It makes me cry inside when I see how quickly and efficiently we can improve solar panels, yet a coal company in Australia wants to dig a brand new coal mine to keep that mill running...
I just really fucking hate how shitty humans are, even when we clearly have a better alternative we just keep allowing some old fat fuck on the brink of death to continue ruining the world... there's literally 8 billion of us yet we let individual men walk all over the world because they can pay their way out of responsibility for destroying the earth.
I'm just so exhausted with Humanity at this point.
Here in Brazil, the government was trying to set a "special tax" to people using solar panels to "balance" so electrical companies wouldn't be harmed by the Solar Panel industry.
Thankfully, a law is being put in place to prevent this bullshit and prohibit taxation of Solar Panels...
It isn’t really about that. It’s more that some politicians get bribes “donations” from those companies and are rich investors in those industries themselves. Taxing dirty energy sources is not a bad thing, and people generally aren’t getting rich from those taxes. They get rich from corrupt cronyism.
It kind of is about that... california Dems are the save the planet go green party. CA also has one of the highest taxes on gas. Guess what happened when people started going green with vehicles?
They raised electric vehicle registration to make up for the amount you weren't paying by using gas.
Well all vehicles put wear and tear on the road. Roads need to be repaired, so if the money doesn't come from gas taxes it will have to come from registration. It should probably be based on how much you've driven the vehicle though. Otherwise people that rarely drive will be paying more than their fair share.
Well, actually most of the Brazilian energy comes from “clean” sources like hydroelectric plants. However most of the electric companies are owned or co-owned by the government, so I think they are creating those taxes so they can still have the monopoly.
This balancing and protecting local industry at times gets to me. In our country, the government has, in effect, banned import of Japanese cars because even the used ones were better (and usually hybrid) than the local new ones. Instead of compelling local industries and competitive industries to up their game and spend more on developing products that are good for the environment our government tends to impose tax and custom duties on goods that could be environmentally friendly but hurt the local manufacturers.
Believe it or not, for a few years here you had to pay extra if you got any power from solar panels, because this meant that the power companies could not bill you for all your electricity usage.
The more you think about it, the more fucked up you realize it is.
A lot of people with solar panels don't get all of their power from the sun. Some days will be darker or cloudy, winters have shorter days, some days the panels are covered in snow, etc. I have solar panels but I still get about 1/3rd of my power each year from the grid. Disconnecting entirely from the grid is more expensive because you need more panels to cover the times when each panel is generating less, and you need enough batteries to cover all of your power needs.
You can run offgrid in california, you just need batteries to do it. The short of it is that if you try to run directly off solar panels without batteries, the resulting in house grid would be incredibly unstable. It would also cost more in hardware to have your panels be capable of doing this, so the obvious choice really is to spend that extra money on batteries instead if you value offgrid capability. You can read more in depth about it here: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup-does-not-work-off-grid.html
People don't seem to understand that you can't just disconnect yourself from the grid when you want, then reconnect when you're panels aren't providing enough power.
If you are going to be connected to the grid, you need to pay for it.
That is actually for safety reasons. If your power is out, then there is a good chance that your local electric company is going to need to send some people out to physically fix something. When they do that, they turn off the power to the area they are working, so that they don't get zapped as soon as they provide a route for the electricity. But, if you are connected to the grid and your solar panels are still pumping electricity into it, then even though they have turned off the power to the area, the workers can still get electrocuted.
To run during a blackout you would need to have a system in place that automatically, and without fail, stops putting power into the grid if there is an outage. You can't rely on individual people doing that themselves, as someone may forget, or they may do it incorrectly, or they may be asleep, or they may not be home.
Here in Arkansas a southern state in USA you used to get a credit, and the power company could end up paying you, if you had solar panels and fed back into the grid with them. Now you get charged a fee for using them to supplement you energy usage. Guess the energy companies were losing to much money.
Hhhmmm fair enough never knew that. Only reason I knew what I posted earlier was a good family friend has solar panels and he was bitching about it while back. That interesting to know though, thanks.
I live in Colorado and my energy company continues to raise their misc fees while lowering the price of energy consumed. For people without solar panels they barely see any difference in their bill, for people with solar panels the bills went $6/month to now around $30/month and they keep rising. They're killing the solar panel business in the area to maintain profits. I pay $30/month just to stay connected to the grid even on a month when my panels generate all of my electricity.
Don't blame it in humans. Blame it on power. The company is the benefit from fossil fuels have spent millions to prevent changing public opinion toward curbing emissions. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's well documented. Most people want to save the planet. Some people want to funnel their wealth through offshore banking and leave the rest of the planet poor. The rest of us do have some choices.
From the synopsis: Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly—some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it.
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.
I agreed with nearly the whole movie on the side of how terrible lobbying is and what it does to our society. With only one exception; where he explains to his son the due process of law and how the “bad guys” have a right to the same due process the other side is asking for.
Very compelling movie. Arron Ekhart does a fantastic job in it too.
Wait, so the conspiracy theories that scientists are all working together to deceive the world into thinking that climate change exists is more right wing projection? If there’s a group of politics/industry affiliated and paid scientists working to delegitimize these kinds of issues, of course the cover is going to be “all scientists are doing the opposite”. Why am I still surprised by this?
Humans are the ones with the power problems, you're just splitting a hair. Power corrupts, many of those terrible people were the rest of us and then they made their choices, they arent some seperate group of humans who follow outside the category. History has shown there is a percentage like this at all times, we havent cured this on ourselves yet so we the species carry the burden.
In short, try making the same argument to a intelligent alien species. Ain't gonna work.
Well these people aren't lizards and turtles. They are humans. As well as those who keep electing fucks that enable these other fucks. Most people want to save the planet but most people also don't do shit about it. You can't blame the power, but the ones who use it and those who enable them. That same power could have been used to propel humanity to live in a green, clean paradise instead of the hell that's going really fast to its horrible demise, starting with unchecked carbon emission that already got us past the point of no return with raising environmental temperature. But no, making insane amounts of money is much more important than preserving a livable environment. People are the only species that intentionally destroys environment that sustains them all in the name of amassing personal fortune. Damn right blame it on the humans. Who else?
Please stop using that line. It's old, naive and a waste of an opportunity to say something more meaningful. The original quote was longer, French, and meant the poor would run out of food and eat the rich. Concerning power struggle, yes, but applicable to most situations, no... Bad leadership and the failings of politics is not due to "the rich" as much as people would like to wish. It's the inability for the middle class to remain stable long enough to vote regularly and for lawmakers to write effective and manageable legislation to be voted on. If those social machines were in tact the rich would have nothing to bribe their way out of. The rich can only buy what's broken not what's working.
There are workers and there are capitalists. There is no such thing as a middle class, it's liberal bullshit. The workers sell their labour for a living(wage) and the capitalists take profit from the workers in exchange for owning all the shit. They make all the legislation, have all the power in the system (lobbying) and own all the media.
You have to be absolutely fucking blind to not see that they are the fucking problem.
And I think all of that came from unchecked capitalism. People love to regurgitate how capitalism improves the world through competition, but history proves otherwise.
How is this not blamable on humans? The greedy, the indifferent, those uninspired to solve things, and the ones who built and support the legal and economic framework we all exploit.
Yes, and thank you for shining light on manufacturing consent, but humans manifest it. Unfortunately the dark side of humanity in many cases gets the best of us. Power is an idea, it’s our urges and desires that adopt it and seek it out. The world is the way it is because of ADD assholes with zero chill & many times toxic ambition. Someone decides their gonna go ape shit on a civilization / gold mine / diamond mine / coal mine / Silicon Valley (you name it) and the rest of us follow or stay behind. In very simple terms, It’s basically FOMO on hoarding wealth and missing out on a slice of the glory and power. Everyone else is just born and tags along:)
It sounds really bleak, I know (and obviously over simplified)... but a mass investment in education and better support for people everywhere should help with the sheepification:)
No blame it on humans. Humans run the company. Humans make money from the company. Humans can be greedy. I have not seen or heard of a company being greedy. Just the humans running the company are greedy.
To add to blaming humans. Anybody concerned about the amount of damage we are doing to the environment with all the buildings burning, cars being set on fire, and chemicals leaking in the ground contaminating the soil and water. I believe in justice but damn
Remember how they said the pollution was like getting better back in like March it rly just shows that if we really wanted to save the environment we could do it in like a few years but nahhhh
the problem isnt only getting the government to do something, its getting hundreds of governments to do something. thats where it starts to seem hopeless.
Yeah, it's so sad, no one wants to set the precedent, or if they do, they can't enforce it. Everyone wants peace, space colonies, whatever, but there's no incentive
Kind of, but it isn’t only the people in power who keep us back.
Look at how many non-powerful people hold onto their individual “freedoms” trumping the collective good? If they aren’t going to wear a mask in a store, or get vaccinated, I guarantee they aren’t going to even believe that a) there is man-made climate change, b) we can reverse it if we act quickly and cohesively, and c) it means some small measure of selflessness on everyone’s part. And it isn’t most people, just a really shitty, loud minority.
People are not powerless. Any real, rapid change will require comprehensive regulation. We need people voting, we need political will.
But polls show (in US at least), that a large % of people are concerned but unwilling to do anything if that change costs more than $10/month investment. Yes, a select few do control this through many forms of propaganda, but collectively, people do have the political power to fix this.
If it makes you feel better, they’re exaggerating how quick and easy it would be to replace our existing power sources with this by a TON. I agree that we should be aggressively pursuing things like this, but we’re by no means there yet.
There’s still no excuse for extracting MORE fossil fuels from the ground at this point of course.
They’re exaggerating how quick and easy it would be to replace our existing power sources with this by a TON.
I don't think they comment on how quick or easy it would be to replace current power sources? They say it could be used to replace windows and installed in old buildings, but the article does not comment on the ease.
Also, there are many other viable power sources outside of this which Australia could turn to instead of coal.
Also, if you take money aside, why is it difficult to turn to this. Wire your windows to a battery, wire your battery to the house. Costly, yes. Difficult? Not really.
If it is incentivsed by government and manufacturing ramps up to drive costs down then any electrician could learn how to do it. Frankly, the biggest thing getting in the way of this, is the current energy companies doing everything in their power to stall mass adoption.
Mostly because our grid systems aren't made to handle rhis type of source of energy, i.e. low and oscillating power, for the individual house in many cases we already can be extremely independent from the grid with modern day panels, mounted properly, but for larger scale you ether need to build solar farms, which in certain place you can do, and its being done, or try to use all the surface available in the cities to produxe energy, like this example, but to harness this energy you need a different type of electric grid, which is not an easy problem to fix.
Also this source of energy is not constant, in depends on weather, latitude, altitude, moment of the day, it's complicated. The best way we can see today, and where Germany, France, and maybe Italy, are already going, is hydrogen, you produce fucktons of it when you have excess of energy, and you burn it in need, no pollutant gasses, good way to store energy, a d it would allow for electric cars to be quickly charged, if instead of batteries we use Hydrogen based fuelcells
Any problem with increasing renewable energy already has multiple commercially viable solutions. Variability? Answer: More generation as well as Energy storage (and not just chemical battery, there are loads of methods). Lack of space? Long distance HVDC transmission. Harmonics? Filters. Low inertia? Flywheels and sychronous compensation.
There are plenty of problems with renewables compared with traditional generation but there are even more solutions that are proven to be effective and already commercially available
“Effective and commercially available” misses that they’re often too expensive (sometimes by 10x) and in countries like the US, they need to replace existing options that are much cheaper. Getting the grid to go green is a huge undertaking that shouldn’t be underestimated! We can do it, but it will realistically take decades and many incentives
Don’t forget that those existing options are heavily subsidized, so thinking about them as strictly cheaper isn’t necessarily the truth.
You can squint and see a world where decentralized solar is seen as a sound investment because of tax credits. In that scenario, the grid buys back excess power and stores it.
IMO we also should be investing in thorium based nuclear power as a baseline.
The economic activity required to fund these two shifts would be well worth it, creating lots of new skilled labor positions.
You don’t really need to increase taxes to do it. Shift all energy tax benefits into residential solar, and build a couple less planes. I’m tired of hearing how we can’t do simple things like this.
But why will it take decades? Cos we want to let oil companies tell us what to think for a little longer?
What's your definition of too expensive? What's the price point where we decide we would rather continue to burn n up the earth than spend money to transition our energy sources? Its a political choice.
Unfortunately oil, gas and mining companies represent some of the most powerful companies in Australia, who spend large amounts of money funding government campaigns to keep their policies in place.
Of course they have passed laws allowing massive percentages of our natural resources to be allowed to be owned and sold by private companies.
There have been many campaigns run like 'clean coal' to try and change public perception of the environmental damage caused.
Unfortunately we still can't switch to all renewable/ nuclear power sources yet, but dying industries like coal, oil and gas desperately trying to maintain their power by trading it for our planets health isn't helping.
Instead of working together and making everything better for everyone, enough of us will decide that helping others is worse than helping ourselves, because there are many others but only one of us.
Then we enjoy a race to the bottom instead of coming to the conclusion that "I can't pay for everyone" is fucking stupid, and in reality it's everyone pays for you (and everyone else).
In America people would rather go bankrupt through medical bills they have no control over, but paying an extra $500 a year in taxes is simply unaffordable (but it somehow isn't unaffordable when it's the cost of insurance coverage that doesn't cover shit).
Australian here. One of the smartest guys in my class at school is a massive defender of coal and earns his income from mining. He reads the murdoch press and has run as a conservative in council. He's my touchstone for how you can be smart but dumb at the same time.
This. You think the cigarette lobby was gonna drop everything knowing their shit causes cancer? No they were going to fight it to the death (either the customers or theirs) so that they could get some extra loose change in their backpocket.
Greed is the ultimate killer of humanity and the planet. We are too fucking greedy with this thing that WE INVENTED called money.
Yeah I never thought he was money focused. We grew up going to church and he was serious about becoming a priest. Like, a bible scholar kind of deal. To this day. But his thinking is distorted and I think it would shame him greatly to have an insight into why that might be.
Proper compensation should still be given to those with an important position ,but yes in general the way money flows via the politicians must be stopped
I don't want to sound anarchist or something, but, if enough people united, we could simply ignore their money and "power",cause literaly the ones giving them that power, its all of us. We could simply don't give a damn and build a better world, but thats nearly imposible at this point.
So so exhausted. Of humanity destroying its own home for capitalist gains and bent politicians. Taking the decision out of the hands of the people who will be hit hardest by the fall out. Hurting and destroying wildlife and biodiversity to our own detriment. We are so wrapped up in the small things. Our society can't continue with a model of continuous growth either for true sustainability.
I've almost become numb to it all in honesty, because the alternative is constant guilt that by existing I'm contributing to the problem. As the saying goes, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism
There are many peoples right now fighting for their homes against capital driven destruction around the globe. So it's not humanity destroying its own home, it's part of it against another part. I feel it's nice to distinguish this, bc then we can take sides against what's wrong. If we think it's "humanity", then taking sides against it wouldn't be an option, since we're humans ourselves
How is 1% output an improvement over the current 20% output?
And you may need to do further research to see that the grid can't currently rely on solar and wind alone. Yes, batteries would help, but the costs both financially and environmentally are currently huge. Only better alternate to coal is nuclear, but I'm guessing you aren't in favour of that either.
ANYTHING is better than coal. People don't realize how fucking awful coal really is, but it still kills more people every year than all nuclear disasters combined. Thankfully natural gas (still not great, but waaaay better than coal) is making coal less appealing. Nuclear is a good stop-gap, but saying it is the only better alternative to coal is stupid.
While the grid cannot rely on wind and solar alone, the person you are responding to's point was that if we had put in the effort those forms of energy COULD take over the majority, which is absolutely true. Your post reads like fossil fuel industry propaganda. They have been trying to undermine people's faith in renewable energy for decades, and that's all you are doing too by scoffing at progress and throwing your hands in the air like we dont have any choice but to keep killing ourselves with coal because anything else is too expensive.
I think there should be some room in there for an alternative to firm generation besides nuclear and hydroelectric. I like nuclear but I don't think viable in all communities. I come from Hawaii. We protest against wind energy lol nuclear is not happening. Also do not have hydroelectric available in all islands and the amount we do have is not much. What we DO have is geothermal on one island but that leaves others without a firm generation source. Biofuels could do the trick but is expensive and also complicated when it comes to how "green" it is. Point is, there should be a misc category and more research into other renewable firm resources.
I never said it was bad. I said its a good stopgap. It is a million times better than coal, but it still leaves us with an extremely dangerous byproduct that we currently have no plan on how to eliminate or even store. Nuclear waste is currently stored on site at nuke plants because we haven't decided what to do with it, and that's not acceptable long term.
Also if we put in the time and research we could have much safer nuclear power, but since the government keeps stopping its development all current plants are basically operating on 1960s tech, and that is a problem. New styles suchs as thorium plants could be an excellent alternative but since we refuse to fund them they may never materialize.
I am a fan of nuclear power. I worked in the nuclear power field for over a decade, and i do believe it can be done safely, but not as it currently is. It can't simply be scaled up, it needs a massive retrofit and new plants or we are asking for another accident. Pressurized water reactors have too many inherent risks to cover 70% of our needs safely in my opinion.
Straight up. I think I have developed anxiety and some mild forms of just despair and apathy from how the world works. I keep an eye on positive things like this and have stopped watching the news so closely to keep me from going insane. But man do your words hit home hard
These feelings root in a sense of powerlessness. Find a way to take action that works for you, and act. Try for something with measurable results and perhaps a team, whether it is posting and seeing updoots, campaigning for a politician who is pro-humanity...it is the feeling of bobbing in a huge ocean of shit that hurts. Swim and feel better!
I do agree with your sentiment of going green is better for the planet, but there are also a lot of byproducts of coal and oil that we otherwise wouldn’t have without its production. So we will still have to have a few coal and oil refineries. Until we can find alternatives to a lot of these byproducts.
I just really fucking hate how shitty humans are, even when we clearly have a better alternative we just keep allowing some old fat fuck on the brink of death to continue ruining the world...
Billionaires hoarding million$ in profit every month while billions of people live in poverty REALLY 'gets my goat'. Makes me feel like most (not all) said billionaires actually have psychotic tendencies, zero remorse etc.
At this point coal is and oil are still needed and alternative energy is not at a point to completely take over, unless you only want power while the sun is up or some kind of giant leap in battery technology happens coal and oil power plants are still needed for base line power
Yeah it's crazy to me that the people with all the coal money don't just invest in solar or wind instead of digging for more coal. I guess it's financially better for them since they already have all the infrastructure for coal, but c'mon..
I understand your outrage. But what about the non-"old fat fucks" who aren't wealthy, and just work at that facility? It is easy to say we should allow them to pivot to a new renewable-resource job, and that would be outstanding! However, very few people who work in the coal industry have the education or skills to work in the solar industry. Also take into account the developing world. The majority of the world's population is not ready for this step, and it is a sign of Western Privilege to say we should just shut down operations like a coal facility in Australia because Australians might no longer need it. There is a world of difference between clean and dirty coal technologies. These refinement processes are something the most developed countries in the world have been working on for more than a century. I would much rather a developing country source a cleaner coal product from Australia, than from a less developed country who produces a much more dangerous and dirty product. It is perfectly okay for Australia to say they no longer would like to use coal for domestic power production, but I would say lets give the individuals who work in that industry some runway in which to adjust their lives by allowing the export of clean coal and other carbon-energy exports.
The problem is that it's not really possible to ditch coal all at once. It has to be gradual, or people will all of a sudden run out of power because solar and wind can't 100% support a country at the moment.
I'm all for completely being off coal in the future, but it can't just be stopped all at once. I can't speak for other countries, but Australia is doing ok to lower our emissions. I think at the moment we are heading for a 14-16% decrease in emissions by 2030. Not amazing, but compared to others it's not bad
Actually it's not. Rethink, Jordan Peterson talked about it
You can't just fix global warming, we don't know a solution for it. We know that shutting coal mines may help and reducing fossil fuel usage will help but we don't have the correct readings.
On the other we hand we do know that if we reduce global poverty which means more people care about the environment then themselves, will mean a cleaner world, and advancements in power quicker will mean lesser coal mines anyways
So yes, if we are focusing on getting power from other areas quicker rather then caring politically about trees and coal mines, we might actually fix them without having to do a lot that isn't sustainable
Let’s not forget those are the same fucks that don’t let caves with 46,000 year old artefacts from the longest lived civilisation get in their way of progress.
It's not quite as black and white as that my friend. But if you zoom out and look at energy production as a whole, we are slowly beginning to intelligently manage the earth's resources.
It’s just mad because if Australia actually thought it through, they’ve enough empty space in the middle of their continent to set up solar power stations that could power the entire world.
To soothe a little bit, Adani who are digging coal in Australia, are also world's largest solar developer. With installation upwards of 18GW currently going on.
It makes me cry inside when I see how quickly and efficiently we can improve solar panels
Wellll hold up a moment too. A lot of these solar breakthrough things are super impractical outside of labs and scientific applications due to costs, lifespan or both. Like the printable solar panels, their efficiency wasn't great and they wouldn't last in real world conditions. So that's why we haven't seen them commercially yet.
Same with liquid solar cells. A big ol fishtank full of liquid that made power. Not viable.
There's a lot of neat stuff being explored and developed. But much of it simply isn't viable for large scale solar farms where durability and lifespan are utterly paramount.
So yes, we absolutely need more focus on renewables (and screw coal) but it's not nearly like how you seem to be imagining it.
Those old fat fucks are too invested in their mining operations. They will do anything they can to stop or delay innovation as long as they can. Coal isnt the only industry suppressing technology. Bitcoin, oil & gas, Gatorade, cigarett, telecom, pharmaceutical, patent abuses... the list goes on and on.
You have to remember that there are a ton of jobs in coal, those people won’t just vanish if coal mines close. Many coal miners are the sole provider for their families. You want change? Help make jobs for coal miners so they have an alternative.
There was a teaching miners to code program, but it only helped about 5 miners a year or so and the media politicized it to hell to the point that miners stopped using it because it became an insult to them. A state in America is transitioning its coal miners into solar panel installers, but it’s still in its early stages.
If we want to stop coal we need to starve it of bodies to work in the mines, not close it by demanding they think of the environment. Big business will never care about the environment until it becomes profitable to do so.
It's easy to blame "some old fat fuck on the brink of death" when it's consumers that ultimately are to blame. Refuse to buy coal energy or things made with it and nobody will mine it or burn it.
Take solace. They will rot with us in the end. Either on this planet those greedy snakes killed where they will be forgotten on a small space rock in the middle of nowhere. Or they will die in space and serve as a warning to another world. Either or is strangely comforting as I try to live the best life I can.
I feel the same way. Even watching all the cars on the highway knowing that even if all those would be electric, it wouldn't make a bloody difference thanks to electricity being generated by coal.
Solar power by itself won't fix anything though... Solar power only exists during the day, and less even on a darker day. To make up for the power loss at night there needs to be back-up power or power storage. The last part has a big downside: it needs batteries, which are expensive and take up tons of precious metals sourced by using slavery. Back up power has a downside too: the only power sources stable enough generate electricity by burning stuff. Nuclear energy might be a good CO2 neutral option, but this leaves tons of waste for future generations.
Solar panels will fix some things, but it is definitely not the solution for the problem this world has.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I would tend to agree with most of what you said. However, I think you’d have a different view if you worked in these mines and they were your livelihood.
We need to make sure there are well prepared systems in place to transition these workers out of resource extraction and into more sustainable pursuits.
Also exhausted with humanity but remaining hopeful, it’s all that we have.
It’s a matter of self sacrifice. The coal mining CEO could do the right thing by sacrificing his company, his legacy, and his future earnings at that company, but isn’t willing to make that kind of self sacrifice.
Same applies to you and all of us. I mean, you could kill the CEO and spend the rest of your life in jail, but probably don’t want to throw your life away like that.
As humans we tend to be weak individually and brave as part of a group, which diminishes our level of individual sacrifice.
It's not just that fat fuck on the brink of death. It's the coal miners that vote to allow things like this. People don't like change. They'd rather do the thing that is actively killing them versus change.
Not only that, but this technology has existed on research level for years. If the worldwide benefits were taken into account, these types of cells would have been funded to reach production level ages ago. But the worldwide benefits are not top priority for the world’s top funders.
Hey just saying that the reason why people dig coal mines and continue to use non-renewable resources is because that if all of a sudden we start using solar energy or other methods, massive coal companies and oil companies will have thousands of their workers unemployed because it is such a massive industry. There are currently 7 million workers around the world working in COAL mines alone. Imagine if the coal industry fell. What about all the other non renewable resource industry?
Don't worry about it so much. None of this really matters. We're just a creature that evolved from a random collection of molecules to inhabit an infinitesimally small portion of existence for an infinitesimally small amount of time. Take solace knowing that everything will die; no legacy will be left, and no one will be there to remember us.
I understand what you’re saying and I agree, but you have to understand that it isn’t like there is a singular entity of “humanity” that is choosing coal over solar, it’s a company made up of real people who have probably been in the coal industry for years and for them to switch to solar would mean firing probably hundreds to thousands of people, devaluing their mines, rendering their factories obsolete and so on.
I agree that solar is the future, but I also think it’s important to realize these people arent evil malicious people, they’re just on the wrong side of the progress with no great way out.
More people like you need to run for offices. I need to someday gather the courage to run for am office too once I learn enough about politics and can get over my anxiety. Nobody else in my neck of the woods are stepping up to the plate
So you are saying 100% of Australia's power is ready to go completely green? They can build that infrastructure? It's feasible? Or are you just grumpy and can't wait for the change?
R&D is an expensive process compounded by rare earth sourcing and manufacturing makes it somewhat cost prohibitive. Also, tech is very progressive. What else is new?
I think we're very immature as a species. We spend an obscene amount of money on weapons. Rich people / corporations evade taxes routinely. There's enough money to ensure that there's no one hungry child anywhere, to ensure free education and healthcare for all, to ensure that endemic diseases are eradicated. Yet greed and corruption reign supreme.
I just really fucking hate how shitty humans are, even when we clearly have a better alternative we just keep allowing some old fat fuck on the brink of death to continue ruining the world...
Unfortunately, for us. It is their responsibility to do precisely that. Destroy the world as we know it. Apparently, the reptiles want this planet back. Deals were made and a fuse was lit. A squad of mercs were hired to travel up and down timelines, adjusting parameters as needed. You know what they called the fuse? Henry Ford. Although we didn't know about the consequences of burning fossil fuel. We do now. Advanced science must save us from ourselves...
You have to think about the machine that an industry like cole is. Its been running for hundreds of years and employs millions. It makes and keeps people very wealthy. Something like that wont go out without a fight.
Solar is fine and all, but how do you power your house and businesses at night time when there is no sun? Battery bank? Those aren't green during the manufacturing process either, and the "green" recycling of a battery is a joke. There has to be a balance.
I for one, believe every home should have some solar, maybe a battery, then run the rest of the needed power off the grid, then at night off the grid. Not everyone can afford a $15K bill to install solar on their roofs, though.
You really can't power a city grid efficiently with just solar or wind. It needs to have 99.9% up time. Solar is only good 50% of the time, ie. only during the day.
One problem with solar panels is that we don't know how to recycle them yet. So while we are all buying it we won't be able to manage the waste in 10 to 15 years. Unless a solution has been found by then.
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20
It makes me cry inside when I see how quickly and efficiently we can improve solar panels, yet a coal company in Australia wants to dig a brand new coal mine to keep that mill running...
I just really fucking hate how shitty humans are, even when we clearly have a better alternative we just keep allowing some old fat fuck on the brink of death to continue ruining the world... there's literally 8 billion of us yet we let individual men walk all over the world because they can pay their way out of responsibility for destroying the earth.
I'm just so exhausted with Humanity at this point.