Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.
The point isn't that they're wonderful, it's that they're treated as this thing that only a few have benefited from, when it's exactly the opposite.
It's literally just a couple of decades of effort what separates the scenarios between mild climate change and the accelerated extinction of most of humanity and biomes. All so that Saudi Aramco and Chevron could get a bit more profit.
Texas is doing something right, that’s for sure. But it’s not so clear what that thing is that the topic can be considered settled without debate.
But in reality entrenched market players have access to political influence that lets them stay entrenched. They’ve spent a lot of money since the Industrial Revolution to make sure we need them.
It’s not a perfect free market. There’s no such thing. Politics has a huge influence in economics and vis versa. They’re intertwined.
Serious question.
Climate change is Schroedingers extinction event. It's only bad when you can solve it with solar panels and wind. It's nothing to worry about when you can solve it with fission and eventually fusion.
This criticism would hold more weight if environmentalists held a shred of power. They aren't the ones at the steering wheel.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/GHG%20em...
Over a 60% reduction in emissions from the electrical sector.
---
Compare that to the US, where environmentalists haven't been allowed anywhere near any influence in the federal government... And you'll very quickly see that they are just a convenient boogieman, and not the actual problem.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...
Even if one of their policy points is counterproductive, the rest more than made up for it.
I'm sure they influenced the policy and were happy (and wrong) about it, but they were in the opposition, and had been for several years.
The 2024 plans under Green minister Robert Habeck called for 25 GW of capacity of new gas power plants (which should be in future fueled with green hydrogen. But until enough hydrogen is available at good price, the new gas powerplants will burn natural gas. Some skeptics say that the cost of green hydrogen will be higher than natural gas for a very long time). The estimated construction costs for the new gas powerplants was in 2024 around 40 billion EUR. Most of this costs will be covered by the German state.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/kraftwerksstra...
I'm honestly flabbergasted at this propaganda attempt, because you happen to have left out (just a tiny excerpt):
- Reiche's previous employer being one of Germany's biggest energy firms (Eon), and almost every decision she has made happens to be according to Eons interests
- Reiche has been trying to stop renewable energy projects in any way she can: https://www.t-online.de/heim-garten/aktuelles/id_101189302/n...
- Reiche is trying to move parts of her ministry to run on consultants instead: https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Strategische-Top-Beratung-Reiche...
- Reiche is subsidizing fossil fuels enough for her own party to criticize her plans: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/spritpreise-entlastung-pend...
- Reiche ignores studies from her own ministry that show positive economic results regarding renewable energy: https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/energie/id_101226464/wirtsc...
- Reiche is literally and explicitly asking the fossil industry to supply reasons her ministry can use for swerving investments from renewable towards non-renewable energy (and these requests were not documented as required, before investigative journalism found them): https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/katherina-reiches-minister...
- Reiche keeps lying to the population about the costs of renewables, and many other related numbers: https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/katherina-reiche-... (heading "Entweder sie weiß es nicht – oder sie lügt"; there are older issues where she lied, easy to look up)
- Reiche is introducing legislation that's openly corrupt enough for the Bundeskartellamt to publish a statement against it: https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/DE/Aktuel...
- Reiche's change in plans compared to Habeck is disastrous enough to unnecessarily cost the population up to 40 billion euros: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/verfehlt-reiche-ihr-ziel...
- Reiche's modifications of a law planned by Habeck is so disastrous that even the oil & gas lobby spoke out against them: https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Auch-Reiches-Verbuendete-warnen-...
- Reiche's modifications of said law, e.g. removing the ban on new fossil heating systems, are unconstitutional: https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/belastet-reiche-gebaeudemoderni...
- Internal documents show that Reiche is literally acting in the interest of her previous employer, one of Germany's biggest energy firms: https://fragdenstaat.de/artikel/exklusiv/2026/07/die-eon-min...
- Reiche is trying to push back the ICE ban, which is not only incredibly dangerous from a climate change perspective, but which is going to kill the German car industry because they'd rather stick with ICEs than actually invest into building EVs, when the EV market is growing rapidly! https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/co2-flotteng...
- Reiche is using dirty tricks (like not hiring enough employees in certain positions) to prevent a supply chain due diligence law from actually taking effect: https://www.zdfheute.de/politik/deutschland/lieferketten-ges...
This is just a tiny excerpt from the last few months. Since the current government came into power, Reiche has been relentlessly acting in the interests of the fossil lobby while deliberately putting the breaks on anything renewable, all while lying and acting as a mouthpiece for fossil propaganda (again, explicitly proven!).
---
Seriously, I'd love to know - why do you deliberately spread propaganda for the fossil industry, like you did here?
If we are now criticizing persons, please remember that German Economy Minister Robert Habeck famously stated in July 2022 during the energy crisis that "we do not have an electricity problem, we have a gas problem"
https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/nord-stream-eins-pipeline-g...
Nuclear phase-out at any cost, including lying to the public. Withholding documents about nuclear phase-out until court order.
https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/meistgelesene-artikel-202...
The personal connections between Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and Agora Energiewende - Patrick Graichen.
https://www.weforum.org/people/patrick-graichen/
During the energy crisis debates, government-commissioned or environmental institute estimates (such as from the Öko-Institut) argued that procuring new fuel rods required 18 months to two years, which was cited as a physical constraint preventing longer life extensions for Germany's final reactors before they shut down in April 2023. But Westinghouse Electric Germany told a parliamentary committee of inquiry that federal ministries never asked if the standard production time for nuclear fuel elements could be shortened.
The Greens, by the way, extended the lifetime of the existing plants beyond what the CDU had planned. Why are you failing to mention that?
If you were honest about your critique, I can't see how you can possibly make environmentalists responsible for Germany's course - during the last 20 years, they were the 2nd largest of 3 coalition partners during 1 governing period, compared to the CDU being the largest partner during 4 governing periods. From every angle, they deserve the majority of the blame.
Congratulations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany
In 2002, under the Red-Green government of Gerhard Schröder, the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity" took effect, following a drawn-out political debate and lengthy negotiations with nuclear power plant operators. The act legislated for the shut-down of all German nuclear plants by 2021.
So when the Greens first came to power in the Schröder administration of 1998 they achieved their major political goal for which they had fought for 20 years: abandoning nuclear energy in Germany.
The Greens wanted swift abandoning of nuclear energy in Germany already in the 2000s, but the government would have to compensate the nuclear power plant owners for the costs of building the nuclear power plants (multiple bilion DM in the 2000s, most of the nuclear power plants were still new and the costs of construction were still not payed by the electricity). Therefor the Government negotiated with each electric utility company a rest quota of nuclear produced electricity and as a result nuclear electricity production would continue until 2021 (with a planned decrease in production every year).
In 2007 amid fears that Russian energy supplies to western Europe might not be reliable, conservative politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Economics Minister Michael Glos, continue to question the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.
In September 2010, German government policy shifted back toward nuclear energy and the government wanted to extend the use of nuclear energy in Germany.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the conservative German government reversed it's nuclear position and returned back the original 2002 Red-Green nuclear phase-out time table.
The current conservative German government under Merz again reversed it's nuclear position towards a more pro-nuclear stance, but decided that it's too expensive to revive the nuclear industry.
I would not say that the current German Green party are environmentalists, currently they are mostly renewable industry lobbyists. CDU has connections to German heavy industry. SPD had strong connection to coal mining regions and coal unions. FDP connections to German car manufacturing.
I don't get it, the project was started by a Greens minister and continued by a non-green minister? The wall of text has nothing to do with anything.
> They had enough power to close down all the nuclear power plants in Germany.
But the CDU were the ones who closed down almost all the nuclear power plants in Germany, and as I've shown the CDU are anything but environmentalists, so this is simply wrong.
My "wall of text" is to prove that the CDU are not behaving in the interests of environmentalists, rather nobody here can believe how deeply they've sold their souls to oil & gas.
Germany had enough power to close down all nuclear power plants, because older coal power plants when taken offline have been carefully mothballed (preserved for later restart, when necessary).
In contrast the 2002 German nuclear law (deutsche Atomgesetz (AtG)) requires that nuclear power plants have to be started to be dismantled immidiately after shutting down. There are no technical reasons why nuclear power plant after shutting down, taking out nuclear fuel and decontamination (as is done regularly during maintanance) could not be preserved for 10, 20 or 50 year (you have to mostly periodicaly repair the roof, repair the paint and guard the buildings, e.g. it can be done without large costs).
Or it says facility inspections cause autism and transgenderism so they have to deregulate for their pals.
Or that nuclear safety itself is a symptom of low testosterone and turns the frogs gay.
...
Hmmm, a radioactive desert vs an entire polluted atmosphere, I wonder which is worse...
No, storing a few cans of solid waste is decidedly NOT a real problem. However, undoing the damage we've done to the global ecosystem instead, now that's gonna be fun.
Regardless, governments do not typically care about public sentiment when making strategic moves for long-term time horizons. It's why we have a strong military and why despite so much whining about its cost, the F-35 exists and is being fielded by as many squadrons as can get their hands on it. If they wanted to build out nuclear power in a civilian capacity, they would. We already do it for subs and ships.
One can observe a problem while not advocating support for it.
It is quite true that energy decision making has been tremendously politicized, and I don't think that's good for anyone.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-a...
1.5% is a //huge// amount. If it was a “drop” in your bucket, it would only hold 67 more of those drops.
AI cannot magically make engines more efficient or CO2 not a greenhouse gas.
That's plainly false, as that's just not how markets work over the long term. We only see distortions like this iver the short term due to investor subsidies.
Can you point me to my earlier argument (the time marks are individual comment URLs)
In fact, I'm unaware of any new AI data center also being built with 0 carbon generation. Do you have a source?
Ohhh, carbon neutral energy generation, if only we could use that to replace the non-neutral energy sources, instead of using it to power virtual X-Ray goggles so MAGA incels can goon at "naked Taylor Swift". Or to answer "please do my work for me" of lazy fucks planet-wide. You know, to stay relevant to the comment thread of "Oceans hit highest temperature on record"...
The problem is not that we are building more things that use electricity, the problem is that we are generating electricity using fossil fuels. We should have phased out fossil fuels decades ago yet here we are ramping it up while everyone's bickering about inconsequential bullshit like datacenters.
Datacenters are not the problem. Construction is not the problem (except concrete which generates huge emissions but we can't really do much about that). Some things are infinitely easier to fix than others. Power generation is such a thing. We have the solution, we've had it for like a century (nuclear) and we're getting even more solutions.
We could run all power production with hardly any fossil fuels if we really wanted, nearly all land transport could be electric. These two changes alone would eliminate the vast majority of emissions. And we can do that, it's realistically possible.
We could also probably run global shipping and aviation on non-fossil fuels if we really wanted to, though I don't really know anything about that. There are large scale mining excavators, dozers and trucks running on electricity, and hybrid solutions.
Stop bickering about the small stuff. The only thing we should be focused on is transitioning all electricity production to green as fast as possible. That takes care of almost half of all emissions by itself and opens up lots of opportunities for solving other problems without emissions. For example we could use green energy to produce hydrogen from water, or biogas, ethanol etc, and then we'd have emission-free fuels we could use where combustion engines are still necessary.
But no let's just bicker about data centers and other inconsequential shit while the world ends.
0.5% is about the entire energy consumption of two Swedens or half a Thailand.
No, we couldn't, because degrowth solutions aren't really an option.
You really think you're going to convince people to become poorer? Not possible in a democracy. It'd require some kind of ecofascist totalitarian thing where you take peoples' energy and resource use away and fire tear gas and rubber bullets at them when they protest.
Or we could build non-carbon-based energy sources. Cause we have those, and they work. You can also have safe sex if you put a rubber thing on your wing-wong.
That’s correct and eventually that will have to happen. There aren’t much other actual options. It’s mostly a question of how long that can be avoided. We developed a system that blocked us in the current local optimum, with no ways to take the drastic actions we need to handle global issues like climate change.
(And to be clear, an ecofascist regime would be horrible to live under)
1.5% of global energy use would be a shocking amount. Aviation is at about 3%. 1.5% of global electricity is about 0.2% of global energy use, a much more manageable figure
Why would this not be the energy of running an LED light for 15 minutes?
Doesn't matter what side you're on, it's always "enough water to irrigate 27 soccer fields" or "as much energy as 1/5th of the average hamburger"
It's not about accuracy, it's about the units people choose when having these discussions
that would be 0.3% of global energy use
They also represent investment in economic growth that doesn't come from resource extraction or travel or manufacturing.
This is why so many AI proponents always talk about future gains rather than what is happening today. It a lot of what it claimed to be coming doesn't happen then it will all look very silly.
Time will tell and depending on were you sit, either we will be there shortly or it will never happen.
Nope. Every moment that hardware is not ran is wasted money that could have been used to buy something else that's actually productive.
Secondary effects like depreciation make this phenomenom even stronger. You've only got a few years to exploit any given piece of hardware before it's obsoleted by newer, more efficient hardware.
That's why any hardware investment with a high upfront cost operates as close to 24/7 as possible — nuclear power plants, factories. Continuous operation amortizes the costs as well as possible.
Instead much of it is being handled by bringing new fossil power plants on line that would not have been built if not for all the new data centers.
The other things that are causing significant increases in electricity use, like more people getting heat pumps and EVs, are all very spread out and so are much less likely to force new fossil fuel power plants.
June 2026: New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-announces-850m-moderniz...
Meanwhile in China (from 2023):
China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.
"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
Meanwhile in India (2026):
India plans to increase its coal production by nearly 100m tonnes to 1.15bn tonnes in the 2025-26 fiscal year to help meet the country’s rising demand for electricity to support economic growth and contend with heatwaves, which have become more severe and more frequent because of the climate crisis.
The planned increases come despite signs that the world is beginning to turn its back on coal in favour of renewable electricity, Global Energy Monitor said.
The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.
These charts address your points:
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/india
India is a bit more concerning for a number of reasons (lower per capita income means they are lower on per-capita emissions currently and hence have more room to grow, and they don't have the resources that China does to build out renewables) but criticizing China from a renewables perspective (there are a whole lot of other valid reasons to criticize them) is insane.
Not according to the federal government's data. BTUs from fossil fuel production set a record last year and is on a faster pace this year. Your bringing up a few coal plants is only tangentially relevant.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_3.pdf
> The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.
Are you familiar with the concept of necessary but not sufficient?
In any event the war with Iran is speeding up the future that was coming anyway. China's EV and solar exports are surging throughout the world. Both China and India have said for many years that their emissions would rise and then fall.
A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting
USA 14.3 t, China 8.8 t, EU 5.5 t, India 2.2 t
It is right because all the planet cares about is the amount in the atmosphere.
It is completely wrong because whatever total amount X of CO2 emissions we decide we need to limit humanity to, we have to somehow allocate that CO2 emission budget to people.
Unless you can make a good case that some people have some sort of natural or divine right to a bigger share than others the only way to do it is for every person to have the same share. (Maybe on top of that there can be some system of trading, so that people whose emissions go toward things that the world finds more useful can trade for a bigger share, but it would still have to start from everyone is equal).
Since it is countries that would be the ones actually enforcing whatever the limit is, the country effectively ends up as the entity in charge of the shares of all its population, making the allocation at the country level equal on a per capita basis between countries.
Another way to see that anything other than per capita is nonsense is that anything else would allow groups of people to manipulate their allocation by splitting the country into multiple countries or merging multiple countries into one.
That is not a very good idea.
Think about it, just breeding more people would give humanity a bigger share.
Much better to let every square mile (or some other arbitrary region) have a share and divide that among the people living there. Higher population density would translate to less shares per person.
If this really happened it would incentivize genocide against less developed nations.
1. Get rich from cheap coal
2. Pull up the ladder behind you
I'm sure everyone will comply.
We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon people.
Another way to put it: China has one billion more people than there are in the US.
Or another way to put it: 4.1x more people.
Which means China is emitting nearly 3x more Co2 than the US.
Our only hope is that China is using coal and fossil fuels only has a mean to sustain its insane growth while they transition to solar and nuclear (which they also do, at an amazing speed).
Hillbillies and redneck with their gigantic pick-up trucks in the US are really the least of worries.
So split the country up fixes the problem. Yes, it's dumb, but you agreed with it...
What is Europe's excuse for having such low wages and output despite having more people?
I agree the USA has grown more steadily than the EU and the American software/tech industries have a leg up but the devil is in the details.
I travel a lot for work to the USA and I do not experience what this GDP growth has brought to the US in the past 10-15 years: infrastructure in general is worse (worse airports, worse roads, etc.), urban life is worse, rural life is worse, quality of food is worse.
[0] https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/europe-v-america-whos-rea...
"Today the US government announced CO2 tariffs against polluting nations - products sold in the USA need to be produced in carbon-neutral manner or face punishing taxes.".
Pipe dream, of course, because the populace will vote for the guy offering cheap instead of sustainable...
To say they’re winning the race implies there even is a race.
It’s a super car vs a snail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country#Global_...
Many countries on that list dwarf China in a solar watts per capita, so are they winning this hypothetical race then?
But sure, them adding that alongside all of their new coal plants is nice. Also, they waste the most solar energy of any country.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-leads-wave-cle...
Sure, there might be more transmission constraints or whatever, but those will certainly be solved in time (transmission capacity is more distributed so I'm not surprised it's lagging capacity).
I just don’t understand why they are diversifying between solar and coal, instead of just putting all new investment into solar or other renewables.
China's 2025 five year plan targets peak coal before 2030 and might have already reached it in 2026. https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre...
First, you are ignoring gas. The US stopped building coal plants because of the fracking boom. That gave the US huge sources of natural gas which was cheaper than coal.
China has little natural gas but abundant coal, so when they need fossil fuel for something they cannot yet do with renewables they use coal whereas the US uses gas.
Second, you are looking at number of plants, but not looking at capacity factor (which is a measure of how much they are actually used). The new Chinese coal plants have lower capacity factors. They are being built as backups and peakers rather than baseload, designed (or retrofitted in the case of existing plants being upgraded) to be able to cycle up and down to balance wind and solar.
Many are idle so much that their owners have financial difficulty keeping them open, and the government has had to start paying them for their idle time so they won't go under.
Many are also built to replace existing plants that cannot not yet be replaced with renewables, so are at worst neutral on coal usage and are usually actually more efficient than the old plants so there is a reduction.
Their use will continue to decline because China is massively deploying renewables. They also are adding massive amounts of grid battery storage and UHV transmission lines (60000 km so far spanning the country with another 12000 km under construction or permitted--the US is a bit behind that at 0 km), which means the can move electricity from where renewables are strongest to places with high needs but fewer renewables much easier that most other countries can which is further going to reduce the amount of time those new coal plants run.
Third, for India, even if we compare by country rather than by the correct per capita measure (see other comments below for explanation of why per capita is the correct measure when comparing energy policies of different countries), India's current emissions are only 68% of US emissions even though the have 4.3x as many people. That 10% increase you cite that they plan for coal in 2025-2026 still leaves them doing WAY better than the US.
India is also expanding renewables rapidly. They have around 10 nuclear reactors under construction, and are adding lots of solar and wind. They are currently up to 136 GW of solar capacity (64% of US and 11% of China), and last year added around 38 GW (the US added 34 GW). They added 6.3 GW of wind compared to 6.2 GW in the US.
They are almost certainly not going to get anywhere close to the US total emissions. (And per capita where they emit 1/6th what the US does they are definitely not going to even remotely near the US).
And FWIW, I don't buy the "but the countries that bred like rabbits for the past few decades are owed their due reserved quota". Having a massive population isn't something you need to be rewarded for, not to mention that the math doesn't even make sense. For China and India to get their "per quota" backlog, we're basically so firmly in self destruction territory that it makes no sense for anyone else to even bother.
If China and India are going to "make up" for their historic per capita greenhouse gas emissions -- after both breeding continent-sized populations -- the worst case scenario is 100% guaranteed and everyone else might as well go wild as well. 3 billion people cannot continue the mistakes of the past, but a lot of very foolish people seriously make that argument.
If China was split up into 20 countries would that be better because the emissions were divided by 20 for each individual country? I honestly don't know how so many people fail understand this very basic point.
Also talking about breeding continent sized populations, the USA is third with 340+ million and rapidly expanding at millions a year. The median country size is around a population of 9 million so the USA having 340+ million is clearly deeply irresponsible.
> China bringing enormous greenhouse gas burning capacity online
Your knowledge is out of date, Chinas total CO2 emissions have likely already peaked back in 2024: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
> If China and India are going to "make up" for their historic per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
Except China likely peaked their emissions at a much lower per capita rate than even the USA does now. India will probably be the same.
> the worst case scenario is 100% guaranteed and everyone else might as well go wild as well.
It can always be worse.
> 3 billion people cannot continue the mistakes of the past, but a lot of very foolish people seriously make that argument.
Sure and a country of 340 million cannot continue to burn as much as it is doing but continues to do so.
Also how much money is the USA going to send to developing countries to help them develop without burning fossil fuels? Oh yeah they cancelled it and they continue to be the worlds second largest emitter.
If China or India split into 5 different political systems each, suddenly the calculus changes?
Talk about foolish.
https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti...
"Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this?
Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given the world consumes fossil fuel I prefer they use American fossil fuel vs. Russian or Saudi fossil fuels. I don't understand why we are dwelling on the wrong metric here. Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there?
Similarly data centers are going to get built somewhere. If they're already built I'd rather they are built in places like the US.
Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Where I would be critical about US policy is that I think they are introducing more tariffs on imported solar panels. This might fit into governments make things worse and hopefully everyone regardless of their political affiliation can push back on this specific item.
The world all going to act together stronger than the markets is not going to happen. You can argue that is unfortunate but it's also where we are.
Scratching my head on that one.
I mean... is something not better than nothing? Or do you only get rewarded if it's 100% perfect? If so then by that metric nobody should be rewarded here. There's nobody in the world who has done enough, certainly none of the major economic powers.
Do you reward a bull after wrecking a China shop because it decided to at least leave the employees in alive with near fatal wounds?
"1954 – The first practical photovoltaic cell was publicly demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.[27] The inventors were Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson.[28]"
The references are on Wikipedia. Maybe do the most basic thing in Wikipedia and click on some links to the related pages before asking for sources. One can still quibble that 'first practical' is indeed different from 'first' but the practical part is the part that actually matters in this argument anyway (i.e. solar rollout).
(also, of course it was Bell Labs.)
Haha my exact reaction when I first found out.
Something one specific party has been fighting against for decades
If it weren't for the huge efforts put into it by china to make solar and batteries so cheap and capable we wouldn't be nearly as far along in the solar transition as we are. Solar is growing in spite of US policy, not because of it.
But really, there is growth under the policies, so saying "despite" doesn't work. You could try to argue that the policy makers tried to kill solar but achieved the opposite result. But at the end of the day the current policy environment led to a positive result. Correlation isn't causation but if I was writing a policy and I wanted to guarantee the opposite outcome I'll bet ya I could.
I happen to know some Americans who have worked really hard to advance renewable energies and have made an impact. To just view the US with one lens is not right is maybe the point I am making, without poking.
China makes cheap solar panels because there's a market for them. Panels aren't the only component in a solar system either. A lot of the technology comes from the US and American companies as well. Germany apparently gets some credit as does Australia. The Chinese did what they do best- low cost manufacturing. We got there together.
We’re not letting the market handle it and we’re going in a backwards direction. Can’t really crow about our accomplishments given that.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/rwe-deal-win...
Nuclear, batteries, solar, wind, hydro.
You know people can just look this stuff up right?
The RWE paid 1.26 billion to acquire the lease on offshore wind. Payment is a refund.
Further, offshore wind is expensive in terms of maintenance. Stopping the project now is protecting billions in expenses in the future.
The Trump administration told them it could continue to make the process drag out for more years as it has been or they could spend the money on fossil fuels. It was not any kind of market decision.
They didnt cancel the contracts, they paid the companies to stop doing work that those companies(i.e. the market) wanted to do
> Further, offshore wind is expensive in terms of maintenance. Stopping the project now is protecting billions in expenses in the future.
Source yourself that this is worth it as per the market if you are going to claim this is a market decision
?
All power plants have maintenance charges. Unless I missed something, this statement is a non sequitur.
On top of that, Wind is practically free compared to the maintenance and running coats of other options.
Your sacred market has been killing us all and will continue to keep killing us all if it makes a few pennies.
The markets have failed everybody, and politicians who believed in the markets were wrong, and should be in jail now for criminal negligence.
> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem.
Blind faith in the markets is what got us in this mess.
> Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage.
Yes, and usage is not decreasing. As solar is growing, it's only adding capacity, not replacing fossil fuels. 2025 was the record year for global emissions and fossil fuel consumption.
But sure, let's let "the markets" dictate our ecological policy. Maybe they'll mercifully let us stop burning oil sometimes in the 2150s.
> Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there?
Huh? Americans very consistently show the most emissions per Capita.
I'll just put this here: as long as burning fossil fuel is profitable, "the markets" won't help at all, quite the contrary. And oil being unprofitable isn't happening anytime soon. Our societies are already suffering from Climate Change immensely, and it will only get worse as the years go by. We should have stopped emissions yesterday, we can't let "the markets" take away our agency on the matter and decide our fate.
Still a ways to go but trending down for some time now. India and China are trending up and might cross us by 2030-2035 unless they reverse direction.
Per capita decreasing is not nothing, but unfortunately the climate doesn't care about that particular metric.
Even beyond that, it is simply a false statement. Among the most, yes but consistently "the most", no
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
This is the key point. While yes, it is brilliant that we are adding loads of solar, wind and whatever - it is the final emissions that really matter. Regardless of how well meaning we are intended with our build outs, the emissions is really the only metric that counts when we are focusing on climate blow back.
But...
The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here. Not overseas. It's true some element of the "right" are ideologically driven here in the wrong direction but many in the "right" are also pragmatic. Instead of fighting we need to get to common ground and the way to get there is by market forces. Most would prefer the get solar energy if it's cheaper vs. more expensive fossil fuels. And certainly if all else was equal (panels made in the US, American jobs, whatnot). So you can take the adversarial route or you can take the pragmatic route and make real progress.
The other stupid political battle here is boycotting Tesla. How does that make sense? We "punish" Elon by using more fossil fuels.
About the (unrelated) boycott question, I would invite you to consider the reasons motivating people to boycott Tesla. If think everyone do that to "hurt" or "punish" Musk, perhaps that's why it doesn't make sense to you.
Canada was able to give me a rebate on my EV purchase. Where do you think that money comes from? I drive a Tesla because at the time it was (and maybe still is) the best EV. I benefit from the network of superchargers. It is one, if not the, of the most efficient EVs in terms of energy/km. Batteries last a very long time due to battery management. It has been very reliable for me. My decision (way back) was really strictly on what is the best EV with no political considerations (and that was before a lot of the more recent political issues).
> The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense.
If you _must_ extract fossil fuel, you can arguably say that it's better to do it somewhere with higher environmental standards (of course, here I'm disregarding people disdain to see wilderness areas they know and have an emotional attachment with transformed into oil fields). But what about _stop_ fossil fuel usage? Sure, it would cost a lot of money. So is AI currently, for doubtful returns. Sure, it would require people changing habits. So has the Internet, and we went through it.
It's like hearing an alcoholic telling you that sure, he still drinks 3 bottles a day but hey, it's Canada-made alcohol, "all in all better than alcohol coming from Russia", right? Yes, I guess it's better for the Canadian economy, but what about just stop drinking?
About your Tesla, deciding to buy without any political consideration is your choice, which you are entitled to. But why would it be impossible to understand someone actually considering the political/social side of things? All your acts and conscious decisions are strictly driven by objective, scientific criteria, never taking into account anything else?
We are not all going to "just stop" using fossil fuels. That is not a realistic goal. If it was possible then I'd entertain it. Being religious about this doesn't help make progress because it alienates people. I am all for pragmatic measures that reduce fossil fuel usage globally. Tanking Canada's economy to make zero or negative global impact is how I evaluate some of the proposed aggressive policies. What is happening is that we are funding Russia's war on Ukraine indirectly due to our lack of ability to replace that supply in Europe. That to me feels like obviously bad policy.
I made changes in my life to reduce fossil fuel usage and am considering more. I also try and influence others where I can to make similar changes. I am not optimizing for $'s here, I can afford to spend more and use less fossil fuels. This isn't really to boast or anything, just to say that this approach works for me and can work for others.
My wife boycotts Nestle for political considerations. I sort of get it but also not get it. That's not to say I would never consider something like that but I also am not a believer in the efficiency of that driving change and I don't have time to research everything in enough depth to come to a conclusion about everything I buy. Not buying Tesla for politics X is a very one dimensional decision. I don't understand how to make that decision and so I don't bother.
Sure, I get it, we won't literally _stop_ fossil fuels usage in the near future. I get it, other countries are large CO2 emitters. But why is it an argument to do nothing?
In Canada, Carbon tax was a pragmatic, reasonable policy. It was even enacted by conservatives. It was done at zero and even negative cost for most people. And yet, it was gunned down because it was easier to just yell "ax the tax" without even understanding what it was. All of it under the cover of "pragmatism" (hey, families are suffering, businesses are failing, we need to do something -- and of course, that something has nothing to do with the root causes of these issues).
I could go on: you cannot put bike lanes to encourage bike adoption (that's pragmatism: people stuck in traffic in their gaz guzzlers produce CO2!). You cannot improve public transport (that's pragmatism, it's too expensive and families don't want that anyway). You cannot have laws to enforce maximal arsenic content in the air in a residential neighborhood (that's pragmatism, what will the workers do when the plant close?). I could go on and on, just in Canada.
It's tiring to see pragmatism systematically invoked as an justification for doing the worst possible thing, environmentally speaking. It's tiring to see that this always raises the bar of what is environmentally acceptable, such that next decisions are even worse.
Kudos on you if you actually make pragmatic choices to reduce your fossil fuel consumption, both at an individual and societal level. But somehow I doubt it. I've seen too many "pragmatics".
And how do you propose we do that if we’re not the ones selling the fossils?
Fossil fuel usage is for the most part, a transaction between willing participants at a fair market price. Will you ban that? How will you enforce it? I hate to be presumptuous, but I assume you’re not a fan of colonialism or wars in the Middle East.
While oil is as valuable as it is for heating, industry, transport, war, and gestures widely at our modern lifestyle. There are two realistic ways to stop it: replace it with something cheaper and better, or genocide.
Neither of these are likely to happen at the scale and timeline required to solve our predicament. But regardless, pretending we can just stop people far poorer than us from striving to meet our standing of living by… asking nicely? It doesn’t help, if your goal is indeed to solve the problem.
Because we would be the ones not _buying_ the fossils? There are multiple ways to reduce fossil fuels dependency, and they are known (and no, they do not involve genocide or colonialism). In Canada, carbon tax is an example, backed by economic studies (from right wight economists) and originally introduced by conservative (in Canada at least). Of course, then right wing parties started to convince people to "axe the tax" because it was the root cause of their problems (which is was, of course, not).
That's always the issue, and that's always been bugging me. Why is it that not being able to replace, today, 100% of the fossil fuels usage means "gee, we should do nothing, let's actually increase our production!"? How do we come from "such an energetic transition is a multi generation work" (which is true) to "meh too hard, let's double down"? How can we seriously make the argument "hey, I _could_ clean up the mess in my backyard, but anyway my neighbor is way worse and he has a larger backyard, let's do nothing instead"?
I really don't see how these positions are seen as the "voice of reason". To me, there at best the voice of laziness.
Sorry that sounds like, if you get murdered than better here because the knives are cleaner.
If you have a view that fossil fuels are practically limited (not necessarily in the literal sense ”run out of the last molecules” sense but in the practical/economic sense), you’d rather buy someone else’s and hoard your own reserves to extract later when the global supply is lower/price is higher.
The US and Canada combined are responsible for 28% and 31% of the global oil and natural gas extraction respectively. If this share were eliminated, then it would force global demand down via the supply/demand price curve especially as there are competitive clean alternatives to burning fossil fuels for energy these days.
We're approaching a global crisis point - and every country needs to reign in fossil fuel extraction and consumption. It's morally indefensible to continue profiting from the sale of products that are f*cking up the planet. Just because there are others that are immoral, doesn't give you an excuse to act without morals. Or claim it's better that you act immorally than someone else.
And that's ignoring the consequences of that on e.g. people in cold climates that rely on gas for heating or people that rely on gasoline for getting to work. The correct approach is to reduce the usage of fossil fuels which will lead to reduced extraction naturally.
You're not 100% wrong but the impact is marginal. Partly because some energy markets are a cartel. The prices aren't strictly governed by supply and demand but rather supplies are throttled to drive prices.
This is why that's the wrong thing to focus on. If we (e.g. Canada and the US) have strong economies that allows us to do more. Both internally and by influencing others. For example I can afford to drive an EV and use a heat pump because the Canadian economy does well, despite those not being economical options. Many early adopters of solar and EVs and other environmental approaches were only possible because we have strong economies, and those drive down prices for everyone.
Oil and gas production is relatively in elastic taking years to expand.
The extra installed solar and wind generation - as a reaction to increased fossil fuel costs and supply disruption - permanently displaces fossil fuel consumption. No matter what fossil fuel prices do subsequently. Like the massive growth in nuclear generation immediately after the 1970s oil crisis.
Championing the continuing extraction of fossil fuels to be sold for combustion given what we know they do to the planet is not balanced in terms of morality by you driving an EV sorry. We have to abandon fossil fuels for energy asap and we practically can - the tech is available and affordable. The current reliance on fossil fuels - outside of some niches - is a political choice backed by inertia and established and powerful financial interests.
And Tesla is not the only game in town for electrification, and it's been like that for years already. Tesla's EU sales plummeted while overall EV share rose quickly during the peak of the 2025 "boycott". Someone who was going to buy a Tesla but got turned off by the Musk-Trump coalition just bought an electric/hybrid from someone else - there is no movement to buy gas cars just to spite Musk (unlike, say, the "roll coal" crowd).
Pragmatism is better than adversarialism, sure, but when it comes to the environment the locus of adversarialism is more lopsided than you're trying to make out.
There are other EV manufacturers. Boycotting Tesla != buying ICE vehicles. That’s a bad faith framing.
Someone pointing out that the US is adding large amounts of solar with minimal government effort isn't "rose-tinted", it's just factual.
> absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization
The good thing is that in the US some people having strong political feelings about something doesn't really stop us from doing things. So not only have we added lots of new solar, we did so with a "braindead" government. That means there's a lot of people in the US who understand the changing needs we face and that having a moron in the White House doesn't really affect that.
We have government agents frequenting this website to sew anti-US sentiment? Really?
Could you identify some of them? Or at least one or two of the obvious ones?
But to be serious, there's endless evidence that it's going on, and if you don't believe it I'm not the one with my head in the sand. (That's a common English idiom meaning "not paying attention," for the foreign state actors out there.)
We – of course – care about manipulation on HN; the only reason this is a site people come to for discussing so many different important topics is that so much effort has gone into ensuring integrity in the content that can be read here. It's just not that easy to engage in astroturfing, shilling, brigading, etc without setting off alarms either in the software or in the many HN users who have finely honed bullshit detectors, because organized, manipulative participation is so clearly different from earnest participation.
It's even worse than "not paying attention". It's knowing the truth of the situation and actively avoiding acknowledging it to yourself or anyone else. Hiding your head in the sand and shouting "It's not really happening, it's not really happening!" despite knowing that it is indeed happening.
The problem is politics and banana republic levels of corruption (aka lobbying) preventing chinese evs to enter the market. If you opened the automotive market to competition ie:
> focus on markets and let them take care of the problem.
then the need for fossil fuels would decline.
That is such an understatement
Do you mean the war with Iran that released in the initial weeks over 5 million metric tons of CO₂?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...
Also this seems to contradict your fossil fuel paragraph completely, the US is amongst the world's highest fossil fuel consumers per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=total&m...
It is a problem though. Extraction and transportation of fossil fuels is a major source of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
Also it breaks down into CO2, so the problem isn't totally gone after 10 years. And we're still accelerating the amount we're releasing anyway.
No, it isn't. There are no short-term solutions.
> Trump has touted coal as clean in the past, but experts say coal emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and several other pollutants.
Wow, experts say coal emits carbon dioxide. What a world we live in where that's considered expert knowledge.
Markets do not care about externalities. That’s the whole issue. Markets by themselves cannot work for the benefit of humans, you need to regulate them, otherwise we would have child labor and slaves to trade. You need to force the participants to have to deal with their externalities and consider more than the next 2 quarters. Markets are a tool you have to use correctly, it’s not a magical thing that solves all humanity problems by itself
No modern market is truly free, government loans, subsidies, taxes ect all impact the direction of the market and every single one of them has been used at one point or another to push the market in a certain direction
What do you mean we are doing nothing?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e1vg0gjl5o
Yes we're still building renewable energy, but goddamn is our government making it hard.
That we are still adding any fossil fuel based system today is something I would have figured would have stopped by now. I figured we would still have some legacy stuff, but overall would be decommissioning more than we would add. Instead, we just add to everything.
I suspect we are going to be like the aphids on a rosebush that will suck it dry just trying to live and most of us go with it.
If we were to live closer to what many philosophers and religions of modesty, we probably would have never gone down this path. Yes, we wouldn't have most of the great stuff we have today but we also wouldn't be looking at a system that can lurch over and crash. There is no winning move in the universe just dances and responses.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
"Exploding" while the US still emits 50% more than China and has been emitting more than double and triple before recent years.