memes

This argument has received responses calling me a Commie, a Tankie, and 'a would-be enslaver of humanity' from family, friends, and internet randoms alike.

For me it is that I just... sorta listened to Bill Nye in the 90s about carbon dioxide.

Reminder that China's competent government has done exactly this, and as a result they produce 93% of the world's solar photovoltaic panels.

If "our" means on the US, you may have to take a look at your electricity monopolies for it to make any difference.

I'm confused, how does this help shareholders?

No, no, you can't have green energy until corporations figure out how to make just as much money off it as they do fossil fuels. Don't worry though, they're innovating. Last summer some prick about had my dad convinced to pay him to put solar panels on his roof and then also continue paying for the power those panels generated.

Imagine the savings to society with the energy independence from green energy

• shut down most of the continent wide natural gas distribution infrastructure
• shut down most of the continent wide gasoline distribution infrastructure
• cut way back on the military when we no longer have to protect oil kingdoms

No they wouldn't. Final consumer cost is based on what people WILL pay not what they WANT to pay. At the end of the day the overarching goal of capitalism is for 99% of the population to spend 100% of their earnings. You can't funnel all wealth to the 1% if the 99% are holding on to it.

Would companies make it cheaper or would they keep the price and pocket the profit?

And then he was yeeted out of the window

Bold of you to assume the government cares about you at all.

They don't want it to be cheaper. This is a nice upwards funnel of wealth for them.

Lower prices? Yeah, I’m sure they’ll get right on that…

Fuck your government, cover your roof in panels and enjoy. Simple as

This is an absolute fact: the government refuses to invest in green energy because it produces too much energy and they’d have to give out power for free.

Nuclear is also a good option. It has the potential to scale up to our generation needs faster than green energy, and it can still be environmentally clean when any byproduct is handled responsibly.

Do I trust my government (USA) to enforce proper procedure and handling? Not really… but I do think we’re less likely to have a nuclear accident in the present day. Modern designs have many more fail safes. And I think it’d still be much cleaner than burning fossil fuels.

I think they need to coexist, though. I think a goal in the far-future should be a decentralized grid with renewable energy sources integrated wherever they can be.

Thankfully that is going to happen anyway through simple economics. Fossil fuel extraction is functionally already a peak technology, out of which every bit of efficiency has been squeezed by over 100 years of frantic and lavishly funded scientific development, whereas solar, battery, and wind technologies have been absolutely plunging in $-per-Kw to deploy and have much much further to go. So governments can try to slow this down as much as they wish, but it's as much a fool's errand as trying to rescue the horse industry in about 1920.

Now as for the question of "why isn't this more efficient technology resulting in savings for, me, the consumer?" I can only encourage you to look at the entire history of extractive, investor-driven capitalism for the answer.

Taking away (partially or completely) reliance upon carbon or nuclear energy will reduce costs and help save the planet. Like my solar set up, it costs less to run my home and workshop in summer than it does in winter.

Not to mention that in certain countries they could also get better public services if they didn't need to spend money on a military sized for power projection into the Middle East ...