COP26, the latest climate change shindig, starts next week. While we wait, let's take a quick tour d'horizon of the world:
- The United States has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas.
- Germany has coal.
- Canada has tar sands.
- Norway has North Sea oil.
- China has vast coal reserves.
- Mexico has offshore oil.
- The entire Middle East is swimming on a lake of oil.
- Russia has natural gas.
- Britain has North Sea oil and . . . coal?
- Etc.
This is just a tiny sampling, of course. But now let's take a look at what each of these countries is doing to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels:
- The United States has developed fracking in order to pump more natural gas and shale oil, and is currently being held hostage by a single senator who doesn't want to endanger the tiny bit of coal mining in his state.
- Germany continues to mine coal. Over the past decade it very deliberately eliminated its nuclear power base rather than reduce its dependence on coal.
- Canada is fighting to develop pipelines to bring its oil through the US for export overseas.
- Norway's entire economy is dependent on continued oil pumping from its offshore fields.
- China continues to build coal-fired electric plants and recently ordered its mines to "produce as much coal as possible."
- Mexico has increased its annual investment in Pemex in order to "revitalize" the company and increase its output of offshore oil.
- Saudi Arabia recently announced that it had no intention of ever reducing its pumping of oil. It's safe to say the entire Middle East feels the same way.
- Russia's economy depends on fossil fuel extraction and it has spent the past decade working hand in glove with Germany to build yet another pipeline to deliver natural gas to Western Europe.
- The coal industry is all but extinct in Britain, but when a new seam of coal was discovered a few years ago plans were made immediately to build a huge new open-cast mine because it would be good for the local economy.
From the brownest to the greenest, there is literally not a single country willing to leave fossil fuels in the ground if that requires even a minor economic sacrifice. Not one.
Put bluntly, this means that no country has any standing to criticize any other. Every single country on earth either (a) has no fossil fuel reserves, or (b) is committed to extracting every last dram of it. As long as this is the case, it's hard to argue that anything else matters except at the margins.
In a nutshell, this is why I believe our only real hope is to spend huge amounts of money on R&D in the hope that we discover a genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels. The odds may be long on that, but all the promises in the world are pretty much meaningless as long as drilling and pumping and fracking and mining continue apace because national economies depend on it. COP26 will, like its previous 25 iterations, do nothing to change this.
I noticed no mention of Japan, unless that etc. is doing an extraordinarily heavy lift.
I have to think, though, that a resource poor archipelago is definitely looking to harness wind, solar, & biomass, among other non-fossil sources, & even if nuclear took a major hit after Fukushima.
Yet you forget 2/3 of all emissions come from the burning of refined oil. Maybe you need to think about this issue rather than blaring a nonsensical post.
Do anyone truly expect we , in the global north, will be able to handle climate breakdown without sacrificing some of our privileges?
We who are having it all are the ones who have caused climate breakdown, we who are living as if we are living on a planet with infinite resources and we who living as if tomorrow doesn’t exist.
Remember, even low income groups in countries like USA is extremely wealthy in a global perspective
We are used to be able to travel hundreds of miles in all directions in just hours at an affordable cost. We are used to be able to fly to romantic remote islands just for fun at any time we choose. We who are able to buy new outfits at any time.
If some politicians or some activists are implying we need to scale down , pay a little more for gas or electricity, in order to save the future for all coming generations are we freaking out and calling them prophets of doom and we are instead turning to politicians who are ensuring us that they are going to handle climate without demanding us to sacrifice anything . They are promising us to reach “net zero”(net zero is a scam) in some distant future and that will be sufficient to save the future of the human race
They are lying!
…. and let’s just forget about the poor ignorant ones who are voting for politicians who are claiming it’s just a hoax
An inconvenient truth from a Swede
No, but we'll survive it better than the global south and then when they invade desperate to survive we will kill them.
And I don't mean invade as in illegal immigration. I mean armed groups trying to sieze territory so they don't die. That is what is coming.
Yes. Resource wars are the biggest threat to humanity in the next 30 years.
"Oh, so you're condemning my people to dehydration? Well fine, I'll nuke your rivers so you die too!"
This is the weakness of capitalism, i.e. free markets. People's income and wealth, especially rich people's income and wealth are tied to specific industries and they and all their investors* stand to lose when and if a real transition occurs. They are fighting tooth and nail to hang on to their profits. And not only that: They do not invest in anything that might help a company transition to a new future--even though in this case the early research was done in the oil industry itself and the industry has had time since about 1970 to get ready for the transition. But "the market" (that mighty God) would consider any expenses in that direction "waste" and we can't have "waste".
* including a large percentage of retirement portfolios--one of the damaging aspects of tying retirement safety to private (if subsidized) saving.
No, there is no capitalism now. It died in 2008. You just have governments logging its body around like "weekend at bernie's" style. The party really ended at the industrial revolution's twight. A system that never did work. It was just a large ponzi scheme.
The main problem with capitalism is that the markets are never truly free. I don't mean regulations, because more are needed, but I mean in terms of power and ability to be disrupted (in a good way). Without regulations, capitalism devolves into oligarchy and rent seeking. Monopolies and monopsony. That, and the ability to externalizing costs.
Just a little anecdote clarifying how far back people have been concerned. My family was very good friends with a gentleman who was a top executive in Chevron (he was also top geologist) and told me several times that they had intense discussions (arguments) in the offices about pollution and global warming, in the late 1950s and 1960s. He gave me a book about global warming published in 1965 about how the world can graduate to alternative forms of energy.
It was around that time that people discovered the cyclic nature of ice ages. And plate tectonics.
The Climate Wars documentary covers climate discussions from the 70's. It's a bit old now, but still holds up:
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earth-the-climate-wars/
We have genuinely cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar and wind. But....
[Despite a massive drop in costs, renewables haven’t replaced fossil fuels at the rate you might expect. That’s because the investments, policies, and very infrastructure of the energy industry as a whole are very much skewed in favor of fossil fuels.
While it is cheaper to build renewables when considering a new plant, that metric doesn’t necessarily apply to running a fossil fuel plant that already exists, explains Ashley Langer, an energy economist at the University of Arizona. Sometimes, she adds, the regulatory structure of utilities actually makes it more profitable to keep a coal or natural gas plant running.
Langer says this is especially true for the state-regulated monopolies that supply power in about half of US states. These investor-owned utilities are guaranteed a certain rate of return on their investments in power facilities, which basically guarantees continued earnings in exchange for running those plants. Even if the actual market costs of their energy sources would make operations costly, these monopolies are set up so that that’s not really a concern.
“The thing that’s really preventing us from rapidly transitioning is what we call the lock-in effect,” says Paul. “We have existing fossil plants where we’ve already paid to build them and the cost of producing one more unit of electricity is cheaper from using existing infrastructure than building new infrastructure in most cases. So given that we’ve already paid the upfront cost of this fossil fuel infrastructure, the economics don’t quite line up yet where we’re going to facilitate a rapid phase out of fossil fuel plants prior to the end of their life cycle.”]
https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/cheap-renewable-energy-vs-fossil-fuels/
Solar and wind aren't nearly enough.
https://skepticalscience.com/detailed-look-at-renewable-baseload-energy.html
Yes they are, and the reports at the link were written before wind and solar became as cheap as they are now & before battery storage made such enormous advances.
Please don't feed the troll.
Every long term investment creates a lock in effect. It is only made if the expectation is long term use. Once it is in place it dictates use patterns. At some point in the future wind turbines and solar farms will also create lock in effects.
Exactly. It's cost/difficulty/path-dependency issues of conversion, not the cost of renewable energy itself.
and the entrenched interests fighting it every step of the way...
Since solar and wind (and tidal and other renewables) are intermittent, you need storage to fill in the gaps. Renewables are already cheap enough to compete with a lot of fossil fueled electricity, even considering building costs. But you need to overbuild the renewables somewhat, and you need storage in addition. (Storage can be anything from pumped hydro to second life batteries to flow batteries etc.)
From an engineering standpoint, all this is doable already.
Nope, that is simply not true. I don't even have to click on the link to know that they're not including the cost of storage. (Clicks on link) No, they didn't include the cost of storage. Whadda surprise.
That's far from the entire sunk cost problem. Billions of vehicles all over the world need fossil fuels; ditto stoves and gardening tools and boats and barbecues and God knows what else. Who's going to buy me a new electric car? Who's going to buy my neighbor a new electric boat? Who's going to gather up all our two-stroke mowers and leaf-blowers and replace them with battery-operated ones? What's my other neighbor supposed to do with the outdoor pizza oven he smokes the street out with on Sundays? Who's going to pay to replace our gas hot water systems and wok burners?
In other words most people on the planet have invested significant amounts of money in assets that only work with fossil fuels. Nobody's willing to suggest a staggeringly costly buyback scheme; few people are willing to suggest banning them; so we're left with schemes that will replace them as they wear out with emission-free power sources. A process that will take decades.
It's happening. California has outlawed gas powered leaf blowers, lawn mowers, edgers and such. As the old ones die the new ones will be electric. Many cities have outlawed new gas water heaters. As the old ones die they will be replace with heat pump water heaters. California is considering this ban as well.
We are building a new home with no gas connection. The solar panels on the roof will also power our electric car. Batteries will time shift power to the evening and support us during the times the electric utility is off line.
We need the federal government to eliminate subsidies for coal, oil and gas. Let them stand on their own.
It will be interesting to see what happens as gas stations start disappearing as demand fades away. This will cause all sorts of problems for those clinging to their gas powered cars. Electric cars can plug in at home. Not so a gas powered car.
We have seen a huge investment in battery development. I think we'll see much better batteries in cars within two years.
As I said, the replacement process will be very gradual. Much too slow to achieve the kinds of emission reductions that are necessary to avoid disaster. The Philippines, for example, was arguing 10 years ago about how to phase out jeepneys and tricycles, some of the worst polluting vehicles on the planet. They also constitute the only moderately effective public transport system in the country and the investment of a life's savings for hundreds of thousands of small business owners.
They're still arguing. The government points proudly to electric jeepneys operating in the wealthy part of Metro Manila, but it's meaningless tokenism. They represent a minscule proportion of the total national fleet.
No regulation was required to get people to move from the typewriter to the computer: the computer was clearly a superior product.
Until 'clean' energy is clearly better, measured by end user price, than dirty energy, there will always be a conflict/have complicated economic incentives. Therefore, without a robust tax structure, something that makes 'dirty' energy much more expensive than clean, there will be political pushback and incentives for resistance.
There are and have been major supports for fossil fuels forever. That ranges from military interventions to keep the oil flowing to not paying for climate change induced (or made worst) disasters. The coal/power plant industry pushed back against scrubbing out particulates--yet do not pay for the health damages they cause.
Fair point golack and your insight supports my broader perspective. Lots of end users mostly focus/care about, their personal cost (and access ) to purchase energy.
Think about it this way, there are about 300 million Chinese, today, without consistent power: they want electricity, they can afford, and are not focused in on climate change. If electricity, made from coal, is the cheapest then there is a conflict.
Bottom line, until 'clean' energy is the cheapest (likely because of taxation on dirty energy), adoption will be a challenge.
At a time when computers were replacing typewriters, my income was about $30,000. A decent typewriter cost about $150. That was about 10 hours pay, pre-tax. A decent computer to do word-processing cost about $1,800; that was about 3 weeks pay. And of course, the computer could also do spreadsheets, maintain a calendar for me, help me with drawing diagrams and flow-charts, and help me with my accounting and taxes.
So the computer, while clearly superior in MANY ways, was also affordable. And nobody had to ask me to give up anything for it, other than a few extra dollars.
All of which is totally in sync with your second paragraph, which is indeed a high hurdle to overcome.
A lot of people eager for us to transition off fosil fuels still don't appreciate the environmental tradeoffs we're going to have to make to covert our auto and truck fleets to batteries and most of our industrial and household energy to wind/solar/hydroelectric. Solar farms have a huge land footprint and run into NIMBYism virtually everywhere. Same with windfarms. Batteries require lithium and other rare earth metals that have to be mined. But every time someone wants to explore for lithium, a thousand injunctions roll in. Yet if we're serious about not burning fossil fuels any more, these things are going to have to be scaled up massively. But nobody wants a huge, multi-megawatt turbine in churning away in their back yard. Or a huge solar array across the street. Something's gotta give, or we get cracking on cold fusion.
"our only real hope is to spend huge amounts of money on R&D in the hope that we discover a genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels."
This is something I have been saying for a long time. Some people keep claiming that direct solar is already cheaper, but if that is true why is China (among other countries) investing in more coal production? Do the coal producers or local economies really have that much influence on the central Chinese government?
Aside from solar conversion itself, energy storage technology is still far from adequate. Current types of batteries have high environmental costs and will just not work in all applications. There was a big fad in the media a few years ago for hydrogen fuel-cell technology, but interest seems to have vanished. Sorry, hydrogen is not a source of energy- the technology is a substitute for batteries. There are reports of revival of private interest in fusion, but actual results do not seem to justify this - it may be a scam.
The free-enterprise economic system has worked well up to the present, but exploitation of fossil fuels is what has made the current standard of living possible, not any particular economic system. Individual countries adopt central direction (socialism) in times of crisis (war and some environmental crises such as hurricanes), but defeating global warming might require global central direction. How likely is that?
This is something I have been saying for a long time. Some people keep claiming that direct solar is already cheaper, but if that is true why is China (among other countries) investing in more coal production?
As far as I know, solar is indeed cheaper once the infrastructure is built. The impediment is the cost of the conversion, especially when a large (or in China's case, gigantic) hydrocarbon energy-harvesting structure is already in place. In the case of China, fear of social disruption/mass unemployment also play a role. Storage challenges flowing from intermittency issues can be addressed by nuclear plants.
Storage. Storage. Storage. That's the problem.
It's not true because propopents of alternative energy seldom -- if ever -- factor in the costs of storage. Damn them all to hell for their dishonesty. Of course, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find that a lot 'o these wights aren't so much pro-alternative energy as they are anti-nuke.
Storage is important, but a complete impediment. We are building a new home with no gas, all electric. We'll have a heat pump water heater which can be scheduled to heat more when our solar cells are producing power. Similarly, the HVAC heat pumps can run more in the afternoon when the sun is shining and turn off at night.
In a nutshell, this is why I believe our only real hope is to spend huge amounts of money on R&D in the hope that we discover a genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels.
According to Noah Smith:
Smith says the technology is already here, no "discovery" of "genuinely cheaper" energy is needed: We just have to come up with the money to change the energy infrastructure from carbon to non-carbon.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/who-is-the-real-problem-when-it-comes
I think Smith has ignored a few particularly relevant stumbling blocks.
(1) We are accustomed to summoning energy when/where we want it. In our homes and workplaces, we have a switch to turn on electricity. We assume when we turn it on, it will be be there. In an environment of "green" electricity, that will require HUGE storage capacity that does not currently exist at ANY price. And creating that capacity will have major environmental [negative] impacts.
(2) We are accustomed to having energy available when/where we want it to power our transportation. In its current form, we can reload our transportation devices quickly and easily, and continue on our way relatively trouble-free. We have a mature infrastructure dedicated to enabling that, and enabling the transportation we use. Converting to green transportation will require a HUGE infrastructure investment, and if anybody is thinking that electricity can replace hydrocarbons to power transportation, they better come up with a way to reload our vehicles in minutes instead of hours. They also ought to spend some time figuring out how to load enough electrical energy in a ship to power a trans-oceanic voyage. And a way to load enough electrical energy into an airplane and still leave it air-worthy. And a way to make an electrical airplane fly fast.
All of which argues that Kevin's premise is exactly correct. We are nowhere near the technical knowledge and capability we will need to go green. We need huge investment in R&D to be able to overcome the above obstacles.
I suspect Smith is right. If you decarbonize ground transport, offsets can take care of fossil fuels for shipping and air travel (until technology is perfected). The intermittency/storage issues can be tackled by nuclear power. (Nuclear power plants are pricey, but cheaper designs are apparently ready to go, and in any event you only need enough new nuclear capacity to top off the rest of the green electricity sector, to deal with intermittency problems).
OMG! Nuclear?!? We can’t have that. It’s scary…
Jasper:
"If you decarbonize ground transport..."
Apparently you plan to wave a magic wand and make it happen. I see no plan to make it feasible on a scale to be effective in decarbonizing, just in somewhat reducing.
"...offsets can take care of fossil fuels for shipping and air travel"
And how do you plan to burn those "offsets" without filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases?
"The intermittency/storage issues can be tackled by nuclear power."
Oh right, I see it all now. The new advertising campaign by the Sierra Club: "Get on board the Green Train. Nuclear is now green."
Apparently you plan to wave a magic wand and make it happen. I see no plan to make it feasible on a scale to be effective in decarbonizing, just in somewhat reducing.
I'm not contending there's a "plan" —obviously there isn't one. That's the issue. I'm just putting forth the argument that technology isn't the problem. Politics is. (Arguably economics isn't the problem either, because the savings we'll be realizing almost immediately — as well as the boost to growth from abundant and cheap clean energy — will more than makeup for the transition costs). According to N. Smith, when you get right down to it, the real impediment is simply the fossil fuel industry: society as a whole will be richer, but Exxon and Saudi Arabia won't be. And they buy a lot of votes.
Noah Smith, ugh. I wouldn't quote him if I were you. He's in Argle Bargle territory.
I may take a look at the article again and see what kind of push back he got from his commenters.
Why would you think Smith knows more than Xi Jinping? Unlike US politicians or CEO's, Xi doesn't have to go by the profit outlook for the next few years, yet China is not committing to solar. On the other hand, maybe China is doing research on some of these things. Would that get reported in US media?
Last time I looked China was finishing a new nuclear plant (literally) every three to four months. Solar buildout here (I live in Beijing) certainly appears to be massive. And a flat majority of new registered cars in this city are EVs (good luck trying to get a gas-powered vehicle registered). China's not nearly where it needs to be with green energy infrastructure, of course, and in the interim the CCP isn't going to risk allowing people to shiver in the dark. So yeah, China's still burning way too much coal. But decarbonization, which is ongoing in China and appears to be quite a bit further along than the US, doesn't seem to be stopping growth. But in any event I'm not sure why anybody would think domestic politics don't play a role in China (as in the US). Their system is different, but it's definitely not devoid of politics. And one problem is there are millions of workers toiling in the hydrocarbon sector. They can't all easily be reemployed managing wind farms.
I dont think that R&D breakthroughs are that important, at least it won't lead to faster adoption of new green assets or retirement of polluting assets. What's more important is overcoming the influence of those who own the income producing assets that will be replaced by greener alternatives.
This blocker remains in place no matter the cost efficiency achieved by the next R&D breakthroughs.
Until we develop a market to own the sunlight or wind, renewables wont achieve the same influence with decision makers. If Wall Street was sitting on trillions of dollars of wind and sunlight reserves, the Green New Deal would be bipartisan and the US would be giving away free electric cars.
"In a nutshell, this is why I believe our only real hope is to spend huge amounts of money on R&D in the hope that we discover a genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels."
Too late for that. Our only real hopes are some combination of (a) carbon capture and (b) geoengineering. Global warming for the next 100 years and attendant resource wars in the next 30 years are inevitable, otherwise, regardless of how fast the planet goes green.
UK electricity production by source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/UK_electricity_production_by_source.png
Not there yet, but not terrible progress, no?
No it's not, but UK governments have consistently failed to do the 'big picture' stuff - it's all very well having the renewable power sources, but you need storage and infrastructure (and cables) and there's been almost none of that because that isn't going to be done by the power companies themselves.
So yes, we have a pretty decent record on renewable production but we're still effectively dependent on fossil fuels to keep the country running.
(Not that I would single them out on this particular area, of course. UK governments haven't done 'big picture' stuff on anything at all since the neoliberal revolution of ~1980. The US government has struggled in a similar way.)
It's not absolute cost but relative cost that counts, hence driving up the cost of fossil fuels (and the use thereof) should be just as effective as bringing down that of renewables. A carbon tax would be faster than R&D. In fact it would drive R&D better than government ever could. And if large markets like the US and the EU dare defy economic orthodoxy and impose a carbon tax on imports, exporters like China will reduce emissions fast.
The problem is not that coal is too cheap but that politicians are.
Not only won’t suppliers turn off the taps, consuming pundits still insist on buying pure ICE vehicles and jetting off to other continents on a whim…
This isn't an evuul fossil fuel problem; this is an evuul consumer problem, full stop.
Nothing will be done to prevent climate change. It remains to be see if that will be catastrophic climate change or change to which humanity can adapt. I’m betting on and hoping for the latter… Not that there’s anything we can do about it.
Nothing done so far has made one bit of difference. It’s too late.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
Just so. Not enough pain is being felt in the polluting countries. I'm a prime example: I am a (relatively) poor person living in SoCal, and easily able to avoid any discomfort due to climate change. All my millions of neighbors in this part of the world are in the same situation. Nothing serious will be done, because we will rebel against any government entity that suggests we must reduce our standard of living.
Translation: Worldwide, things will have to get much shittier before anything will be done to stanch the bleeding. Who knows how long that will take or what the level of discomfort will have to be? But from where I sit, the end is not visible.
And yet, no one is actually asking you to reduce your standard of living in order to use fewer fossil fuels. Passing building codes encouraging new construction to be more energy efficient, to not use natural gas, and to use solar where reasonable, won't raise your mortgage nor your rent.
Picking a date to stop producing internal combustion engines for passenger cars won't increase your costs.
Stopping building new coal plants and decommissioning old plants improves your standard of living.
Instead of "All my millions of neighbors in this part of the world..." I should have said "...my millions of neighbors the world over..." We in southern California are not the only climate jerks.
That’s ok. From the perspective of this NorCal sitting in his armchair you had it right the first time 🙂
No one will ever do something if their financial incentive is to not do it.
There was a recent write up of a study of growing crops under solar panels. They picked plants that preferred indirect light and...those plants did better than under full sun. Also, they needed less watering. The solar panels did better with plants growing beneath them--in general, things were slightly cooler for the panels.
Are solar panels better than trees--probably not, but they can be moved out of the way if you need to use a tractor.
https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-now-theres-a-bright-idea/
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Solar prices keep dropping and efficiency keeps increasing. It's less a shifting point and more of a slope. But, I understand that solar is not accessible to l00% of the world and that it's not a total replacement.
And that's why, even though everyone keeps pointing to fusion as pie-in-the-sky, I think we should be spending several billion dollars to bring fusion to reality sooner than later.
CCS is almost comical. We're still going to need it because the world is most certainly going to overspend its carbon budget by billions of megatons. But, if people are upset at windmills all over the place, they're most certainly not going to accept rows of mega-sized industrial fans, even if they have a dystopian steam/cyber-punk appeal to them.
We do transport electricity today on the order of at least a thousand miles. (British Columbia to Los Angeles.) So, yeah, solar is basically accessible to 100% of the world. Research stations in Antarctica are well within round-off error. And there's wind. And there's hydro.
It won't be long before mining isn't done by humans anyway.
Democrats need to campaign on We Need to Get People Out of Mines!
Because nobody wants to work in a coal mine; coal miners only do it because they have no other option.
Democrats need to campaign on giving them options, and subsidizing their relocation.
So the preachy Lefties try to think for the Coal Miners.... whereas there is quite the evidence that many do really ID with being a miner and they certainly don't want Lefty intello eggheads retraining them and telling them to move elsewhere.
Extraordinarily blind and condescending.
You so often say things that are extraordinarily blind condescension it is an actual joy when you come up with something else. I treasure those occasions.
You're stepping on a rake here though.
Working in a mine is a very focusing experience. People rationalize and make a virtue of what they have to do, particularly when they can do nothing else. When someone like a miner says something like that it's for that reason, and, of course, trapped in this, it's hard for them to hear that what they're doing is wrong on top of it.
Nonetheless there aren't that many coal miners in the US and most of them won't vote for the Democrat whatever he says, so it's best to do what's right and get them out of there while they can still live a few years longer.
And, in any event, in fifteen or twenty years when every one of those people are replaced with robots, it would be best to have a plan for them, wouldn't it? Because a skilled miner has little to offer in any other field.
This might not be entirely the case. I heard an NPR news segment a few years ago. It was about coal miners, and the gist was they wanted to be coal miners. Something about their way of life. They were being offered alternative employment, but their fathers and grandfathers were coal miners, and by damn they did NOT want any fancy "retraining." They just wanted their coal mining jobs back, to hell with cave-ins, black lung disease and climate change.
There's a lot of identity in something like that. I think they're NUTZ, but identity matters a lot, something we learn every couple of years.
I never suffered that problem, my father was a farmer, I ran away from the life as fast as I could.
Forget about the magic R&D fix, Kevin. I am an energy engineer and spent 41 years in energy research. There are absolute cast-in-stone physical reasons why no one will ever invent a "cheaper" source of energy than fossil fuels . . . UNTIL we are willing to put a price on carbon that reflects the ecological AND economic damage it does.
Realize that the chemical energy stored in fossil fuels is really concentrated solar energy from long, long ago. Sunlight and water were processed into carbohydrates by plants, and some of those chemicals were fortuitously buried underground, where pressure, heat, and time made them even more concentrated.
My point here is that a lot of the work to make that energy highly concentrated was done by NATURE. All we have to do it remove it from the ground and burn it. The only thing that can compete is energy from radionuclides like uranium or thorium, but we've decided we're more fearful of the potential hazards from those than we are of the slow but steady disturbance of our climate by burning fossil fuels (as well as the health damage via air pollution).
We just can't get it through our thick heads that reducing the long-term (meaning just a few decades) harm is worth some minor costs and inconvenience right now. And the blame falls not only on the consumers nor only on industry, but on both. Prioritizing the short-term status quo over future benefits is baked into our DNA. People are never going to spontaneously decide to grow up; it has to be done by political leaders.
And the only way to solve this is to tax the carbon. People can wail all they want about how that's "politically impossible." But that doesn't change the fact that it's the only thing that will work.
Funny, you don't seem to have actually learned anything in 41 years. The cost to manufacture, transport, and install roof coverings is pretty much the same, at scale, whether or not the roof covering produces electricity as a side effect.
Kevin is right; there is no way that we are going to stop using fossil fuels sufficiently to deal with this. And even if we were able to somehow cut new carbon emissions deeply, there is so much greenhouse gas already in the atmosphere that we are still in DEEP trouble
Which leaves carbon sequestration and geo-engineering as our best chance for reducing the pain that climate change will being.
Yes, well, we have a "genuinely cheaper alternative to fossil fuels". But we're unwilling to use it and continue to subsidize the use of fossil fuels. So your actual thesis is that we should spend massive amounts of R&D figuring out how to extract co2 from the atmosphere. Or orbit solar shades or something.