running during sunny periods would cause costs to go up by a lot more than a factor of three. The grid scale storage necessary to make solar power work for heavy industry remains extremely expensive and capacity limited. Costs are starting to come down but it will take decades.