Comment by jmward01
4 hours ago
There are a multitude of arguments against this:
- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports.
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.
For example in reaction to 1973 Arab oil embargo Carter boosted energy efficiency and solar and promoted coal.
" "America indeed is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and my goal as President of the United States is to see on the world energy markets Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal," Carter told miners and employees of the Old Ben Coal Mine No. 25. He also boasted that the country would, "produce more coal in 1980 than has ever before been produced in the United States of America." "
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/29/1158426645/jimmy-carters-envi...
New coal gasification projects in India
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...
>The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.
Fossil fuel is still going strong and will probably stay so for the next 50 years. Like I just learned Taiwan makes most of its energy from coal and LNG and is set to denuclearize, which blew my mind given their cutting edge manufacturing economy, but kinda makes sense when you factor in their geography and geopolitics.
It's fun watching the right wing try to square this circle. Especially in the UK where we import most of our fossil fuels.
We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!
But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.
I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...
>Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
Except you know, all the actual mining and manufacturing of those things, which isn't in the west but mostly in China.
Before, say, 2022 or 2026 for that reason, oil, coal, lithium, silicon, iron, etc were mined, processed, and shipped as usual. By now, the production and shipping of oil and oil-based fuels, and, to a lesser extent, LNG is hampered by wars. The production and shipping of what is required to build solar, wind, and even nuclear power sources continues, mostly unaffected by the wars, which makes these power sources relatively (even) more attractive.
Sadly, it does not mean that EU or USA grew less dependent on China for solar panels, industrial chemicals, or a lot of other things. OTOH, they did not grow more dependent either.
so what if theyre made in china?
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Yup. The best thing Trump did for Climate Change was to start a war with Iran.
> Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though;
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
>and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years
Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.
> at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production
You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.
Taiwan cannot make chips without western inputs and spare parts, so China taking over Taiwan or Korea or Japan doesn’t really give them access to making those chips.
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But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.
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At least they haven't relaxed restrictions on sulfur dioxide emissions, etc.. yet. Making rain acidic again would be completely on brand for this administration.
We might want to at least on the high seas to combat global warming a bit.
The Gulf countries paid handsomely to get Trump in there to keep the United States as the buyer of last resort once the rest of the world goes renewable.
Problem is that installing a bunch of sick sons of bitches to do your bidding can backfire when those some morons lose a war to Iran in a matter of months.
Fossil fuel power plants are unfortunately still profitable for their owners (billionaires...). The cost of building them has mostly been written off a long time ago. None of this is about what is good for America in the long run...
I have to wonder if this is a play towards coal miners, who are part of the conservative base - and they need every vote they can get. Coal is an awful source of power, and a really big source of pollution.
I doubt they really care about coal miners’ actual votes. The US coal mining industry employs fewer than 50,000 people. I live in a major coal producing state and while it was an important industry in my grandparents’ time, these days it isn’t a particularly noteworthy share of our economy.
I would say if it’s specifically about coal at all, it’s more because of the GOP’s tendency toward weird nostalgic obsessions.
But is it stupid if you want to sell some fossil fuels in the short to medium term?
> - Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it
That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind
That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.
And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.
This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1]. The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of... [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...
I will believe it when I see it. The only countries with both cheap and clean electricity are those that built out extensive nuclear or got lucky enough to have access to other forms of cheap base load like hydro / geothermal.
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Germany's decommissioned nuclear, and subsequent concentration of base load in Russian gas-fired plants, is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.
Or that Germany shares electricity with the EU, so that everyone is getting subjected to those pains with fuel sources being cut.
Coal isn't cheap. Specifically coal powerplants are not and it's got nothing to do with emissions. One of the pinch points in the Australian power grid has actually been that a bunch of coal plants are aging out and no private enterprise wants to even bother financing their replacement because it's a money loser compared to renewables build out.
Fortunately this is well on it's way to being solved by the massive battery build out which has happened which means evening peak electricity usage has declined enormously[1] - i.e the primary "sun not shining" point of the day is rapidly turning into an energy use low point for the grid (which makes sense: business powers down, people go home and their batteries which have been charging cover cooking - I have an induction cook top and a 10kw inverter covers everything).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/15/austr...
You are 100% right but I think your arguments will fall on deaf ears. Someone bribed Trump or one of his cronies to revoke pollution limits and they got it. What to do when rationality just isn't a factor in politics anymore?
> - Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
Is not Germany an example of the opposite? I mean their decision to shut down nuclear plants while getting dependant on Russian supply of energy sources?