Comment by Gomotono
5 hours ago
Because people didn't care that oil and gas is breaking our planet 100 years ago. Or didn't knew and capitalism made the people in power very very rich very fast.
At that time we still lived and heated normally. For sure the brits destroyed a lot of their trees but you know? They could.
What do you think would have happened if we had a small population collaps at that time and HAD to consume sustainable? We would be less people for sure, but we wouldn't have killed the missing people, they would have not been created in the first place.
We created the first solar panel 1883. The first EV in 1884.
China is still using coal because they are in the same dilemma as we all are: we ignored the impact and keep the status quo. But China build a lot of coal plants for renewing aging ones and they are massivle building out solar.
So why are my neighbours not doing it? Man i talked to sooooo many people about this, are you ready? Because people don't care. Or they don't like new things. Or they don't understand why it would be better.
Yes thats the conspiricy. People can't do the math, don't care about climate change or just don't want something to change.
Everyone i know who has solar panels on the roof, a small battery and heat pump literlay saving money and would never switch back. Every single one of them.
The Industrial Revolution started in 1760-1800 and was driven by coal, completely replacing wood as the primary industrial fuel. We almost exterminated whales and deforested the entirety of Europe before discovering fossil fuels, which both bounced back after.
The first EV an the first solar panel are second order effects and only possible because of the industrial revolution driving massive human innovation and growth. Good luck reaching the levels of industrialization and tech required to mass produce solar panels by using wood. Producing 1 ton of charcoal from wood, requires 4-7 tons of wood. To smelt a single ton of iron you then again need multiple tons of coal. Good luck industrializing without turning the whole planet into woodchopping and wood planting farm. It was all made possible by fossil coal, oil and gas.
Everything is essentially downstream of industrialization enabled by coal and subsequently the superior oil and gas.
And saying that oil and gas was breaking our planet doesn't make sense, if anything these are great replacements of coal.
You are also diminishing the brutal life of pre-industrialization times. Staggering high child-mortality rates, low life expectancy, and an high amounts of deaths caused by starvation and extreme weather events, like droughts and floods.
Solar plus battery takes many years to be paid back. If this setup is actually cheaper, industrial scale solar+battery would be huge. Solar on its own is a great cheap pairing with stable energy sources like hydro, gas and coal, which is partly why china is doing this.
People do actually adopt green tech when it makes financially sense, just look at the huge boom of adoption of AC and heatpumps around the world. Because it massively reduces electricity cost of heating and cooling.
Its not because people cant do math.
The revolution could still have happened differently and slower.
I didn't say it would have been possible without ANY coal but you do understand that the amount of co2 we put into our atmosphere is not from 1760? All of that big huge co2 output happend in the last 100 year...
Solar plus batterie is currently winning. In germany the problem again is NOT the economy, its literaly the energy provider companies being slow as hell. This critisim is circling the media now for the last few years.
China is doing hydro, gas and coal because China is gigantic and they don't mind that coal still exists and we do not know yet at all how their end energy mix will look like but they are pushing very hard for renewable.
No as i told you, a lot of people around me literlaly don't want to do reneable for the reasons i told you. A L'ot of people DO NOT CARE about climate change.
Germany is trying to push for heatpumps in the old government, the new/current one is paddling back, AGAIN. This is happening under our noses. The discussion of the new heating law (from the prev government) created A LOT of controversy.
The main reason why the renewable energy transformation is happening at the current speed and not in the possible speed, is people not math. not economy.
We have protests against wind mills because they 'look ugly'. My neighbours hate my solar panel on the balcony but can't say something against it because the old government created a law for this.
Work collegues of mine hate EVs and don't want to switch over but my company only allows EVs since this year. Multily of them complained that an EV is not usable as a daily car while i own an EV for 4.5 years now and it is usable as a daily driver.
The transition in China is significanlty faster than in Europe.