7 ms·
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.“
by ThomW 7mo ago
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created
a lot of value for shareholders.“
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoClean tech will save the day (low carbon generation, batteries, electrification trajectories and rate of change, broadly speaking), but the global fossil industry will need to be dismantled faster than some will like. It is a matter of survival, not politics or economics. My hunch is there are not many globally who want to suffocate while trying to exist for shareholder value.
- lenerdenator 7mo agoI'd be willing to bet they go the Spaceballs route and make cans of oxygen a must-have item before they cut the emissions.
- HoldOnAMinute 7mo agoPerfect opportunity for a subscription. Amazon Oxygen. Subscribe and Save!
- lapcat 7mo ago> My hunch is there are not many who want to suffocate while trying to exist for shareholder value. Have you... read the news lately? You say it's not a matter of politics, but the politicians are absolutely trying to roll back the clock, push dirty tech, eliminate all environmental protections and regulations.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago> but the politicians are absolutely trying to roll back the clock, push dirty tech, eliminate all environmental protections and regulations Yes, in one country who seems hellbent on destroying itself. But looking globally, more and more countries seems to get it at this point, and at least move in the right direction, compared to others. The others will make themselves irrelevant faster than the others can reach a future without fossil fuels.
- lapcat 7mo ago> Yes, in one country who seems hellbent on destroying itself. One of the largest countries in the world, measured by size, population, economy, and military. If you hadn't noticed, the US can do a lot of damage to the rest of the world all by itself. And pollution does not respect borders. Global warming does not respect borders.
- embedding-shape 7mo agoRight, but again, it'll matter less and less as the US hegemony is dying and other countries will pick up the torch, and the ones who are taking over seem to be a bit more willing to both commit and execute on plans to reduce pollution and global warming in general.
- lapcat 7mo ago> the US hegemony is dying The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago> The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok. If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you, ignorance is a bliss sometimes I suppose. Don't look at how the average person live and survives, if you want to continue that way...
- lapcat 7mo ago> If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you I don't make such predictions. I'm not Nostradamus, and neither are you. I don't think anyone can predict what will happen exactly in a decade. After all, who predicted this a decade ago? > ignorance is a bliss This insult doesn't even make sense. I'm not experiencing bliss over the situation.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- tw04 7mo agoYou do us all a disservice by saying “the politicians”. The REPUBLICANS are attempting to ignore reality and burn more fossil fuels. Nobody else in America. Name the problem, otherwise you’re implying it’s a bipartisan effort.
- lapcat 7mo agoObama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’ https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2 https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caa... You have to be born yesterday to believe that Democratic leaders haven't merely hand-waved and virtue-signaled about global warming for decades. I realized this back in the 1990s. Democrats have superior rhetoric, and they are less openly hostile, but their long record of doing nothing to help is unsurpassed. They will fiddle while Republicans burn Rome. And don't forget that Joe Manchin for example was a Democrat, one who dominated Democratic policy during the Biden administration.
- M3L0NM4N 7mo agoWe need to push for clean tech obviously. I disagree with Republicans blocking wind farm construction and rolling back regulations, but American energy independence is important for national security, which is a shorter term issue than climate change. And developing more domestic clean energy helps with that as well.
- HoldOnAMinute 7mo agoExactly. As a Democrat my eyes were opened when I saw the senior leadership do absolutely nothing to impede Trump other than form a strongly worded tweet.
- knowaveragejoe 7mo agoYou do the people causing this problem a great service with false equivocations like this. It is clear one group would prefer us to ignore the problem and do nothing at all - in fact encourage the problematic behavior - and the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power.
- obsidianbases1 7mo agoWhere can I find some of that optimism in 2026?
- toomuchtodo 7mo agohttps://ember-energy.org/focus-areas/clean-electricity/ https://ember-energy.org/focus-areas/clean-electricity/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/global-solar-installations-surge-64-in-first-half-of-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/global-solar-install... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-fast-track-where-china-built-on-coal-india-is-building-on-sun/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci... https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/battery-price-vs-cumulative-production https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/battery-price-vs-cumulati... Trajectories are favorable and compelling. We can go faster though. “You can just do things.”
- throawayonthe 7mo agothat very much is a matter of politics, people should stop being afraid to acknowledge it real politics are often concerned with survival
- tw04 7mo agoI think you’re grossly underestimating how much the average American can deny with the assistance of social media. The number of people I personally know who thought the country was going to end on J6 who now call the entire thing a “political hoax” breaks my brain. Not to mention the endless posts about “where are all the people claiming COVID was so deadly now?” Who literally completely ignore the MILLIONS of deaths caused by COVID… Until these people have their own son or daughter killed by X - they’ll happily claim it’s not actually a problem. Or find something completely unrelated to blame instead if it doesn’t align with their Twitter feed.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agohttps://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/27/solar-powers-newest-friends-maga-influencers-00802954 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/27/solar-powers-newest... https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/11/05/impact-of-climate-change/ https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/11/05/impact-of-climate-cha... https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/08/19/global-climate-change-as-a-threat/ https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/08/19/global-climate-change... https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2024/12/09/how-americans-view-climate-change-and-policies-to-address-the-issue/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2024/12/09/how-americans... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-...
- boringg 7mo agoNuclear will save the day in combination with clean tech. Clean tech on its own is too slowly to be meaningfully impactful by the time we need it.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoIt takes ~ten years to build a nuclear generator. In that time, 10TW of solar PV will be deployed at current deployment rates (1TW/year), a bit higher than total global electricity generation capacity currently (~9TW). Fusion is solved, at a distance, with solar, wind, and batteries. Half an hour of sunlight on Earth can power humanity for a year. Long duration storage remains to be solved for, but look how far we’ve come in 1-2 decades. (at this time, short duration storage will likely be LFP, sodium, and other stationary friendly chemistries, but this could change as the state of the art advances rapidly and the commodities market fluctuates)
- boringg 7mo agoFusion isn't in our lifetimes. Its been 10 years away since the 50s - only to get more R&D grant funding for budget building. If it happened it would be a huge game changer for our economies but it is far away from deployment let along lab proven. It still requires more energy to start/maintain the reaction then it can produce - which is fundamental to success.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoSolar and wind are fusion generated energy from the sun. “Fusion at a distance.” Fossil fuels are ancient sunlight, ancient fusion.
- boringg 7mo agoA step to far my friend. If we abstract away everything then nothing matters.
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- pocksuppet 7mo agoBut everyone wants everyone else to suffocate while delivering shareholder value for themselves. Classic Prisoner's Dilemma.
- AlexandrB 7mo ago> My hunch is there are not many globally who want to suffocate while trying to exist for shareholder value. I hate this kind of hyperbole because it obscures the real dangers. No one is going to suffocate any time soon. Atmospheric CO2 is around 450ppm. The CO2 in a meeting room of a typical office can easily reach 1500ppm or more[1]. Is everyone in meeting rooms "suffocating"? [1] https://www.popsci.com/conference-carbon-dioxide-tired-office-work/ https://www.popsci.com/conference-carbon-dioxide-tired-offic...
- johnboiles 7mo agoYes in one way or another
- johnboiles 7mo agoAlso, these CO2 canaries are neat. We got one for our office https://a.co/d/02EKUci9 https://a.co/d/02EKUci9
- goodpoint 7mo agoI think you are being downvoted because people only skim "Clean tech will save the day" without reading the whole text.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoI post to educate and inform, the votes are meaningless to me as an observer and scholar field reporting. Humans are tricky, mental models are rigid and can be tied to identity. Facts, data, and information stand on their own regardless of belief. Reality > incomplete or suboptimal mental models.
- qingcharles 7mo agoI thought the current policy was "Drill, baby, drill!"?
- davidw 7mo agoAnd parking is abundant!
- amelius 7mo agoIf you have the money for it. https://easypark.rs/news/cheapest-countries-to-park-in/ https://easypark.rs/news/cheapest-countries-to-park-in/
- davidw 7mo agoIn the US, people bend over backwards to ensure that there is free storage for automobiles. And that housing and businesses are forced to include that expensive (parking spots can run into the 10's of thousands of dollars for some kinds of construction) amenity. Fortunately that's starting to change, but it is a big battle. And meanwhile, CO2 levels keep rising. ( This book goes into detail but is quite readable: https://www.henrygrabar.com/paved-paradise https://www.henrygrabar.com/paved-paradise )
- epistasis 7mo agoMore specifically, free for the person parking. All the rest of society pays massive amounts in construction costs: > adding tens of thousands of dollars per housing unit and, in some cases, increasing total construction costs by more than 50%. This is from a recent update to Donald Shoup's estimates from the classic "The high cost of free parking": https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9f88x32n https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9f88x32n
- wise_young_man 7mo agoAnd in many places makes more than minimum wage.
- throw0101a 7mo agoA few years old now, but still worth checking out: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
- slibhb 7mo ago[flagged]
- pluralmonad 7mo agoNever heard this take before. Care to elaborate? It seems like crop failure and disease are the typical causes of food shortages, if not outright human logistical failures. Sounds like saying pouring gasoline on a tiny fire is the only reason we aren't cold (ignoring that more firewood would be the solution). An unsustainable solution is not in-fact a good solution. So if your assertion is correct, then we should all prepare for our thatched huts in which we will starve.
- Krutonium 7mo agoI think their point is more along the lines of the energy availability of Fossel Fuels allows for the Mass Farming and Construction that we do, not so much that we can pour it on a fire in place of wood.
- _DeadFred_ 7mo ago40–50% of the nitrogen in our bodies come from fossil fuels via synthetic fertilizers.
- jbboehr 7mo ago> Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on agricultural machinery and chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and defoliants; which, as of 2014, are derived from crude oil, making agriculture increasingly reliant on crude oil extraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
- adrian_b 7mo agoThose are derived from crude oil only because for a long time that has been the cheapest way to make them, not because oil were necessary in any way. And it was the cheapest way only because most prices are fake, because they do not correspond to the cost of closed cycles of the materials used to make a product. All those things require mostly energy, air, water and a few abundant minerals and metals to be made. Technologies to make them in this way have already existed for almost a century (e.g. making synthetic hydrocarbons, to replace oil), but they are still very inefficient. However, the inefficiency is mostly due to the fact that negligible amounts of money have been allocated for the development of such technologies (because as long as the use of fossil oil is permitted, there is no way for synthetic hydrocarbons to be cheaper), in comparison with the frivolous amounts of money that are wasted on various fads, like AI datacenters.
- throw0101a 7mo agoFor those unaware, this is the dialogue/caption in Tom Toro's 2012 New Yorker cartoon: * https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 * https://tomtoro.com/cartoons/ https://tomtoro.com/cartoons/ * https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed-tom-toro.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed...
- highview 7mo agoIt's like the ending for the Dinosaur TV series.