← Back to context

Comment by toomuchtodo

2 days ago

Clean 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.

61 comments

toomuchtodo

Reply
tw04  2 days ago

I 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.

pocksuppet  2 days ago

But everyone wants everyone else to suffocate while delivering shareholder value for themselves. Classic Prisoner's Dilemma.

obsidianbases1  2 days ago

Where can I find some of that optimism in 2026?

throawayonthe  2 days ago

that very much is a matter of politics, people should stop being afraid to acknowledge it

real politics are often concerned with survival

lapcat  2 days 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.

  • tw04  2 days ago

    You 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.

    • embedding-shape  2 days ago

      To be fair, looking from the outside, democrats don't seem to be very eager to do anything about it either, most politicians in the US seems to be playing for the same team; the rich and wealthy.

      1 reply →

    • lapcat  2 days ago

      Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’ 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.

      25 replies →

  • embedding-shape  2 days 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  2 days 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.

      4 replies →

goodpoint  2 days ago

I think you are being downvoted because people only skim "Clean tech will save the day" without reading the whole text.

  • toomuchtodo  2 days ago

    I 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.

AlexandrB  2 days 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-offic...

boringg  2 days ago

Nuclear 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.

  • triceratops  2 days ago

    I think you have that backwards. Building nuclear is slow slow slow. I can have new solar on my rooftop this year.

    • boringg  2 days ago

      While that is true that there is a lag time to deploy nuclear - that is a vestige of the last 40 years of regulating it out of existence. That has changed - technology has improved and regulatory is under scrutiny. The difference is that once nuclear starts to roll out, as it will in the next 3-5 years, we will be seeing large deployments of clean dedicated load ripple through our electrical system in a product assembly line.

      Solar and storage are great assets - and will continue to grow but they have other sets of constraints and deploy at small scale (relatively). The large scale deployments have long time horizons.

      2 replies →

  • toomuchtodo  2 days ago

    It 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  2 days ago

      Fusion 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.

      3 replies →