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When it began to dawn on them that their political "side" was intentionally ignoring climate change to boost fossil fuel profiteers they fell back to mocking hi

When it began to dawn on them that their political "side" was intentionally ignoring climate change to boost fossil fuel profiteers they fell back to mocking hippies and silly women environmentalist for supporting feel good renewables instead of manly nuclear. It made them feel much better, so now they need to desperately avoid learning anything about either renewables or nuclear power because their ego will collapse if confronted with reality.

toomuchtodo 20d ago
Their side will never learn, as it isn't an education issue, but an ideology issue. Anti renewables is deeply ingrained in their identity and belief system. We just need to keep powering through the energy transition while ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. You're not going to logic and reason someone out of ideology [1] [2]. Same reason 100k churches are going to close over the next 5-10 years [3]. The ideology ages out, because it is rigid and in many aspects, unwavering versus being able to change. Not many coal generators (~182GW) [4] and mines [5] in the US left to go. Keep going. Fossil gas gets pushed out next. (If the US replaced all of the ag land it uses for biofuels, about the size of Oregon, with solar PV, it would produce more power than the entire country consumes while being wildly more efficient) [1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-county-may-reverse-renewables-solar-ban https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-coun... [2] https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ ("755 counties have ordinances against renewables, and 61% of those counties are rural.") [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 (citations) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 (citations) [5] https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c2496791822964cfaa7670#overview https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c24967918... ("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)

toomuchtodo 20d ago

Their side will never learn, as it isn't an education issue, but an ideology issue. Anti renewables is deeply ingrained in their identity and belief system. We just need to keep powering through the energy transition while ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. You're not going to logic and reason someone out of ideology [1] [2]. Same reason 100k churches are going to close over the next 5-10 years [3]. The ideology ages out, because it is rigid and in many aspects, unwavering versus being able to change. Not many coal generators (~182GW) [4] and mines [5] in the US left to go. Keep going. Fossil gas gets pushed out next. (If the US replaced all of the ag land it uses for biofuels, about the size of Oregon, with solar PV, it would produce more power than the entire country consumes while being wildly more efficient) [1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-county-may-reverse-renewables-solar-ban https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-coun... [2] https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ ("755 counties have ordinances against renewables, and 61% of those counties are rural.") [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 (citations) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 (citations) [5] https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c2496791822964cfaa7670#overview https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c24967918... ("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)