[s1k3s]

Please allow me to go political for a second: both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like. I hope that at least the people who are intelligent enough to see the progress of green energy won't support that through their votes. We can literally have "free" energy coming from this star around us but instead of using it we're coming up with excuses that keep us from progressing.

That's it </political>

[bwb]

I don't understand, the USA and EU are adding solar and wind very fast. Financially, it is a no-brainer and getting added in record numbers.

What else do you want?

Sure there are issues over regulations and power lines approval, but those are hopefully going to get solved surely.

[s1k3s]

I'm not talking about what's happening now (even though there's plenty of criticism to be said about the programs that we run). I'm talking about a new wave of politicians that's coming up in both regions, and they want this to stop.

[Moldoteck]

At least redirect (some of) govt subsidies for fossils towards renewables to build faster?

[thelastgallon]

Thats temporary. Solar builders stockpiled panels for the rest of the year, and doing installs as fast as they can. The costs are going up: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-solar-builders-br...

[dyauspitr]

Trump saying he’d ban all EVs. Trump saying he would end all wind installations.

[toomuchtodo]

You can’t fix some mental models. You can only try to succeed despite them. It’s unfortunate for sure.

[akira2501]

If you have a better source of energy then build it. If it's better than the other ones will cease to exist. The "mental model" is entirely immaterial to the "market reality."

[thelastgallon]

We're going to drill baby, drill. Rightaway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GiTR--XuM

[wqtz]

What transition plans do you recommend for coal producing counties? The issue is that these coal counties get fucked (for a lack of a better words) with coal and without coal. With coal every family suffer generational health problems. But atleast they get to eat and live. Without coal they do not have an economic system to make a living out of it. During the colonial times (here we go) the Bri'ish forced Bengal farmers [0] to cultivate indigo which caused literal famines. They could not produce food crops and colonialist didn't bother to compensate the farmer obviously. Then the farmers got "fucked" over again, when industrial revolution resulted in creation of artificial indigo and farmers struggled to make a transition to another crop. Now, your average WV native is far from a Bengal peasant but idea of policy based restrictions on making a living can be compared. My argument is that broad sweeping policies about establishing how people in particular regions make a living needs to carefully evaluated. Now, I am not for or against coal at all. Coal producing counties are always marginalized and politicians rarely care about them except for election times. For/against coal does very little in terms of coming up with a solution. If you are against coal present a solution on how these counties can transition to making a living without being relocated.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_revolt

[jbattle]

There are only 12,000 coal miners in WV. Only 45,000 in the whole US. Obviously there are a large cast of others supporting the miners directly and indirectly (e.g. truck drivers, manufacturers of mining equipment, etc).

There are 341 million other Americans that have an interest in where our energy comes from (and what goes into our atmosphere).

(I'm all for generous support for any American facing major disruption because of macroeconomic changes btw. Getting rural places a fair share of national prosperity is a national problem)

[s1k3s]

This is a great argument and perhaps the best argument to support the idea of going back to coal. I don't know how to answer this because I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest subsidizing such people from taxation until we reach a green energy goal. Sadly though, politicians don't address this at all.

[akira2501]

> both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like.

What is an "insane amount?" Is there a spreadsheet or scorecard somewhere that quantifies this?

[s1k3s]

Kind of. According to polls there are 52% of Americans supporting this. In the EU we have elections this weekend so there's no reason to come up with polls, just follow the results!

[SadTrombone]

1 is an insane amount.

[cladopa]

You talk about intelligence but then act like a zealot. Don't get me wrong, I have solar panels myself in Spain, but is not Utopia.

Solar panels use a lot of space that could be used for other things like growing food. They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun. The political zealots talk about climate change but avoid to talk about that.

It is not excuses, there is very intelligent people working on those problems. Natural gas makes a lot of sense combined with solar and wind because solar only works when the sun is above and wind when the wind blows. You need something for winter and nights. Energy storage is very expensive, and also require lots of energy and raw materials for manufacturing.

For wind mills to make sense you need wind. Lots of countries do not have wind, and also produce heat an noise and kill birds.

In Spain, when the price of the panels and inverters go down, if you have users nearby, it makes sense. In Germany, with half the insolation, it does not.

There is no "free" anything. Everything has its ups and downs.

We need less politicians, lawyers without knowledge of science and engineering.

[s1k3s]

Of course there's an impact, but the question is "what is impacting us more?"

https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/solar/solar-en...

[wjmao88]

> They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun

What are you smoking? The sun is not sending more light to the places with solar panels. It just absorbs light that is already hitting earth. If anything it makes earth cooler as it absorbs light that would otherwise just hit the ground and make ground hotter.

[redserk]

At least in the US, the arguments against solar and wind are usually not out of concern for land area needed for food growth. The opponents tend to use unsubstantiated FUD.