2y ago

Climate change is costing the world $16 million per hour: study

www.weforum.org

You'd think this would give us some wiggle money to play with to build out new energy infrastructure. You're wrong though, there is no wiggle. We need all renewables like Germany.

Although the transition to EVs will require an enormous increase in base production capacity, it would be wasteful to build out nuclear to meet it.

$16m an hour might seem like a lot of damage, but nuclear can only exacerbate economic loss which is equally important as climatic loss.

Renewables now!

27 comments

Germany is in no way a role model when it comes to renewable energy.
- Aren’t they ahead of many other developed nations? Just because they’re not perfect or their journey isn’t complete doesn’t mean their progress isn’t worth taking inspiration from.
- Germany has made great sacrifice to be a leader in renewables. An example for other nations of what can be accomplished with confident determination.
  
  Germany is heavily relying on coal: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany
  It's also building inefficient LNG terminals for liquid gas. Far away from being a leader in renewables.
  Furthermore EVs are not a solution for climate change, but rather to save the car industry, which is particularly strong in Germany.
That economic loss isn’t affecting the people it needs to affect for there to be real change. That’s the problem.
- Privatize the Profits. Socialize the losses. It is known.
EVs are just a drop in the bucket. Most of the greenhouse gasses come from factories and industrial use
- transportation accounts for 1/3 of emissions. as that demand transfers from oil to the electric grid, we'll need a lot more renewable-only capacity
  
  Transitioning away from cars entirely is far cheaper and more viable than transitioning to EVs. Fuck cars
That's ok, they'll just raise prices and "rightsize" to keep the shareholders happy.
Oh, is that all?
Germany predominantly sources its energy from fossil fuels. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
- And in 6 years, we will end coal as the first nation of the industrialized countries. The US is currently planing to phase it out in 16 years. Some other countries do not even have a plan for the next 20 years. What is your point?
  
  i wish we would do a space race to end coal
  
  There are more fossil fuels then just coal though. You could squint and if you were paid to be dishonest you could say that Lignite isn't coal and therefore in 6 years when Germany is still burning Lignite, they have transitioned away from coal. Additionally they are not planning on transitioning away from Natural Gas at all.
It's not costing the companies that are causing it anything though because the cost is subsidized by the public.
- In Econ there's opportunity cost, I think that's what companies end up losing, the greater profit they could have made (if they were like a bit less short term oriented).
  
  Sure, but that's generally ignored by company owners and investors. All companies try to do is to maximize profit for each quarter, this tends to be the singular metric which is completely at odds with any sort of long term planning.
As long as it doesn't affect profits, nothing will change.
That's still cheaper than the wealthy paying taxes.

27 comments