Re:Tim Cook’s Message to 2019 Graduates: ‘My Generation Has ...
by bumby on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @08:58AM
(#19969685)
I fully grant your point that the rate at which Chinese were brought into the middle class is dependent on fossil fuels.
But similar to your point on the infancy of renewables, this is largely because ICE and other fossil fuel technology has been improved on for the last 150 years. It's unfair to compare renewables to this standard as they are still very much the new kid on the block.
What I think will be very disappointing is if we, as a society, decide to blindly continue focused on fossil fuels because we're optimizing in the short term, rather than the long term. In my opinion, we should be leveraging the last 150 years of fossil fuel technology as a stepping stone to something more sustainable.
I think there's a tendency to treat it as an overly simplified optimization problem, as in we need to maximize output at all costs. It's probably better to set it up as an optimization problem with the proper constraints. These constraints may be externalities that the government is involved in regulating. Yes, we may sacrifice some short term benefit for long-term success. But we (hopefully) won't have squandered an amazing resource like fossil fuels for an ill-advised myopic gain.
But similar to your point on the infancy of renewables, this is largely because ICE and other fossil fuel technology has been improved on for the last 150 years. It's unfair to compare renewables to this standard as they are still very much the new kid on the block.
What I think will be very disappointing is if we, as a society, decide to blindly continue focused on fossil fuels because we're optimizing in the short term, rather than the long term. In my opinion, we should be leveraging the last 150 years of fossil fuel technology as a stepping stone to something more sustainable.
I think there's a tendency to treat it as an overly simplified optimization problem, as in we need to maximize output at all costs. It's probably better to set it up as an optimization problem with the proper constraints. These constraints may be externalities that the government is involved in regulating. Yes, we may sacrifice some short term benefit for long-term success. But we (hopefully) won't have squandered an amazing resource like fossil fuels for an ill-advised myopic gain.