131–140 of 305 posts
Absolutely loved Costa Rica when I visited several years ago. It is on my list of places to go back. However, I was saddened to see litter all over some of the beaches I went to.
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What are you talking about? If AOC and Gov. Brown are confident we can get to 100% renewable energy, then we can. Batteries will solve all the issues you mentioned and 100% renewable we go!
AOC is not exactly someone I would trust to have deep knowledge about this topic
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Costa Rican resident here. Costa Rica invest a lot in renewables. Tourism is a huge income. There are lots of places to visit. Hundreds of volcanoes, 7 active. The climate, it can rain and then sunny...several times a day. Costa Rica exports technology. Intel, MS,Google...Several start ups...lots of outsourcing jobs.
Had the honor of visiting years ago. It really is a gorgeous country.
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"Massive" Honsdale battery is capable of supplying much less than 1% of grid power in Australia. An installation of that size could help at the margins to prevent some brownout events, but don't overestimate the capacity of batteries compared to grid demand. It looks like Costa Rica has about 3600 MW of generating capacity. The Hornsdale battery is good for 150 MW.
You don't have to supply the entire grid demand - only smooth out the brownouts, which something the size of Hornsdale would likely be able to do for Costa Rica Note that Hornsdale is also tiny compared to batteries currently being developed in Australia. The new battery in the Hunter will be 1200MW - which is enough to nullify the need for all gas-generated peaking capacity in that state
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I live part-time in Costa Rica. Brownouts occur 1-4x every day. It’s usually just a few seconds and not all that bad. The worst part is when you have to restart the dishwasher.
four brownouts a day is an instant kill for industry despite that you're okay with it, most heavy users of power aren't the reason they're omitting this from the reporting is that the reporting just isn't true
Absolutely loved Costa Rica when I visited several years ago. It is on my list of places to go back. However, I was saddened to see litter all over some of the beaches I went to.
when did you go? One of the most impressive things in Costa Rica is that they are really careful with litter and very big on recycling and banning single-use plastics.
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Ah, right. If only we all would have embraced minimalism from the very start! There would be no need for these pesky warm houses, abundant food, or relatively cheap medicine.
Won't have that stuff in an ice age.
I'm getting a little older and have a tough time keeping up with the climate-change alarmism dejour.
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
IIRC part of the answer is that they had a successful revolution led by principled people who realized that cultural capital is just as important as power and in fact maybe keeping a standing army had problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Figueres_Ferrer https://www.spanishpuravida.com/why-costa-rica-has-no-army/
I'm not saying setting up an alliance with the country that has the biggest army in the world and then doing without an army is a bad thing...
What I'm saying though is that it'd probably be very different for a country without any alliance with the US to decide to have no army.
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
The book "Why Nations Fail" and the followup by the same authors "The Narrow Corridor" paints a fairly convincing picture that the success or failure of many modern Latin American countries is directly correlated with the extent to which the Spanish colonialists were able to enslave/subjugate the indigenous population, and the types of societies and institutions that followed that initial seed. For example, in modern…
Could this be partially attributed the geography, natural resources available in the region. AKA both the Spanish Empire and contemporary society saw the same poverty inducing industries available in those regions?