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Every prediction we make seems to be reached sooner than expected. There is so many effects that we don't understand yet. Keeping with the "this is surprising"
by monneyboi 1mo ago
Every prediction we make seems to be reached sooner than expected. There is so many effects that we don't understand yet.
Keeping with the "this is surprising" narrative, or like this title, implying that we have any time at all, is not helping.
I would expect a less naive title from a platform like the economist.
- antonvs 1mo agoThe Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.
- measurablefunc 1mo ago[flagged]
- wazdra 1mo agoSarcasm?
- anonymars 1mo agoLike a carbon tax?
- rickydroll 1mo agoYes, a carbon tax would go a long way, but I think a broader view is to look for ways to use taxes to shift externalities back onto the organizations that created the problem. For example, data centers (a popular demon). The two main externalities are water consumption and power consumption. The tariffs for providing those services to a data center should be high enough to compensate the rest of the community for the impact the data center has on the community. For example, tariffs could be used to subsidize non-data-center power users. Higher tariffs could also be used to fund community solar and community BESS, helping provide greater local grid resilience. For example, the tariffs should be high enough to subsidize everybody else so they don't have to pay more for their electric service, roughly speaking. I would also advocate closing the on-prem generator loophole by classifying on-prem power generation services as belonging to or leased from local utilities, and setting the tariff for locally generated power to match the tariff they pay for drawing from the grid.
- esseph 1mo ago> I would also advocate closing the on-prem generator loophole by classifying on-prem power generation services as belonging to or leased from local utilities, Congrats, now all power generation is owned by the power company, including your own solar, wind, and fossil fuel generation.
- danans 1mo ago> your own solar, wind, and fossil fuel generation. The OP was clearly talking about on premises primary power generation for datacenters. The utility doesn't have a way to own my residential generation.
- rickydroll 1mo agoThey kinda do via net metering tariffs and curtailment. I'm a big fan of 0 export systems as a way to keep more for yourself. Now if one could get spot prices and sell your power then...the system gets more interesting.
- danans 1mo ago> They kinda do via net metering tariffs and curtailment. They don't own your system through net metering. If you have net metering you are using the grid as a battery, which has a cost - the infrastructure to support net metering isn't free. For a long time residential solar customers (like me) were being subsidized for the upstream load we put on the grid. > Now if one could get spot prices and sell your power then...the system gets more interesting. They are running a pilot of this in California (PG&E): https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/hourly-flex-pricing.html https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/hourly-flex-pricin... It's currently restricted to downstream only customers. They plan to admit net metering customers to the pilot in the future. Even outside of that, anyone can enroll a home battery in a demand response program to make money by supporting the grid during peak hours.
- 1mo ago
- dgellow 1mo agoI don’t know what the comment you responded to said, give it is flagged. But really, the time for carbon taxes was 15y ago. It’s not such a small bandaid compared to the size of the problem
- tomComb 1mo agoClearly you don’t read the economist
- 1attice 1mo agoI've read it since 1995 and I vividly remember them enthusiastically stanning Bjorn Lomborg's denialism. That's when I learned that the Economist is actually the world's first manifestation of a phenomenon now associated with ChatGPT: immaculately-phrased ideological assertions that are presented as common sense that all good, clever, right-thinking people already know. Like ChatGPT, the findings are delivered with polish and confidence, and like ChatGPT, you would not like what's in the sausage, were you to understand its provenance. It's devastatingly effective on a certain kind of man.
- antonvs 1mo agoI first read The Economist in the 1980s. Name a counterexample and I’ll show you how you’ve allowed yourself to be duped.