Well Germany is closing down their nuclear power plants, under excuses of damage and recent Chernobyl series.

While actively funding Nord Stream 2.

So there goes your green EU.

If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.

After all they all will be able to afford ticket to Elysium.

The trigger for the decision was not the recent Chernobyl series but the Fukushima incident combined with an important election. If Fukushima would have happened a month later, Germany probably wouldn't have decided to shut down it's unclear power plants.

On October 28th 2010 the German government (CDU & FPD) voted to prolong the usage of its existing power plants for another 8 years. Fukushima happened on March 11th 2011. Put under pressure by an increasing poll numbers of the (anti-nuclear) Green Party and having a state election upcoming on March 27th the same government decided to close down the power plants.

Well, the German Greens (along with NGOs like Greenpeace) have always campaigned against nuclear in a way that very effectively shaped public opinion to allow Merkel to use the Fukushima scare as an opportunity to shut down nuclear power.

Note that Germany's newest nuclear power plants were built in 1982, before the Chernobyl incident and before the merger of the West German Greens with the East German progressive movement (which made the party more politically relevant). This resulted in lifetimes of existing nuclear plants continuously being extended, which in terms of safety was much worse than building new ones.

There are six plants currently still operating, half of which are scheduled to be shut down by the end of this year, the other half scheduled to be shut down by the end of next year.

Ironically, the nuclear scares have not resulted in a massive expansion of renewables but in a strengthening of fossil fuels and especially coal (which is heavily subsidized and has even led to land being expropriated "in the common interest" to allow energy companies to harvest lignite).

As of 2018 Germany has vague goals about abolishing coal power by 2038 due to public pressure but in the most optimistic scenarios this doesn't involve shutting down any coal plants before 2035. That this is being discussed by (conservative and centrist) government officials at all is only the result of the Fridays For Future protests and related spillover movements (XR and more specifically "Ende Gelände", a series of protests directly targeting the surface mining sites).

> shut down it's unclear power plants.

Now that is a typo if I ever saw one.

Should of course be nuclear.

It's unfortunate you are being downvoted because you have a lot valid points.

> If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.

I agree this is the inevitable end of this trajectory. Eventually there will be environmental extreme groups that will target fossil fuel leaders.

Controversially, ignoring the ethical aspects of this, it would be an incentives equalizer to precipitate real climate regulation. Currently there is no incentive to do so, this dynamics would change with a palpable fear of immediate injury/death.

Or perhaps we could allow obtaining of some carbon credits through carbon capture / sequestration, and tighten the emissions cap. For 4% of global GDP you could stop/compensate global co2 emissions based on current carbon capture technology's prices per ton of co2 removed. [1] If there were a business case for CCS, the cost would come further down. Currently there is no profit in it.

One would need to restrict the allowed methods to safe and scalable ones (like extraction from seawater, not ocean seeding).

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWpFCjh0Fk for prices and methods + https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock... + simplistic back of envelope calculation (assumes cost scales up linearly)

Sorry, i dont think that is a good idea.

Its like telling me that its ok if a company shits in my garden and then donates some money to the public cleaning fund.

I dont want to have trash in my garden or deal with shit from companies.

We are actively trashing this planet for younger generations. To feel good we say, no problem to companies if they donate some money to charities or organizations which do some cleanup.

Why allow companies to pollute in first place ?

Oh wait, because of lobbies.

Never Mind.

Carbon credits are a mechanism by which excessive pollution is supposedly legitimized by other actions. It's a rather nefarious scheme IMHO. We should treat the activities of governments, companies and other organizations in a disaggregated fashion: Pumping out CO_2 and other pollutants into the air should be penalized, and engaging in CO_2-and-methane-sequestering activity (e.g. forestation) should be encouraged, independently of one another.

> Or perhaps we could allow obtaining of some carbon credits through carbon capture / sequestration,

Except companies will go for the cheapest possible solution that “counts” for carbon credits, which is probably entirely fraudulent.

So don't have those fraudulent solutions?

See off-shore accounting and special tax jurisdictions, for a solid track record on Humans not having fradulent solutions (specially when profit is at stake).

Carbon credits are a joke. Its basically "so I'm clean over here which means I can be dirty over there! Profit!"

Carbon credits are like paying someone else to not commit adultery so that you can commit adultery guilt-free.

Politicians in general are no longer accountable to the public. I've long thought that some tarring and feathering is overdue.

"No longer"? When were they accountable to the public? To public opinion, sure, but we still have opinion polls and politicians in most Western countries spend a lot of money on trying to shape that. But accountability is incompatible with centralization and multiple layers of delegation.

There's also the rather obvious conflict of interest between politicians needing/wanting money and politicians being supposed to represent the will of the people (rather than the will of those who can give them a lot of money). That police officers aren't being bribed doesn't mean we don't have corruption. We just have corruption with Western characteristics.

That's only because the public keeps re-electing them and their parties regardless of what they do. It's the voters who are not holding politicians accountable.

And that's only because for-profit media outlets owned by the bourgeoisie control the “narrative” and have huge power to influence people's electoral decisions.

Regardless, writing X in a box every four years is hardly a “democracy”.

You can find causes for causes all the way back in the chain. But voters are human beings with independent agency to act according to their own wishes. They have the ability to break the chain of causation if they want. And they don't. So it's their fault.

It's the same way that you can't say a child abuser isn't responsible for his crimes because he was abused himself as a child. Yes, that's a factor that contributed to his actions, but he's still responsible for his own actions no matter how difficult the decision is.

Yes, voting every 4 years is a democracy. It might not be direct democracy but direct democracy has serious problems and you probably wouldn't want it.

Current days political campaigning is pure emotional control. And its in a runaway effect state.

Politicians, backed by professional PR companies who in turn are based on sociology/psychology and years of studies, can pull on emotional strings of people who are already self identify into entrenched positions. Using emotions is clearly easier and more powerful way of getting votes. The only way to win is to play their game, and that costs a lot of money.

Its a fools game to try convince anyone with facts, it simply doesn't work. Thats why anti vaccines, flat earth etc are so rampant today. The more you reason with those type of people the more you entrench them.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted because that’s exactly what they’re doing. I worked for a company that was being paid to work out how best to manipulate people into certain political outcomes by trying things and measuring results. Of course they didn’t market themselves as that. I quit when I worked out what they were doing.

Interested in hearing more about your story if you're willing to share.

I’d probably get fucked over if I mention names which would be required. Not very nice people.

"trying things and measuring results"

do you mean plain jane A/B testing?

Nope much more insidious. A/B testing is statistically random. This thing dangled the desirable result down a path of rewards to attempt to reprogram people into accepting version A while discarding version B, then measuring which method to do so was more effective.

> It's unfortunate you are being downvoted because you have a lot valid points.

that tends to happen around here. valid points don't matter, only group think get upvoted

Totally agree. Just that I probably mean another group.

Its incredible how common it is that people picture themselves as self-thinking individuals who came to their conclusions by doing their own research ... and then repeat all the standard talking points by some other group.

What valid points, mass murder or some space station from a movie?

It was the same old nonsense with no actual solutions.

- Germany closing down Nuclear meant a greater dependency on Carbon emitting energy sources with no down time (Coal and even more so Gas)

- Nord Stream 2 is a project that will further allow Germany to burn more Gas cheaper (more emissions) and become geopoliticaly more dependent on Russian infrastructure

- The EU loses geopolitical strength if it is unable to cut ties with Russia as an escalation counter-measure (Because it's biggest net contributor actually needs Russian gas to keep the lights on).

- Just like you have had extreme groups and extremist recruitment/propaganda forming around other divisive issues, it is inevitable that some form of environment related extremism will evolve in particular when populations start to become displaced. The obvious target of such groups would be fossil fuel industry leaders and lobbyists.

Controversially, ignoring ethical aspects, you could eliminate most violent crime by killing off the poorest people in each country. You could prevent child abuse by killing children. You could encourage any kind of behavior you want by randomly killing people who disobey your demands. Wouldn't life be great if you were an authoritarian dictator with no morals.

Apart from the fact that this is logical fallacy, all your examples are not civilisation ending scenarios.

If we both are on a cliff face and you fell off, and now you are dangling connected by rope to only me. Standard movie trope.

Now because of your weight my only options are to cut the rope - you die, or wait and we both die. This is more accurate example we are talking about here, not killing poor people because 'crime'.

Also I would like to point out that poor people are not root cause of crime. So you are not tackling actual problem, only applying band-aid solutions. But that's a tangential topic.

> all your examples are not civilisation ending scenarios.

Neither is climate change, is it? Unless there's some research I haven't heard about, I think you're doing science denial misinformation spouting.

> Unless there's some research

At this stage this is trolling.

(Reductio ad ridiculum, doesn't allows to have a very meaningful discussion)

Sure. But neither does inciting murder. Some problems can't be solved just by being angry enough to kill people you hate. The oil industry will continue no matter who you kill or how dangerous it becomes because everyone and their dog will be throwing money at whoever can supply oil.

I am too old and cynical to be angry at anybody, my point was that (ignoring ethical matters) the likely spawning of environmental extreme groups would act as an incentive equalizer for the current status quo.

There is too big of an asymmetry with the current situation: profits, tax incentives, lobbying, and regulatory capture. This is not something that the average person can address from within the existing judiciary system.

At the moment you will need either something that will make carbon emissions unprofitable, or an epiphany from those abusing the status quo, that would lead to de facto climate regulation. Neither of those will happen without some incentive (positive or negative).

The only way to "cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders" is realize that wind and solar can't provide base power at rates people can afford. And if people have to spend too much on electricity, they'll vote in new "politicians and dirty industry leaders", like Germany's (and soon France's) return to coal burning.

If we started today with nuclear, we could trivially hit the 1.5C IPCC goal. Hell, we could likely hit it if the world started fracking and moved to wind/natgas plants (like the US is doing rapidly). But at least for now, nuclear and fracking are less preferable than >2C warming to nearly all climate change advocates.

I wish someone would do to the energy industry what SpaceX did to the space industry. Prove to the world what is now possible instead of excuse after excuse of defending the status quo.

Arguably Tesla is doing exactly that. Solar is cheap and available these days, wind is growing consistently. The main issue is smoothing out the spikiness of these sources as they scale to significant parts of the grid. Tesla is the only company I hear about in a real "boots on the ground" kind of way, with notable projects deployed in recent years and a consistent effort to scale those projects up - everything else I've seen is in development, barely started, or vaporware.

> If we started today with nuclear, we could trivially hit the 1.5C IPCC goal.

Just wanted to point out that this is nonsense. We already have 2C of warming baked in, if we go to net zero today, which is a complete fantasy.

In fact we're likely to reach 1.5C of warming before those nuclear plants (that you propose we get started on) even come online.

Did you even look at the graph in the top post in the thread?

The German public (and especially the Green party) has been against nuclear power not since the Chernobyl TV series (which I think didn't tell anything new to most Germans), but since the original Chernobyl incident in 1986. Chernobyl was most likely the catalyst of why the Greens became so popular in Germany in the first place. And now that they are becoming the most powerful political force, don't expect the German stance towards nuclear power to change in the next few decades.

(to be clear, I fully support the decommission of European nuclear plants, Europe is just too small and too densely populated to risk nuclear accidents, or for long term storage of nuclear waste)

> Europe is just too small and too densely populated to risk nuklear accidents.

Maybe, if we built new safe reactors it wouldn't be a problem.

That said, it's probably faster to go renewable -- so is it too much to ask that Germany doesn't build more cold fired plants?

As far as I'm aware, no new coal plants will be built:

https://www.powermag.com/germany-brings-last-new-coal-plant-...

Coal seems to be roughly on the same trajectory as nuclear, and since around 2015 on a much sharper decline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Datteln 4 just started operating last year

And that was the last one, meanwhile 8 other coal power plants had been closed in the same year. Planning and building power plants takes a long time, especially in Germany, where all big construction projects take forever. It's clear that there's gonna be some overlap between old and new plans.

> Europe is just too small and too densely populated to risk nuclear accidents, or for long term storage of nuklear waste

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874421

Well yeah, but the situation is simply that nobody wants to have nuclear waste in their own backyard. They don't even want it to move through their backyard (see the Castor protests).

I'll take it any day over coal plant. Those produce more pollution and radiation than nuclear plants.

Having coal waste in the backyard is fine though, despite it's more radioactive.

> They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.

Just like all the consumers buying all that stuff and just like all voters not voting for politicians that would change something?

Yeah but sure, it's always "the elites" fault.

Do you realize the amount of money poured into propaganda/brain washing of the electorate? Even if all voters suddenly become super informed overnight, it is still hard to vote for good politicians (the very few) because of issues like gerrymandering etc?

Yes, voters should take responsibility. But too much destruction comes from the elites. But feel free to support them. When this planet is ravaged by the effects of climate change, no elite will help you. They have their bunkers built and ready to move in.

Gerrymandering is only a problem (with respect to climate change) if around half of the voters don't care about climate change.

As you said, there are good politicians. Its us that do not vote for them.

In Germany, it was always the same: in between elections, the Green party have really nice results in polls. However, when it comes to the election, people prefer reducing (or not increasing) taxes and stuff over fixing the climate.

People DO know about climate change. There IS good information available online. Its not that people have no idea what's happening. They just don't care to do something themselves - there's enough other people to fix it. Its like an email with lots of recipients, no one feels responsible to reply.

> But feel free to support them.

I never said I support them. I said we could easily get rid of them, of we only wanted to. The problem is (half of) the people around you, not the elites put in power by them.

Is the green party in Germany really a primarily green party or is it like the Finnish green party, which is simultaneously green and hardcore leftist?

Asking because that is why voting for the green party may be a huge turnoff for many (like myself.)

Luckily, nowadays they pretty much got rid of their fundamentalist/leftwing arm. They kinda turned "conservative", but in a positive sense.

In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.

What do you constitute as rightwing crap, out of interest?

For example, appealing to voters of this party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany

Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.

Figured since we can observe the same phenomena everywhere in EU.

Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them.

Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.

> we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them

So in Germany, we are actually quite successful in managing the million that came in 2015. Most got a job and pay taxes. Actually quite awesome, fiveteen years ago everyone in Germany was afraid we'll run out of young workers.

> it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU

As far as I remember, the problem was that it was actually not possible to do a top-down decision, because each national government did whatever they wanted to do? I guess the only thing we did end up doing on a EU-wide level was border protection. Not sure though.

> Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.

Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?

> Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?

We paid in 6 billion into the relief fund and are projected to get less than 3 out of it wrapped in some pre-determined financial instruments. It's like paying 10€ for a gift card that's worth 4€ and only works for some specific shops. People would call that a rubbish deal but what do I know.

In addition, our politicians lied very intentionally to us that this is a one-time fund, just for COVID purposes. Less than 2 weeks later after passing the vote in parliament, Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazia Visco is already marketing the fund as permanent and the future of a joint monetary EU strategy.

Excuse me if I don't share your optimism on this swindle, but then again unlike us, Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this. Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies and insane amounts of bureaucracy.

Well, the EU is pretty heterogeneous, so I would expect different politicians saying and wanting different things. Still seems like its worth it, though, on an economical level at least.

England, for example, did only join the EU back then for economical reasons. Them leaving the EU now doesn't seem like an economical win (and it was probably not an decision made based on economics, I guess).

So I agree that

> Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this.

but I would argue that all countries in the EU are.

> Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies (...)

Which lies do you mean, for example?

> (...) and insane amounts of bureaucracy.

Well yeah. But if the EU would not manage these things, each country would have to manage them with each of the other countries, leading to much much more bureaucracy.

Gerrymandering can give a great deal of power to ~26% of the population. It takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4

The US senate is even more extreme. Wyoming at 578,759 people has exactly as much power as California with 39,512,223. Clearly a party aiming to minimize the number of voters it needs to please would avoid California. After all if you get the right 10% of voters you win and who cares about anything else.

> t takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4

I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-)

> The US senate is even more extreme.

Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.

Suppose there are 100 seats in parliament. To gain political power, you need to win 51 seats. So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote (assuming the population is evenly distributed among the seats).

Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways.

The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share.

> Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority?

I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.

> So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote

Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already.

> Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency,

In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat.

That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.

This argument assumes even distribution of wealth, which is a remarkably bad assumption. Most consumers are put in the position of having to choose between different variations of economic survival and weighing in options like carbon-neutrality is often completely out of the question in favor of other products that are cheaper (granted, they're only cheaper because "the elites" have found a way to externalize the costs of their production onto the rest of society).

So yes, when the distribution of wealth is enormously skewed towards the elites, and production follows capital, it is absolutely the fault of "the elites."

Don't give me astronomically less voting power than others and then blame me for not saving the world with my vote.

Look at those stupid surfs not wanting to have land and freedom. Sucking up to their lords.

> Yeah but sure, it's always "the feudalism" fault.

M'kay.

Are you arguing as a consumer you have no control over the products you buy or the energy sources you use? Because that’s not true.

You can spend your entire life fretting over how each and every one of the products you use was produced. You can dig through hard to find information (if there is even such public information at all!) and devote literal hours per day on that quest. You will have made an impact which is a millionth of what an (unelectable, unaccountable) CEO can do with a decision of his.

This is not sustainable, it's not democratic, frankly it has to change.

PS: Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.

But there's stuff that doesn't fall in that category. Flying for example. In Europe, where trains are a viable alternative to shorter-distance flights, still lots of people would not even think about taking the train because ... don't know, flying is cool?

> it's not democratic

How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs do make different decisions? We can force them. Easily. Even better, we don't even have to force them, we just have to increase taxes on stuff we don't want and subsidize stuff we want. That, for example, worked extremely well to get renewables in electricity production to 50% in Germany (within 15 years, while the new government was trying to work against it).

We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation and laws that would force those CEOs to decide differently. There's no reason, nothing to keep us from doing it, no brainwashing, nothing. Just way too few people that think of climate change in the voting booth. It really sucks, but it doesn't help to blame anyone else than most of the people around you.

> Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.

If you're poor, your CO2 emissions probably are way lower than if you're rich.

> Flying for example. In Europe, where trains are a viable alternative to shorter-distance flights, still lots of people would not even think about taking the train because...

Because the pollution of flying isn't adequately accounted for and priced as an externality. If we had a proper carbon tax (which I dislike the name, it's actually simply a carbon price) then green transportation would be cheaper than flying (and then all second-order effects would kick in: more incentive to invest in green transportation, more incentive to leave flying, etc).

> How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs

> We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation

Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy. It's not. Consider the following damning evidence:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

in particular Figure 1.

> If we had a proper carbon tax

That would be awesome :)

> Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy.

I can only speak for Germany, where it does. Right now, the Green party has the least seats of all parties in the national parliament. Why should the parliament then do something about climate change? However, when they were in the government between '98 and '05, the put the "EEG"[1] into effect (basically just implementing subsidies for renewables), and now 50% of our electricity is produced by renewables (not including nuclear). And that happened even though the following government tried to slow the transition.

There's national elections in September in Germany. With some luck, the green party will be in the new government, right now they are 2nd in the polls. That will, undoubtedly, change national politics with respect to climate change policy.

As for the US ... not sure what your problem currently is. Does the two party/winner takes it all system lead to these problems? Or is it because the republicans basically stopped caring about the truth in the 90s to win elections, spoiling the whole political process? No idea ... however, still, under the last three democratic presidents, more was done for the middle class (and probably less wars were started) then under republican presidents, right? So it does definitely matter what party wins, right, making voting not completely irrelevant even in the US?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...

The big four are buildings, electricity, transportation and agriculture. The typical consumer has no influence on buildings, because they rent. They have a little influence on electricity, because they can choose to buy greenwashed electrons, but they have no influence on energy policy. They have yet a little more influence on transportation, because most can choose not to fly, some can choose not to use a car (or at least use an EV if they can afford it). But they have almost no influence on, e.g. public transportation infrastructure, charging infrastructure, cycling infrastructure, or city planning. Only in agriculture you can actually make a difference in your emissions by eating less meat, but there too there is no path for the consumer to carbon neutrality.

Overall, a conscious consumer can maybe cut their carbon output in half compared to their peers, but their actions have no path towards actual carbon neutrality. That is a problem that needs to be tackled by politicians.

Consumers don't have as much choice as you make it out to be. I can't choose the sourcing of my power utility's generation. Nor can I choose to get an EV because my home doesn't have the ability to support charging. So I'm stuck with buying renewable energy credits from a third party in order to attempt to offset the dirty power generation sources and driving an inferior hybrid car.

But we don't even make use of the little choice that we have. And for example in Germany, you can choose electricity providers that only use renewables.

Because people have neither time nor money for any of this. Most of the population worries about short-term things like "having food on the table", "keeping that job", "keeping myself healthy", "giving my children a better future, so that their lives aren't as hard as mine".

We've just signed a new contract with our electricity provider in Poland. Renewable usage didn't even enter the discussion - none of us even realized there's a choice there. Only when reading the details of the agreement I realized the provider is committing themselves to deliver electricity from renewable sources. So now, I'm powering my computer with green energy, and so is likely my entire neighbourhood. Not because any of us made that choice - it's because the power company did.

Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us. Getting a power company to go green is much more cost-effective than trying to make an equivalent number of consumers to switch individually.

> "giving my children a better future, so that their lives aren't as hard as mine"

Although they'll have a pretty hard live if we don't do something against climate change. And yes, many people do not have the resources to do these tings.

> Because people have neither time nor money for any of this.

Many people do not have that, yes. But many others do, and they could start doing it and as they are probably the ones better off, their over-proportional influence as consumers would make a huge difference. Its a complete failure of the "middle class".

> Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us.

Well yeah, I agree that politics/elections are a better way. Its just that ... we do neither. We do not take our individual responsibilities serious, neither when voting, nor when consuming.

>n Germany, you can choose electricity providers that only use renewables.

That is a false choice - unless electricity providers have wires all the way to your house you have no idea where the electricity came from. All you know is they buy enough renewable to cover what you use. However if you didn't use them the renewable power would mostly be generated at the same time anyway, just at a lower cost.

The above isn't completely true, as the higher price you pay does get a bit more renewable power into the mix. However overall it isn't a big factor unless most people choose the same provider.

>All you know is they buy enough renewable to cover what you use.

And where is the problem with that? The coal plant you got your electricity from is the real sucker here because they didn't get paid and more people doing this is a real problem for them.

They're not more expensive. And of course it changes something when enough people change providers, as those providers then have more money to invest in renewables, just as you said. If enough people switch, coal power plants would have to shut down as no one would buy their elecricity.

Did you consider the ability to charge an EV when buying (renting?) your home? Will you factor that in when moving in future?

Consumers have more choice than you think; not everyone, but a definite proportion come into a position to make a choice on a continual basis. And economically, it is the margin that matters.

What if he had considered EV charging? Or chose to move again this month? Somebody would still be living in his current house and driving a non-EV because that's what's available.

These "choices" are largely meaningless. The choices that matter are ones which reduce emissions or waste across society, not for one individual.

Upgrading to an EV does little to prevent climate change. Do all new EV owners have their old ICE vehicles responsibly destroyed? No, they mostly just sell them on. All you do by choosing to buy an EV and a house with charging is push the emissions onto somebody else.

The important choices, the ones that determine the overwhelming bulk of the outcomes, are being decided by elites and politicians. And they are choosing in the wrong direction.

*rich customers have more choice than you think

Poor customers go with what they can afford

As "a" consumer I do, but I think they're arguing that we need our "leaders" to show some "spine"... they have the power to force corporations to make drastic changes, but till now they're either dumb, deaf, blind or zombiefied by power (or promises of)... The average consumer doesn't think there is a point in changing behaviour(or economically can't) and being an example for others (or different) requires...spine?

> but I think they're arguing that we need our "leaders" to show some "spine"

I was arguing that we can vote in politicians with a spine with respect to doing something about climate change, if the ones we have don't do their job.

I think it is really important to acknowledge how well the political system works, at least in Europe. Politicians largely do what their voters want from them.

Its the voters that don't want climate change legislation. Take Germany: the conservative party did rule now for 16 years, and they are certainly fulfilling their voters wishes by NOT doing something about climate change. Voters of that party don't want that.

> The average consumer doesn't think there is a point in changing behaviour

Unfortunately I have the feeling that the consumer just does not want to change behavior, no matter if it would change something or not. Afterwards, they'll rationalize their decision with such arguments, sure.

If it's not incumbent on our leaders to have that responsibility, then what good are they?

WE voted for them. And voted for them again.

If they don't show responsibility, and we vote them in again and again, it is not their fault, its ours.

Stuff like: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?

We did vote for them, and I absolutely agree.

The one problem with that is the equation is not that simple.

Most of our so-called leaders come from a completely different class than the rest of us, or were inducted into that class through their networks. They spend billions to make sure that everything goes their way. Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.

Voters are to blame, but those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value. That value is also mined from the public through careful manipulation.

> Most of our so-called leaders come from a completely different class than the rest of us, or were inducted into that class through their networks.

Yes. And some are not, and we could vote for them to give them more influence. I bet once that happens, even more of such people would come into politics.

> Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.

Speaking for Germany (and I believe it is the same in many European countries), I don't see that. I don't see manipulation and propaganda on that level, and I do, for example, see quite a lot of good journalism providing good information.

Of course there's wild theories going around on social media and influencing people in really bad ways, but that's just people telling lies to other people, not a lot of the classic elite/leaders there.

> those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value

I absolutely agree. That's why its so depressing that we do not vote such people out.

Nah, we voted against somebody else

Rich people naturally hold more power, proportionally to their wealth. They're also likely to have played a part in technology which create pollution.

Because we have a government which uses threat of violence to exert extra power even if they don't have money, it's natural to blame them as well.

If we were living in complete anarchy, we would definitely hold the polluter accountable for polluting the world and demand some retribution, possibly using a private court system and some underlying threat of violence (which can be externalised through agencies specialised in that).

Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.

> Rich people naturally hold more power, proportionally to their wealth.

This ends up being a cop out. Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth.

Generally rich people get rich by selling stuff people want.

> Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.

And we can also blame poor people for putting those rich people in power and consuming their wares.

> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth.

But that's irrelevant metric. The nature only cares about absolute amount of consumption, and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor.

The fact that rich could have consumed a lot more according to our own measure of "wealth" doesn't make them less morally culpable, since this is not tracked by nature at all.

I realized I should also add, it's not just direct consumption, investment can cause emissions too. Investment often means building infrastructure, which nature counts as consumption regardless whether the investment is then recouped or not (if it's not, then it's a waste). Investment also drives consumption in other ways, often directly through advertising or people just realizing they "need" a new service or product that they didn't need before.

Even savings (richer people just keeping money in assets) are not immune from not having a side-effect on consumption. As assets prices rise, this sends the market wrong signals and the result can be for example building far more housing that is needed, again resulting in additional consumption of resources.

> and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor

This is obviously not true

Here's the source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...

Emissions are closely tied to consumption.

Who is ‘the rich’?

> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth.

Which, of course, means that all this talk about blaming the rich are a distraction from one unavoidable thing: since most of the consumption comes from ordinary people and not the rich, any substantial decrease in consumption has to come from them too. It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Blaming the rich can't change that. Guardian headlines about how "just 100 companies" are responsible for most emissions based on counting all emissions from the fossil fuels produced by them as their emissions, regardless of whether they're being burnt in everyone's cars and to heat everyone's homes, won't change that either. All it does is hopefully distract blame from the activists trying to take things away from everyone.

> It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life.

Pretty dark view of the future. Its not that we have to lose all those things, we just got to change a little bit in how we produce things and electricity and how we travel. And got to insulate houses a little. We don't have to give up any of the comforts of modern life.

That's actually the worst part of it all: its not even that we would have to give up something in order to prevent climate change. We'd just have to CHANGE something, but even that seems to be too much to ask. That really makes me mad. So incredibly unnecessary :(

Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people. There's a lot of people who rarely get out, and who's struggling just to be able to buy a cheap smart phone every year and a last-minute all-inclusive trip to Las Palmas twice per decade.

If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.

Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.

> Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people.

There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax, and pay out the money to people. Seems like this could be designed in a way those people don't suffer.

> If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.

That's why we can implement laws forcing them to. If they add insulation to the house, the cost for heating will go down. So we just got to make sure that the one makes up for the other.

> Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.

But its an investment, isn't it? Its not like we're throwing the money out of the window. We're investing, we are building things that will have a positive net return in the long run. For example, solar and wind are so cheap now and don't require constant imports (or digging up of) fuel. So in the long run, we'll have a more robust and cheaper energy production. Or from above - insulating a house will cost money now, but we'll save money in the long run.

> There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax

Where I live, there is a carbon tax already. It's going straight to the coffers of the state, and I have little hope that they'll let go of those money as it's used to finance other things.

> That's why we can implement laws forcing them to

Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible.

> long run

Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.

I agree that all those things would be nice and that they would improve the situation. If we ever get a majority in favour of such changes it might happen, but believe that'll take far more time than we'd like.

> Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible.

> Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.

Kind of sad. We could do it in a fair way, we just don't care enough. But was there ever a time when that was actually different? I assume not, and even though lots of things are crappy right now, we're probably still better off than ever (speaking for Europe, at least ...)

There were the syndicalists/socialists/communists back in the early 20th century but Whatever was left of the European revolutionary movements dissolved into the current iPhone-wielding, latte-drinking Twitter mob we call the left today. I have little hope they will accomplish any real change.

I'm pessimistic and don't think we should hope for more than damage control once the effects of the climate change start becoming more evident in a few decades.

This is a very good summation of the problem. People do not want to change their consumer habits and their voting choices reflect that.

> under excuses of damage and recent Chernobyl series.

Actually it has been a way longer process starting in 2000/2001[1], with Fukushima having a significant impact.[2] It doesn't seem the Chernobyl series was responsible.

[1] https://www.terradaily.com/2003/031114130333.jlvf6wjx.html

[2] http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/4/14.abstract

I always wondered why was Germany concerned about the events in Fukushima as that was caused by the earthquake/tsunami. Is that a common phenomenon in Germany?

It’s not.

The whole reason is historical, because of Chernobyl, Sellafield, the Fukushima. People have been wary for years. Netflix series Dark reflects this mindset pretty well.

The idea of nuclear energy being clean that we see repeated here in Hacker News is not as widespread as it looks, HN is just another bubble. People are not hearing about it. It will take a while for the population to change their mind, and longer still for the government.

> The idea of nuclear energy being clean that we see repeated here in Hacker News is not as widespread as it looks, HN is just another bubble. People are not hearing about it. It will take a while for the population to change their mind, and longer still for the government.

German here. We Europeans also have another issue: where to put the waste. Unlike Americans who have lots of deserts where no one gives a flying f..k about anything you dump there because there is no human life in a hundred km range, Europe is densely populated and surprisingly people don't want to live near a nuclear waste dump.

Additionally, unlike Americans we have personal experience with nuclear disaster from Chernobyl - to this day, many decades after the event, you have to check wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria for radioactivity if you want to sell them. And current operators of nuclear plants haven't been exactly trustworthy, given many thousands of incident reports of which quite a number can be boiled down to shoddy construction or maintenance.

On top of that, we have had massive fuck-ups of our governments in the attempts to find a permanent storage site:

- former salt mine "Asse" which was used from 1967-1978 turned to be a colossal disaster - the barrels rusted and leaked, to make it worse it was known at the time that the barrels would only last three years, and now it's estimated to need billions of euros for retrieval of all the waste

- former salt mine "Gorleben" was inspected from 1979-2000 as a permanent storage site, but (again) it came out that the location was chosen for political reasons, not scientific

- former GDR site "Morsleben" is unstable, needing billions of euros to prevent collapse

- current projects to search a new final site are expecting to take until (at least) 2031 with finalization of storage in year 2095-2170 (!!!), at a total cost of 50-170 billion euros.

As a result of all of this - especially the last point, who can even guarantee there will be a German nation in over 150 years of time from now?! - German public is extremely skeptic of nuclear energy.

In other European nations, French and British projects for new nuclear reactors (Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, respectively) have managed to surpass the infamous disaster airport BER in budget and time overruns. Even if there were public support for nuclear energy, no one trusts government to complete such projects in time and budget anymore, further weakening nuclear energy.

Edit: Totally forgot about the boatload of issues involving power plants europe-wide, see e.g. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-ageing-nucl... for a list. You really have anything there, from fundamental construction issues over your run-off-the-mill accident and old age (many plants are 30 years or older) to outright gross negligence. To put it short: We Europeans can't operate nuclear power responsibly, no matter if organized under capitalist, communist or modern-ish government control.

There won't be much of a future for nuclear fission power in Europe, no matter what some of our bought-off leaders (Macron, Orban) spout.

The waste is the biggest advantage of nuclear. Consider that when you burn hydrocarbons, you produce waste, too. And much of that waste is simply dumped into the air where we all breathe it.

You might say, well, hydrocarbon waste is much less dangerous. But that's negated by the fact that you need about 1,000,000x as much coal to replace the energy provided by nuclear. And in fact, the total amount of radioactive contaminants in that quantity of coal is roughly equal to the amount of nuclear fuel you would have required in the first place had you just used nuclear alone!

Also with burner reactors you can use the "waste" as fuel.

The problem is largely a political one.

> Also with burner reactors you can use the "waste" as fuel.

As far as I know using the waste as fuel is only possible in new reactor types, which are still under development - and in the case of molten salt reactors, it's not even sure yet if these actually can be built because of material science issues (aka, how to construct piping that stays durable for decades when exposed to hot, aggressive molten salt).

It is simply not fair towards future generations to literally dump even more waste to them and hope they manage to figure it out, when we could alternatively also build out the European power grid and go fully renewable using wind, solar and ocean/rivers for generation, batteries and hydro for storage and natural gas/hydrogen for peak demand.

Counterpoint: If we cannot switch to those other kinds of renewables in a reasonable amount of time compared to Nuclear, we're leaving them with a way bigger clusterfuck in the form of runaway greenhouse gas driven global warming.

Germany managed to get from 6% renewables in the energy mix in 2000 to 46% in 2020.

It is not impossible to get even faster buildout in the next ten years, all we need is politicians deciding to do so instead of giving billion dollar handouts to fossil fuel companies and actively impeding buildout!

Doesn't look like based on the graph in the top level comment of this post that made much of a difference at all.

The problem is German insane requirement of "permament" solution. Sure, the biggest problem here is what will happen 10000 years from now with waste that could easily be repackaged; instead, let's kill the planet in the next 100 years.

>In other European nations, French and British projects for new nuclear reactors (Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, respectively) have managed to surpass the infamous disaster airport BER in budget and time overruns.

China has managed to build reactors using same EPR design on time.

German people demand a safe permanent solution simply because time has shown over and over again that nothing is as permanent as an unsafe "temporary" solution that ends up being permanent because of inertia, budget cuts, insolvencies or whatever.

It's the same as with tech debt, with the difference that your average startup's tech debt can't be turned into a dirty bomb by flying an airplane into it.

And nothing is as expensive and company-killing than complete tech stack switch and rewrite of all software.

>unsafe "temporary" solution

There's nothing unsafe in this particular temporary solution. It's the other way, if something leaks, you can relatively easily fix it. It's only problem if you bury leaking stuff underground.

Also, proper solution is to use "waste" in breeder reactors, which only problem is political opposition to them.

You have two choices:

1) Store the stuff above ground => risk terrorism, sabotage and "normal" accidents (e.g. lighting strike, earthquakes, corrosion leading to leaks), additionally: no one wants to live next to a nuclear dump so you won't get political support but rather fierce backlash from the people living near the chosen site

2) Store the stuff under ground => risk of collapse, of leaks and other issues as have already happened in the existing attempts

> Also, proper solution is to use "waste" in breeder reactors, which only problem is political opposition to them.

Breeder reactors IIRC have the problem of plutonium proliferation, molten-salt reactors aren't even close to being developed enough to be put into production.

Todays nuclear waste is futures gold… i would be happy to buy all the waste. In the future it will be burned in next gen reactors. What now seems crazy will be reality in couple of decades.

It is in part literally gold and other heavier elements due to all the transmutation going on due to neutron bombardment in the reactor core. :)

It's just not yet economical to extract it out of the spent fuel for use.

The obvious solution seems to be to ship the waste to the US, paying them for the disposal. Or you can sign a deal with some North African countries (Libya, Tunisia), and have them store the dump in Sahara.

> We Europeans also have another issue: where to put the waste

We do not actually have that kind of issue, nuclear waste takes very little storage space.

My reading of the situation is that Merkel went anti-nuke because the greens in Germany were anti-nuke and she needed more support. It was all about electoral politics.

I'm not sure about that. IMHO, one of the major reasons Germany (beyond party lines) went anti-nuclear after Fukushima was the sentiment that "something like Tschernobyl can only happen in countries like the Soviet Union / the eastern block", that was the political position of most parties (except Greens, of course) since the 80s. The West German nuclear plants were "always safe", something like Tschernobyl "could never happen here". This sentiment was a major part of the reason why the East German nuclear plants were shut down immediately after the collapse of East Germany, even before the Unification. They were Soviet and unsafe.

But Fukushima is in Japan, and Japan and Germany feel much more similar, from a technological standpoint, than (West) Germany and the ex Soviet Union. Even though Fukushima was geographically much farther away than Tschernobyl, it somehow was "closer", politically.

"If it happens in Japan, it can happen here, too" - I know a few people that regularly vote / support the CDU (Merkels party) and most of them had this exact change of mind.

The question is - why did this trend arise specifically in German-speaking countries?

Chernobyl/Pripyat is in northern Ukraine, on the border with Belarus.

Ukraine is totally fine with nuclear power. Belarus plans to expand the existing plants. To the west, Slovakia's grid is mostly nuclear and is currently doing finishing touches on their new reactors. Hungary is also pro-nuclear.

The radioactive plume from Chernobyl then moved northwards, towards Baltics, reaching the populated parts of Scandinavia. Well, the grids in FIN and SWE are heavily nuclear-based, Finland is about to launch another 1500MW reactor.

So - the countries most affected by the Chernobyl disaster are unanimously pro-nuclear, while DACH countries, basically unaffected by it, are somehow in panic-mode whenever the word 'nuclear' is uttered.

I don't think "unaffected" is the right term. Yes, DACH didn't get much radiation in median, but in some areas (mostly Bavaria[1] and Austria[2]) there was quite a bit of radioactive rain. For example, its still not allowed to eat wild boars / deers in parts of Bavaria, because they accumulated too much (> 10k Bq/Kg) radiation, mostly Caesium 137 from the Tschernobyl incident.

Also, Austria did reject nuclear power in the 70s, before Tschernobyl, with one power plant (Zwentendorf[3]) already built but not yet running, via a very close referendum. So the anti-nuclear sentiment was already partly there (in Austria more than in Germany), but its very probable that Tschernobyl (and Fukushima) pushed enough people "over the edge" to give the anti-nuclear sentiment a comfy political majority across almost all political parties.

Why the other countries did not follow this trend, I don't know. They'll have their reasons :-)

[1] https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschut... [2] https://science.orf.at/stories/3206079/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

The nuclear power plant in Belarus is a political project funded mostly by Russia to increase political ties with Belarus. It cannot be profitable without "free" money from Russia.

Ukraine was against nuclear power and nuclear weapons until war. Now, we need to have an ability to quickly produce few plutonium nukes in case of emergency, so we need weapon grade nuclear reactors to produce nuclear waste with plutonium.

Being anti-nuke and being against nuclear power are two completely different things.

> cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders

Hello. Would it be possible to have a conversation about climate change that does not involve the suggestion that humans be killed en masse, in the manner of diseased animals? Thank you.

Why not?

“If you truly claim to represent the people of the future, Frank asks — people who have the exact same right to a livable planet that we do — doesn’t that mean you should be willing to kill in their defense? Not as a first choice, not as the only choice — but can you really take it off the table? ‘If your organization represents the people who will be born after us, well, that’s a heavy burden! It’s a real responsibility! You have to think like them! You have to do what they would do if they were here,’ Frank argues. ‘I don’t think they would countenance murder,’ retorts Mary, to which Frank replies, ‘Of course they would!’

The Ministry for the Future is thus a novel about bureaucracy, but it’s also about the possibility of a wide diversity of tactics in the name of a livable future that include fighting both inside and outside the system. Characters in the novel contemplate targeted assassination of politicians and CEOs, industrial sabotage of coal plants, intentionally bringing down airliners in the name of destroying commercial air travel, bioterrorism against industrial slaughterhouses — and they do more than contemplate them. How does it change what’s possible when we stop worrying so much about losing in the right way, and start thinking about winning in the wrong ways?” [1]

To be honest, I'm surprised we're not seeing more acts of eco-terrorism yet. There are only isolated incidents of infrastructure sabotage. [2] I think it will change if (when) we don't meet the 2030 emission targets.

1. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/of-course-they-would-on-...

2. https://theintercept.com/2019/10/04/dakota-access-pipeline-s...

I don't believe that people that use violent rhetoric in political speech (fight, war, kill, hang, etc) really know what any of those things are like. If you knew what it was to take a human life, no matter how self-justified, would you bloviate about it so openly?

>> cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders

> Why not ?

You are joking, right ? Or not thinking about what you are saying. Or not respecting that ugly thing - "history"...

You see, when killing starts it's do not stop. 1) goals are not fully achived; b) killers starts to "clean" their ex-own camrades... Soviet Rossia, French revolution are obvious examples; c) killers starts to live in fear of being killed and create despotic countries - that was what you wanted ? I thinked goal was just "protect environment"...

Now compare what achived Soviets and what that dirty Capitalists - who actually get civilized first ? You know that in 70's in UK main society parasites was unions ? - working class won too much. In the mean time: in CCCP and China and Nord Korea you had terror not "freedom for all!"

That's why you do not do things by killing - it dop not work.

“surprised we're not seeing more acts of eco-terrorism yet“

People don’t work the way you think they do, yet.

I suspect that most of us here are unwilling to countenance murder; that's why not.

Germany is also the worlds largest lignite miner and won't shut down it's coal plants before 2038.

Shutting down all coal plants before 2038 isn't the same thing as running them until 2038.

Germany manages to reduce fossil fuel use though: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei%3AEn...

(Personally I would have preferred to shut down coal first, but old nuclear plants are a risk and new ones are too expensive)

The politicians do what corporations and voters want or they get replaced by politicians who will.

Corporations want profit. People want jobs and products.

Nuclear is a tiny sliver in that chart. If decarbonization takes 1.3% longer because we also get rid of nuclear I think few people will complain. It would of course be nice for the climate to first shut off coal plants and then nuclear plants, but it's hard to get a majority for that in Germany's current political climate.

Its not so different from the covid vaccines. We don't need a solution. We need every solution available.

I completely agree and would be in favor of keeping nuclear power running. But I think that shutting off nuclear early is a very minor mistake compared to the general energy policy.

You can achieve much more per Euro though with renewables than nuclear.

That is technically correct today. But that is because there are many problems with renewables that only really start to appear at scale.

In the United States - many utilities gave up literal free money from the Federal Government on renewable deployment because it was creating problems with the grid at like, 2% of use.

Nuclear is a drop in replacement for coal or natural gas.

This is a primary reason that we need a carbon tax. Building out renewables and stopping there will just make energy cheaper and induce demand. A carbon tax will actually change the energy mix by making carbon-intensive energy sources more expensive relative to less carbon-intensive sources.

Speaking of visual reality checks, check out En-ROADS, which was built in collaboration with MIT to simulate different policy interventions. Check out the carbon price slider compared to everything else: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....

My favorite thing to do with the money from a carbon tax is to just give it back to everyone as equal dividends, to offset any regressive effects of the carbon tax without creating tons of loopholes with another more complex disbursement scheme. This is called carbon fee and dividend.

The IPCC finds with high confidence that we need a high price on carbon to stay under 1.5C. PDF warning: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15...

A policy framework without a carbon tax is not serious about getting emissions down.

Counterpoint, while it’s true we still use things like coal, what we do with them has changed massively. Coal in the 1850s was all about metal working, steam production (train and ship), and home heating, uses that have been almost entirely replaced. Coal fired power plants came surprisingly later, with most units coming online in America between 1910 and 1950, a time in which trains and ships largely went electric or to diesel.

Also, our history of energy production is very short. I’d be disinclined to say that it’s impossible based on a mere 200 year sample.

That's not a counterpoint, it is a case in point! There are some energy sources like whale oil that had supply issues and roughly a single use that got displaced. But for our major energy sources with a vast supply we keep finding ways to use them in amounts that don't really decrease.

It's kind of a counterpoint still. We tried and managed to replace coal for home heating and transport with something else, because coal kind of sucks for those things. The fact that coal continued to be used in new ways is a consequence of coal dropping in price and there being no real external pressure to eliminate coal usage. It's not clear what happens once there's strong pressure to eliminate these fuels from our economy, because we've never really tried it before.

>> Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows.

Which is why any efforts based on reducing energy use are doomed to fail. "Do more with less" sounds great but goes against human nature to expand and collect resources. The push should always be to make energy cheaper or more green, not to curtail energy use. An effort to power air conditioners using solar: good, people will get behind that. More efficient air conditioners that use less power: great. Telling people they must reduce air conditioning and just live in hot: bad, doomed to fail. So bring on the solar panels. The mob will support you. Just don't tell that mob they must do with less.

Actually I suspect we need both approaches. But I agree we need to both support economic needs and make it not feel like extra work to use less energy (although there may be some extra up front costs).

Total energy usage has stopped growing for most of the developed world for the past decade.

Interesting. Looking at the same graph - especially when you tweak it to show only the last decade - you'll see solar is growing very quickly (25% YoY) while the others stay fairly stable. That would have it overtaking oil in 20 years.

Considering we're going to see mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next 5-20 years I think that will happen even more quickly.

I want to point out that overtaking oil doesn't mean displacing it. History described in this chart predicts that the best we can hope for is that oil usage will very slowly decline like biomass or coal.

I point this out not because I think this history must be our destiny, but instead to raise awareness that much more must be done to avoid that destiny.

Only if you assume that the growth is expoential / compounding.

I don't know much about the field, but given the vast investments and land needed for country level solar projects I would argue the growth rate is much more likely to be linear, in which case it looks like it won't be overtaking oil this century.

It's relatively easy to make large percentage gains when the current amount is so small.

Solar already hit a supply shock this year that has increased the cost of installation (it has been reliably going down before this). Solar growth is expected to be closer to just linear this year. I hope this is temporary due to all the supply shocks going on right now.

Looking longer-term there will be growth slow-down when wind/solar reaches a larger scale due to the intermittent nature of the energy unless we can figure out how to deal with this. Currently dealing with it requires lots of gas peaker plants, hydro (which has its own environmental damages) or batteries (the resources required to produce and continually replace these are not sustainable but hopefully the net carbon emission can stay low). Malaysia recently had to stop incentivizing solar because their grid couldn't handle it.

There was a similar price shock back around 2010 (?) due to polysilicon shortage. After the hand wringing about how the learning curve was over, capacity increased, and prices continued downward, making up for lost time.

I'm not sure if this is a "reality check", and it sounds suspiciously similar to the "population explosion" claims.

US electricity and gasoline consumption has declined since 2010, despite a growing GDP and almost 20 million more people. Efficiency and conservation have achieved enormous gains, and every renewable source that comes online displaces an existing one.

This has occurred across every developed nation. Japan is using 20% less energy today than it did in 2000. Germany, France, Italy, Canada -- all below 2000.

As developing countries bring more of their population into more modern accouterments, of course the total is increasing -- for now -- but thankfully most are starting with a much greater mix of reasonable sources.

I agree that Europe is having real success. But we need to also keep in mind where energy is being used the most now and in the future. In the long-term Europe going 100% renewable by itself doesn't change the global energy picture much.

Displacing a global energy supply in one country keeps the resource available and the price lower so that another country may use more of it. We may have actual success with reducing global coal usage soon since it does not transport easily.

I can't find data to back up your claims about the US decreasing electricity and gasoline consumption. Do you mean per capita? Meanwhile natural gas consumption is increasing. I also suspect that the US has outsourced much of our energy usage to China in the form of manufacturing. China now uses much more energy that the US (although not per capita).

Developing countries may have a head start with renewables now, but AFAIK their overall energy usage still implies increased fossil fuel usage for the world.

I don't believe this means we are in a hopeless situation. I think it means that Europe and the US must prioritize using their wealth to further develop the technology for carbon neutral energy and to demonstrate it so that it becomes the default energy source for the entire world.

No, I mean in total. US energy consumption across the board has declined. Even in total energy consumption (every plane, train, automobile, factory, office, microwave, etc) the US is currently about equal with 2000. I mean, it was equal before COVID hit, and is measurably lower now (which will likely continue as fewer people commute)

21 years later, with an improving quality of life, and almost 50 million extra people (almost 20% more), aggregate energy use for the entire nation is static and declining. There remain enormous opportunities for efficiency, a lot of it simply in normal ongoing modernization.

Wind and solar are already cheaper than any other source but natural gas, which itself is a precarious source that most nations aren't in a geopolitical situation to rely upon.

I find it odd that you question my facts given that there is literally nothing that claims otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

Where are you getting your data from? I see here [1] that energy usage is static now (but not since 2000), but it is not declining. But that means it is declining per capita. But again, I would like to see manufacturing outsourcing taken into account.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

In 2020, total energy consumption was significantly below 2010, which was my original claim. In 2020, total energy consumption was far below 2000 as well. Total energy consumption declined. Continually saying "where are your sources" when they're the canonical sources of a simple Google search doesn't make my statement untrue.

"But again, I would like to see manufacturing outsourcing taken into account."

Groan. This is going down that incredibly boring path where someone must "win" however strained and nonsensical their argument becomes.

Every developed nation has effectively capped energy usage and started to reduce it (despite continuing population growth). Every developing nation is starting with a much better foundation where they have extremely competitive options that aren't the catastrophe that prior ones were.

Thanks for editing to cite your sources. They seem to show a slight increase in energy usage since 2010. You must be using 2020 pandemic data as your comparison which is very misleading. But 2018 is the same as 2007, so I think it is fair to call energy usage flat.

But the entire point of the chart in my original comment is that even if members of the developed world are reducing energy usage and lowering carbon emissions (which is at best marginally true of the US), the rest of the world by definition is more than making up for it whether or not they are also using renewables as well.

Displacing fossil fuel for mobility with green hydrogen + electricity will reduce a large portion of those energy sources.

Hydrogen for heating + for shipping + heavy duty transit -- more.

California has already decoupled increasing amounts of electricity use and emissions through a combination of policies to increase adoption of renewables and through codes and standards for home heating/insulation/good build practices.

So while your statement may resonate with some of the past - it does not handcuff us to a future trajectory. It is possible to change and it is happening - it just needs to happen faster and increase in its scale.

Also - we did stop using whale oil in the early 1900s so your statement is not 100%.

Whales were going to go extinct so I don’t think there was much choice. Also it had just one main use at the time for oil lamps. That can certainly be disrupted. But if it was a plentiful source it may have been possible to figure out how to use it more broadly.

I agree that history is not destiny. But in this case only if we first understand history.

Random aside, the fantasy world in the Dishonoured games series is a parallel version to ours wherein whale oil formed the basis for the industrial revolution.

This is I think a riff on the Fallout universe, where the transistor was never invented and electronics still bloomed via it's predecessor, vacuum tube technology.

"Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one."

I'm having trouble finding whale oil for my vintage lamp...

> Humanity has never displaced an existing energy source with a new one. Instead total energy usage grows. Our only success with fossil fuel usage reduction is that coal usage is no longer growing.

That is a misrepresentation. The fact that a bunch of other people in another country use, say, more biomass now than in the past since there are more of them than in the past, does not mean that in your country there hasn't been a displacement of biomass with, say, coal. And indeed, coal had displaced biomass in many countries in the world. And natural gas displaced coal in some places.

I agree with your statement. However, we need to keep in mind that displacing an energy supply in one country keeps the resource available and the price lower so that another country may use more of it. We may have real success with reducing coal usage soon since it is much less economically viable to transport it long distances.

We need to also keep in mind where energy is being used the most now and in the future. In the long-term Europe going 100% renewable by itself doesn't change the global energy picture much. The greater effect is the leading role they play demonstrating how it can be done and further developing renewable technology.

Of course they can't. Nuclear is about the only viable way currently, but "greenies" won't have that. I think eventually they'll have to accept it as well the climate skeptics. I certainly hope solar comes up from the rear and surprises me, but unless we have a 100x breakthrough in energy storage (batteries or something more exotic) I don't see it happening. I guess a break through in solar->biofuel energy conversion might also be sufficient for it to replace fossil fuels completely.

Exactly. Tragically, people think individual action doesn't achieve anything, but they measure the wrong thing, that one person's impact on one or two actions. Our greatest impact is in leading others, which multiplies. To lead others we must first lead ourselves. My personal actions have led me to consult corporate executives, mayors, congressmembers, and other influential people.

From the article:

> not yet investing at sufficient scale in technologies that support fast decarbonisation of their economies

The most effective "technology" is to consume less. What will do that is acting on different values, instead of growth, enjoying what we have, instead of efficiency, resilience, instead of comfort and convenience, meaning, purpose, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Human societies lived with those values for hundreds of thousands of years in some cases, and centuries in many others, with higher markers of health, longevity, stability, and equality than our culture until very recently, but those markers are going back down. And will drop precipitously if we don't return to those values.

Population growth may be leveling off in the most polluting nations, but it's globally growing and over sustainable levels. Economically we can sustain population decreasing and many nations have lowered birth rates with the opposite of the One Child Policy coercion or eugenics, purely voluntary, noncoercive, leading to stability, health, and abundance.

> “Every day, we witness the worsening consequences of the climate crisis for communities around the world – farmers’ crops failing; floods and fires engulfing towns and villages; families facing an uncertain future."

We can dance around sustainability issues all we want, we eventually reach both overpopulation and overconsumption, both driven by growth, both driven by cultural beliefs and values we can change. This community loves nuclear, but without considering your point, that we aren't using new energies to replace but to augment. If we ever expect to stop growing and instead shrinking our polluting behavior, the sooner the better, as in now, which requires leadership more like Churchill, Mandela, MLK, and peers, not new technology. It costs nothing and improves our lives. When we learn to reduce consumption, nuclear will help. With our current values, we'll keep growing until hitting its limits, back where we are now, but with more people and dependency, making reduction harder.

To quantify all this, I recommend Tom Murphy's book Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, which I wrote about https://joshuaspodek.com/the-science-book-of-the-decade-ener....

Why it's going to be hard to go for green energy:

https://braveneweurope.com/alf-hornborg-a-globalised-solar-p...

Nixon wanted to have 1000 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. by the year 2000. Today there are 60. Would this law have still applied if we followed up with our planned nuclear infrastructure?

If we presume that the entire US became gradually powered by nuclear (along with solar, wind, and hydro), we probably wouldn't have ever seen an actual global decline in fossil fuel usage at any point other than perhaps coal by a little. Total fossil fuel usage today would be lower though, but this would make oil cheaper for the rest of the world which would lead to greater oil consumption in the rest of the world than what we have historically had. The US would also need to lead the rest of the world to adopt nuclear as well.

I guess the graph ends somewhere and my guess is we largely stop using energy during the coming nuclear winter.

I mean.. in 1800 the main source of power for transportation and industry was wind and water. In 1850 it was coal.

Because fossil fuels are the best energy source, absolutely smashing the competition circa 1850 and still the top contender today.

If we found a comparable energy source today that checked all the same boxes as fossil fuels, sans climate change and plus energy density, we'd be all over it tomorrow.

But the energy usage increased dramatically. So it is possible that the usage of wind power and water power never declined much (it would be interesting to see data for this). A clearer case might be something like using animal power (for plowing and transportation) but I think this idea only applies to resources that have a ready and easy to expand supply.

Humans never willingly decrease their footprint. Even technology that is supposed to "save money" won't be used to decrease overall footprint. People want to save money so they can get more in other areas. Technology that simply reduces overall footprint doesn't sell. Technology will not save us.

Counter point: In Germany we are moving from heating generated from coal and oil to heat generated by heat pumps.

Which is largely driven by government regulation. This is not people doing it willingly just for the sake of reducing consumption. Governments have the power to do things like this. But even then, it remains to be seen if this will actually reduce overall energy usage. It could simply mean people keep their houses warmer/cooler all year round and energy usage stays the same. Or the "saved" energy merely gets diverted to some other use.

Yes, leaving fossil fuels in the ground will be because governments stop people from using them. This will involve laws and guns.