Comment by jtr1
13 hours ago
"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing. The cost of renewables has been plummeting for well over a decade. New renewables are now cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in most of the world, and in many regions they're already competitive with or cheaper than simply running existing fossil fuel infrastructure. As modern wars in Ukraine and now Iran are increasingly demonstrating, they are not only cost effective but rapidly a matter of energy sovereignty and national security.
That's not to say we won't need treaties and supranational entities for some aspects of decarbonization. Methane emissions outside of agriculture are notably a problem of enforcement.
We're badly in need of a collective update to our priors regarding renewables. In the US, a hostile policy toward renewables is not only shooting ourselves in the foot environmentally, we are now actively impoverishing ourselves due to entrenched economic interests across the fossil fuel industry and the cultural inertia they actively worked to develop.
A new US administration and Congress need to be voted in. There is one party who backs fossil fuel interests and denies anthropogenic climate change. They're currently in charge. The American public didn't see that as an important enough issue in 2024.
They are forcing power companies to run coal plants that they don’t want to run (at a loss).
In principle, you are right. Cheaper than coal renewables are winning. Don't forget though, that fighter jets can't operate on batteries.
> fighter jets can't operate on batteries
Gas turbines can run on a variety of fuels, natural, synthetic or a mixture of both. It’s actually one of the reasons that a turbine was chosen for the M1.
Yeah but gas turbines by definitions run on "gas" kerosene based fuel. If you're talking about a battery powered fan or prop that's very different.
They don’t contribute enough to matter
And using more electrics powered transport in other sectors frees up fossil fuels for other sectors.
So we won't be able to fight air wars over the last remaining pieces of arable land.
I'm convinced.
That’s a red herring. It’s not worth mentioning.
Except for the industries where it does matter. Trivializing the needs of complex and energy hungry supply chains, is bad faith. They are one of the many reasons fossil fuels are so widely used.
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>"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing.
Then why is my electricity and gasoline both so much more expensive than they used to be?