But the fossil fuel billionaires are bribing them now. What’s the point of creating solar and wind billionaires in ten years time? Who knows who will be in power and collecting their bribes then.
Thankfully that is going to happen anyway through simple economics. Fossil fuel extraction is functionally already a peak technology, out of which every bit of efficiency has been squeezed by over 100 years of frantic and lavishly funded scientific development, whereas solar, battery, and wind technologies have been absolutely plunging in $-per-Kw to deploy and have much much further to go. So governments can try to slow this down as much as they wish, but it’s as much a fool’s errand as trying to rescue the horse industry in about 1920.
Now as for the question of “why isn’t this more efficient technology resulting in savings for, me, the consumer?” I can only encourage you to look at the entire history of extractive, investor-driven capitalism for the answer.
This is really a huge oversimplification of a complex and nuanced topic. But the main thing worth mentioning is that your utility bills, in all likelihood, are already insanely cheap if you compare what you get to any other time in history. Like, keeping your home temperature at a perfectly pleasant temperature 24 hours per day probably costs you only a couple hours of labor each month. Compare this to gathering sticks in the forest and lighting a fire inside a mud hut - which, btw, also gives you lung cancer faster than cigarettes.
Should the government invest more in renewables? Yes, obviously. They should also fund the infrastructure necessary to make renewables work at scale, and research to improve renewable generation, transmission, and storage tech in order to close the gap between what is practical now and what we need to achieve. And while they are at it, they should introduce improved pricing schemes to head off increased wasteful usage. But will any of this actually have a direct impact on consumer pricing…? Probably not, since almost all utilities are already state owned or else heavily regulated. The cost of electricity is determined more by committee and political maneuvering than the actual price of, say, coal or solar on a day to day basis. The actual mechanism of paying for power to be generated and delivered to your house on demand is a combination of the price you pay per kwh, property taxes, government revenue in general, debt taken on by the government or utility, investments made in the past, etc. If you actually want a cheaper price per kwh, the solution is simply petitioning whatever regulatory body is in charge to lower it.
Of course, the problem with lower prices is that they encourage wasteful usage. If electricity becomes free, then aunt Ethel will start blasting the AC while leaving the windows open, because she likes to be comfortable while listening to the birds chirp. Without appropriate pricing schemes, people and companies will use up as much additional renewable capacity as is built as soon as you finish building it.
Truth, but the fossil fuels industry lobbies A LOT to keep your bills high and their pockets overflowing.
Legal bribing, if you will.
Nuclear is also a good option. It has the potential to scale up to our generation needs faster than green energy, and it can still be environmentally clean when any byproduct is handled responsibly.
Do I trust my government (USA) to enforce proper procedure and handling? Not really… but I do think we’re less likely to have a nuclear accident in the present day. Modern designs have many more fail safes. And I think it’d still be much cleaner than burning fossil fuels.
I think they need to coexist, though. I think a goal in the far-future should be a decentralized grid with renewable energy sources integrated wherever they can be.
Don’t even have to invest. In my area, a 100% renewable supplier was about 30% more per KWH, all of that extra overhead was paid to keep old unprofitable coal plants online. That’s capitalist efficiency for you.
Imagine the savings to society with the energy independence from green energy
- shut down most of the continent wide natural gas distribution infrastructure
- shut down most of the continent wide gasoline distribution infrastructure
- cut way back on the military when we no longer have to protect oil kingdoms
Yes. All of my problems are the government’s fault.
Well that’s a rediculous mischaracterization. All my problems are capitalism and how it influences the government’s fault.
A reminder that https://slrpnk.net/c/memes exists. I’m crossposting this there, as it’s totally on point. The stupid ‘!’ thing wasn’t working for me.
Didn’t auto-complete for me either, but: !memes@slrpnk.net
Not working great so far. I’m 100% for renewables and fuck fossil fuels, but despite the press about renewables finally being cheaper than fossil, it isn’t being passed to the consumer yet.
Depending on where you live this might be because of pricing regulations which require payments to be equal to the most expensive source used in a given period plus a preset margin. Some of the regulatory systems don’t know how to cope with the differences in generation that come from renewables. …not that they’re great at managing the non-renewables these days either.
If “our” means on the US, you may have to take a look at your electricity monopolies for it to make any difference.
No they wouldn’t. Final consumer cost is based on what people WILL pay not what they WANT to pay. At the end of the day the overarching goal of capitalism is for 99% of the population to spend 100% of their earnings. You can’t funnel all wealth to the 1% if the 99% are holding on to it.
In a free market, people will pay less for the same service if they can.
Capitalistic utility monopolies are a scam.
So you’re telling me if I found a way reach all my fellow power company customers we could strike and lower our power rates?
Many states have very regulated utility prices: you may need just a half dozen buddies and get appointed to the oversight board that approves rates
This is sounding like you’re trying to do a socialism over here.
Yes. It’s like big telecom. When people install panels at home, power companies start inventing additional fees. If communities start looking for local grids, companies start lobbying to outlaw this.
Thats wildly incorrect.
If you care to know why, just ask me.
It depends how you do it. I invested in green energy with a heat pump and spend fuck all compared to some people I know in heating. With a home battery I could cut my energy down to about £300 a year. Dont even need solar for that.
We’d spend money up front to build the green energy generation. Distribution costs don’t go down, and tend to increase over time. It would take a while to realize any savings on the consumer bills?
What’s the context of the painting?
Reverse image search is a powerful tool
Holy shit, I always just assumed it was John Brown
It does look just like John Brown
He looks real good, for having been a’mouldering in the grave for 70 years!
Norman Rockwell. He did paintings of Americana. This one is about the civic duty to speak up or something
Removed by mod
So, “green” energy is only cheaper if the government pays for it?
Not really a great argument.
No, you have it backwards. Fossil fuels were only cheaper because the government was heavily subsidizing it.
*is
When the government subsidizes the shit out of the alternatives, yes. But also investing in research for better things means you get better things faster.
That’s what holds US gas prices down, subsidies. Helping large scale things be possible is what a government should do. There’s many things that wouldn’t have happened without the government paying for it.
The kicker is that if they switched to green and took away paying for petroleum, things would collapse, as green alone isn’t going to support our society. That’s the dead end we’ve walked ourselves into. It’s not one or the other, it’s what can we supplement or phase out with a better solution. And that kind of work needs government support, from subsidies to regulations to a supervisor that directs the change vs. relying only on free market.
green alone isn’t going to support our society
Let’s find out. When I started advocating for increased renewables, the expected limit was the grid destabilizing at 30% renewables. Now many places are there. I recently read a piece expecting the limit to be about 95% renewables based on scalability of todays grid storage. Were a long way from that, so let’s work toward it and see what improvements we can make along the way
Note: one of the more difficult areas to greenify will be the military, but imagine instead shrinking that as we no longer have to defend petrostates or fossil fuel trade routes
Sure, let’s keep going towards the goal of better solutions. Even this meme doesn’t say or imply that it has to be all green, and it simply can’t. Some things need a high energy density or other features that unfortunately only petroleum has. It really is an amazing substance. That causes problems. Everything has a cost.
Plastics
sure it is. governments have more leverage than private actors when doing projecting and costing, and can amortise things more economically.
See also: accessible health care. When the gov is the only consumer - ie no private monopoly and no dual-market slippery-slope - then healthcare becomes accessible and supported by regular income tax.
They’re already paying for fossil fuels (7$ trillion worldwide)
A government’s concern is not in a single area.
For example some counties have free public transport, in part because it’s better for the economy as a whole. That wouldn’t make sense if public transport is privately owned.
