81–90 of 286 posts
1975: The first cancellation of a planned nuclear power plant occurred in Wyhl, Germany due to protests from "environmentalists".
That's good news, take it further!
[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/air-pollution/news/german-c...
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…
Now we can see that vast quantities of people in the first world think not being able to go to Arbys is a human rights violation, and worse still the friendless losers who were pining to back into the office.
If sitting indoors is too much of a sacrifice for people, what happens when they need to make real changes to their lifestyles?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need carbon (coal) to make steel from iron. Cement needs lots of heat to make it - from coal too. Also, cement is made from CaCO3 (limestone, the shell of ancient microorganisms). It releases the CO2 it contains when transformed into cement.
My guess is that the coal could come from wood? The heat could definitely come from nuclear power. However, the processing of the limestone might be more difficult. But then again, that also seems like insignificant emissions when the other ones are taken out, no?
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…
You can’t just shut down the fossil fuel industry before you have alternative green energy infrastructure in place, this is a multi decade project. Otherwise the price of oil shoots up and you get inflation which affects most people’s ability to get by. “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.
I do agree that finding alternatives quickly is crucial. However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people. I suspect this is because of a mixture of things: 1. The rare instances of it going wrong look catastrophic, while the many times it does better than coal/oil/gas go ignored. Kinda like how people fear plane travel more than driving, despite the former being far safer than the latter. 2. It's more expensive to setup, so there's an economic incentive…
Isn't the number one reason that nuclear gets a bad rep because there is no compelling solution for getting rid of the waste?
Coal in particular results in incredible toxic waste. Even if it was inert (which it very much is not) you get enormous heaps of rock you dug the coal out of and those have to be stored forever. Typically people just leave it in a big pile as somebody else's problem until one day the wind blows and it collapses and kills a bunch of people. Oops.
But even for natural gas in the best case your waste is excess carbon dioxide, which renders your planet inhospitable so that's not great either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people. I suspect this is because of a mixture of things: 1. The rare instances of it going wrong look catastrophic, while the many times it does better than coal/oil/gas go ignored. Kinda like how people fear plane travel more than driving, despite the former being far safer than the latter. 2. It's more expensive to setup, so there's an economic incentive…
Isn't the number one reason that nuclear gets a bad rep because there is no compelling solution for getting rid of the waste?
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…
Additionally, it is not effective unless you want to return to pre-industrial society.
What works is: Changing the source of the energy we consume. Solar is the cheapest source of energy now. Wind is good in some areas. Nuclear can be useful too.
The amazing thing is that solar is so cheap now, there is basically no way stopping it. We may still want to burn gas and oil in the off-hours, but it will be expensive and consumption will be much lower than today.
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…
You can’t just shut down the fossil fuel industry before you have alternative green energy infrastructure in place, this is a multi decade project. Otherwise the price of oil shoots up and you get inflation which affects most people’s ability to get by. “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.
If the costs of current living standard wasn't externalized to future generations (to the detriment of the environment), they couldn't afford those bills to begin with.
Unfortunately, it's very hard to reduce people's living standards once they got used to it. So yes, the end result is what you're saying - however, I think it's a very important nuance. It was always a card house; we just chose to ignore the issue and continued to build on top of it.
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip…
Our governments are so dysfunctional and corrupt our only hope is that AI will actually be benevolent and can help guide us and solve problems. Because, as the comic, and thousands of other examples show, our governments aren't actually capable of leading and solving problems, even when the problems are blatant. Same when the solution is easy, but it will cause the wealthy to lose money, see US health care and taxati…
I think that a lack of biochemistry will probably quickly lead to the conclusion that it’s not worth it.