Bipartisan Consensus In Favor of Renewable Power Is Ending (arstechnica.com) 206
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the most striking things about the explosion of renewable power that's happening in the U.S. is that much of it is going on in states governed by politicians who don't believe in the problem wind and solar are meant to address. Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power has boomed -- wind in Wyoming and Iowa, solar in Texas -- are governed by Republicans. That's partly because, up until about 2020, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of expanding wind and solar power, with support above 75 percent among both parties. Since then, however, support among Republicans has dropped dramatically, approaching 50 percent, according to polling data released this week. [...] One striking thing about the new polling data, gathered by the Pew Research Center, is how dramatically it skews with age. When given a choice between expanding fossil fuel production or expanding renewable power, Republicans under the age of 30 favored renewables by a 2-to-1 margin. Republicans over 30, in contrast, favored fossil fuels by margins that increased with age, topping out at a three-to-one margin in favor of fossil fuels among those in the 65-and-over age group. The decline in support occurred in those over 50 starting in 2020; support held steady among younger groups until 2024, when the 30-49 age group started moving in favor of fossil fuels.
Democrats, by contrast, break in favor of renewables by 75 points, with little difference across age groups and no indication of significant change over time. They're also twice as likely to think a solar farm will help the local economy than Republicans are. Similar differences were apparent when Pew asked about policies meant to encourage the sale of electric vehicles, with 83 percent of Republicans opposed to having half of cars sold be electric in 2032. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Democrats favored this policy. There's also a rural/urban divide apparent (consistent with Republicans getting more support from rural voters). Forty percent of urban residents felt that a solar farm would improve the local economy; only 25 percent of rural residents agreed. Rural residents were also more likely to say solar farms made the landscape unattractive and take up too much space. (Suburban participants were consistently in between rural and urban participants.) What's behind these changes? The single biggest factor appears to be negative partisanship combined with the election of Joe Biden. Among Republicans, support for every single form of power started to change in 2020 -- fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear. Among Democrats, that's largely untrue. Their high level of support for renewable power and aversion to fossil fuels remained largely unchanged. The lone exception is nuclear power, where support rose among both Democrats and Republicans (the Biden administration has adopted a number of pro-nuclear policies).
Democrats, by contrast, break in favor of renewables by 75 points, with little difference across age groups and no indication of significant change over time. They're also twice as likely to think a solar farm will help the local economy than Republicans are. Similar differences were apparent when Pew asked about policies meant to encourage the sale of electric vehicles, with 83 percent of Republicans opposed to having half of cars sold be electric in 2032. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Democrats favored this policy. There's also a rural/urban divide apparent (consistent with Republicans getting more support from rural voters). Forty percent of urban residents felt that a solar farm would improve the local economy; only 25 percent of rural residents agreed. Rural residents were also more likely to say solar farms made the landscape unattractive and take up too much space. (Suburban participants were consistently in between rural and urban participants.) What's behind these changes? The single biggest factor appears to be negative partisanship combined with the election of Joe Biden. Among Republicans, support for every single form of power started to change in 2020 -- fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear. Among Democrats, that's largely untrue. Their high level of support for renewable power and aversion to fossil fuels remained largely unchanged. The lone exception is nuclear power, where support rose among both Democrats and Republicans (the Biden administration has adopted a number of pro-nuclear policies).
I want the more costly option (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I want the more costly option (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change is costing a lot more than a few cents more for electricity
Re:I want the more costly option (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine if the vested interests hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades gaslighting that climate change didn't exist.
Here in Australia they buried a confidential report from the period that Malcolm Fraser was in charge, 9 prime ministers ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
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Imagine if the vested interests hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades gaslighting that climate change didn't exist.
Imagine if the Democrats hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades opposed to nuclear fission power. The official Democrat party platform states they support building new nuclear power plants, a change made back in 2020. It would appear to me that Democrats did their own polling in the past few years and decided that with opinions on nuclear power shifting in support that it might be wise to discontinue this opposition.
We know nuclear power is low in CO2 emissions, I suspect few doubt that. Where the oppositio
It's the liberal voting base and jobs (Score:2, Interesting)
There are hundreds of thousands of job in the environmental advocacy and climate research industry which liberal politicians want to appeal to.
- Faculty, staff, administrators at most major universities - Climate change research is a huge industry with colleges around the world having a significant revenue stream from grants, publicity for the colleges in the media and a way to help build a lifelong future liberal voting block in the university students
- Nonprofits, employing tens of thousands, and also emp
the stump speech and demographics (Score:2)
Most of these politicians, NGO/nonprofit leaders, etc. have a standard stump speech. Building anything which will take away the fall-back old standards in the stump speech is an issue for those people.
It may be down to demographics now. Late career boomers and even older congress/senate members aren't in it for any change, they want the status quo for as long as they are working a job.
Those late career boomers are exiting their jobs and most will be out of the workforce in the next 5 years. These are the
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Hundreds of thousands of jobs in advocacy?
It's certainly true that there are many jobs available in energy production, and that the shift to renewables will require more people. It is good that this is happened and is attractive to people; as fossil fuels die off, we need to ensure that the people living in those areas that are dependent on the fossil fuel industry have opportunities.
When we (the UK) moved from coal to oil, we didn't do this. It's not a proud history and one that I hope we can avoid repeati
Re: It's the liberal voting base and jobs (Score:2)
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Sorry, indeed, yes a confusing statement. I was thinking of terms of industry. Coal was a major employer which was destroyed (deliberately) about the same time as north sea oil and gas took off. In terms of heating and electricity, we did switch from coal to gas.
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Sorry, to everyone else. It's MacMann, I couldn't resist!
Re: I want the more costly option (Score:5, Insightful)
In all your pro-nuclear ranting and posturing, why do you always ignore cost? At the end of the day, all other forms of clean energy are far cheaper.
Re: I want the more costly option (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention, they're also far cleaner. Decommissioning of a wind turbine involves finding some creative way to reuse the blades. Decommissioning of a nuclear plant, on the other hand...
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Unfortunately no one has yet found any creative way to re-use the blades, and I'm not sure anyone ever will. They cannot be recycled. So they are sent to the landfill where they get stacked in a corner somewhere, weathering and deteriorating further. Add to that the fact that most blades are now lasting much less than the original estimates, needing to be replaced more frequently.
The recycling problem is going to hit solar pretty hard too in another couple of decades. Hopefully we can get a handle on th
Re: I want the more costly option (Score:2)
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they are sent to the landfill where they get stacked in a corner somewhere, weathering and deteriorating further
They deteriorate very slowly. Blades are replaced because they are damaged, not because they just wear out. Lightning strikes are bastards even when you are trying to design for them. As the blades stack up, there will be more potential for actually recycling them in some sensible way. For now, there are a number of groups doing research projects to see what the results of simple, low-energy recycling or reuse projects will be like. Much like EV batteries, there are barely enough of them to even make it wor
Cost of Storage? (Score:2, Informative)
At the end of the day, all other forms of clean energy are far cheaper.
Re: Cost of Storage? (Score:2)
The UK is currently building a high voltage DC interconnect with Morocco, where the sun is basically on at all daylight hours. Given the typical power usage patterns, that should work pretty well for base load.
Re: Cost of Storage? (Score:2)
The UK is currently building a high voltage DC interconnect with Morocco, where the sun is basically on at all daylight hours.
I'm sorry, where is the sun NOT "basically on at all daylight hours"? (You do understand what the phrase "daylight hours" refers to, right?)
Re: Cost of Storage? (Score:2)
The sun may shine on your part of the earth during daylight hours, but the majority of the light may not always make it all the way to the ground. Here in Grand Rapids, MI, we only get 60 or so sunny days per year. Solar is practically useless here. Detroit gets like 80-90, which is better but not great. But other places, like in the desert, get much more, up to like 350+ in the Sahara. That's what they meant by the sun not always being on. In some places, it isn't.
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You're fighting the wrong enemy bro.
You might want to look at which countries are currently and have had historically the lowest CO2 per kWh figures.
Renewables are very much most likely the cheaper cost but there are still a few knotty problems with aren't currently solved. Renewables have no inertia. That's a solvable problem with rotary compensators. Easy enough, but it'll need to be done at scale. The other problem is that renewable performance is on a large regional/small continental scale.
This needs se
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The solution isn't building renewables, it's building renewables and a commensurate amount of grid infrastructure.
Literally the only kind of new generation equipment that even slightly makes sense and doesn't require new grid infrastructure is point of use solar, like on roofs and over car parks. New nuclear plant? Requires a fat new connection to wherever we site it, plus new interconnection equipment wherever it connects, because it's so much generation in one place. (We're not going to put SMRs in neighborhoods, so if we even wind up building them they're just going to wind up ganged in single locations for securit
Re: I want the more costly option (Score:5, Informative)
Lets assume that a wholely wind/solar/battery system is cheaper for a second (it isn't, I model this for a living, bit let's assume). There's substantial materials and space overlap to build those resources. They require significant grid retooling. They're heavily subsidy dependent, and those subsidies are becoming increasingly political. This basically mandates that full costs must be recouped up front because a changing political landscape endangers the investment, which is tricky because subsidizing a thing up front is vastly more expensive than an ongoing subsidy (ironically a similar issue to nuclear power). So you have both rate and resource limitations. Now on top of that, support is dropping for wind and solar in the US and these resources are becoming a wedge issue; I think less because of climate denialism than the reality that the burden of building these assets falls on rural areas, with the main (immediate) benefits going to urban centers.
Nuclear, even in a world where it's more expensive, has become the concensus mode of power generation for combating climate change. A lot of that is driven by where the benefits from nuclear power go: virtually every component expense and ongoing maintenance cost stays in the US, and those expenditures go to more rural areas that may otherwise have little for economic prospects. Each nuclear plant supports thousands of high paying jobs, provides millions in tax revenue, and is relatively unobtrusive (most people would never know they live by a reactor if you didn't tell them). Heck even the outsourcing of fuel production was done basically for diplomatic reasons, and will almost certainly move back to the US or allied nations now that relations with Russia collapsed. Contrast that with a solar panel, where significant portions of the economic benefits go to the nation of resource extraction and manufacture (mostly China).
So there's a practical choice here. Nuclear, wind, and solar can grow in tandem, vastly increasing the speed of decarbonization and augmenting each other in terms of grid stability. Or wind and solar can be pushed alone, bottlenecked by both physical and political considerations, ultimately struggling to grow or displace natural gas as "favorable" sites to build are consumed and reliability issues become harder to solve. Even if you assume every nuke takes 10-15 years to build (they should take half that, especially being built at scale), there is literally no chance that the US energy sector is even close to fully decarbonized by 2050, especially factoring in a desire to switch wholelly to electricity for vehicles and home heating. You will get decades of use out of nuclear assets, minimum. And the drawback is, what, you might pay a 30% premium for the nuclear component of your power bill relative to the most rosey wind/solar + batteries scenarios? Scenarios that assume long duration battery technologies that don't even exist in a commercializable form at any price?
If you genuinely think climate change is a civilization threatening event, you are pro nuclear power. Maybe begrudgingly, but you are. The math of climate change clearly says you have to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it, and ignoring a proven technology that is at the very least in the ballpark of the other options and uses different supply chains is absolutely nuts. A pessimist could assume (the virtual impossibility) that a nuke melts down twice a decade for the next century and it would still do vastly less damage than the impact assessments say climate change will do. That's why support is growing in a bipartisan fashion.
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In all your pro-nuclear ranting and posturing, why do you always ignore cost? At the end of the day, all other forms of clean energy are far cheaper.
That was absolutely not the case until just fairly recently, and even now it's pretty questionable once you actually include grid firming costs. You need a looooot of extra capacity and storage.
They examine a couple of clean power scenarios here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
tl;dr in these snaps:
https://i.imgur.com/BBuSCIO.pn... [imgur.com]
https://i.imgur.com/EFg3o1q.pn... [imgur.com]
https://i.imgur.com/easLlnW.pn... [imgur.com]
Decisions to kill off nuclear and subsidize solar/wind had been made decades ago.
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Imagine if the vested interests hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades gaslighting that climate change didn't exist.
Imagine if the Democrats hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades opposed to nuclear fission power.
Is this really a Republican vs. Democrat thing? After all, the biggest losers with more nuclear power would be oil and coal, the production of which is predominantly in Republican states. That is, Democrats oppose nuclear due to ideology, but Republicans oppose nuclear due to financial interests.
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A somewhat limited dataset (Score:2)
Plenty of new nukes being built and operated in other parts of the world. Yes the present experience in the West is disastrous financially...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Lots of Chinese ones there up and running
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China is a good example. Minimal red tape compared to western countries. They started ramping up nuclear over 30 years back and have only lately acquired the capability to build multiple plants a year and still have to install more renewables then the rest of the world as well as update a lot of coal plants.
Ramping up nuclear is slow, need an educated workforce, need other stuff such as the capability to forge containment shells etc.
Even if we went full nuclear, how long to build the number of needed plants
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Imagine if the vested interests hadn't spent in excess of 4 decades gaslighting that climate change didn't exist.
I doubt it would have made much difference. The problem is that people who think they will be dead before it gets really bad don't want to change their lifestyles at all, even to make them better. Climate change is somebody else's problem.
Depends where you are (Score:2)
Climate change is costing a lot more than a few cents more for electricity
That depends on where you are. The same study that showed climate change lowering GDP in many places showed it increasing GDP in Canada. That's actually a serious problem when you have a right wing (for Canada) provincial government because the main argument for renewables - that the money spent now will reduce far more costly damage to the economy later - not only doesn't work but in fact spending now prevents additional growth. This is provided you are ok ignoring everyone else's suffering but they gener
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Except the main reason for the price explosion was the gas price.
Re: I want the more costly option (Score:2)
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Unfortunately it also matters due to Germany having multiple gas power plants and when the war in Ukraine started the gas price in Germany spiked to crazy values due to uncertainities on the market, which also almost immediately launched electricity prices sky high. Now the gas price is down again, so is the price for electrical power. I now pay almost the same as before the war.
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The price of electricity in Germany? Which put off investing in renewable energy for years, placing their hopes on coal and gas.
Hardly something that the greens need to feel embarrassed about.
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>> can't hide the price of electricity in Germany
The wholesale price of electricity in Germany is in line with the rest of the EU.
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Republicans' grasp of reality dropping (Score:2, Interesting)
So in other words Republicans are far more easily swayed by anti-science propaganda and their connection to reality is fading even as global temperatures begin to exponentially ramp up.
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Because that's what the data is indicating. That statement is the best guess about reality.
However, on the elderly conservative side, there is a strong faction that is hard core on Bible literalism. And they fervently believe that they know exactly how the world will end. Therefore, all talks about climate change to them is heretical nonsense. Of course, no one is saying climate change will end the world, but once they've got their fingers in their ears it's not worth trying to explain their misundersta
Re:Republicans' grasp of reality dropping (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.frontiersin.org/jo... [frontiersin.org]
This seems like the most random thing in the world to study. But actually I think it tends to refute the causation you are assuming. You could argue only Christians have a dispensationalist End-Times contingent, but the Muslm prophesies about the end of the world aren't very different.
Attitudes and opinions for the most part aren't connected by reasoning like that. Maybe in post-hoc confabulation, but not really. Studying old writings would not allow you to make very accurate predictions about what modern people who claim to adhere to those writings think about modern issues.
A much simpler explanation is that people generally don't change their opinions about things. Social change doesn't come about by convincing people, it comes about because young people adopt the attitudes prevalent among their cohort during their formative years which hopefully better reflects the realities of that moment in time. And the old people die.
On average the attitudes of a 30-year-old bible believing American today are far more similar to those of a 30-year-old non-bible-believer than they are to a 30-year-old bible believer from the year 1420.
Are attitudes that different? (Score:2)
On average the attitudes of a 30-year-old bible believing American today are far more similar to those of a 30-year-old non-bible-believer than they are to a 30-year-old bible believer from the year 1420.
That may be true but the worrying thing is that both are gettig much closer in some ways. Replace religious dogma with political dogma and things start to look unhappily similar. There is increasingly less and less tolerance for people who disagree with your chosen point of view and while neither side is yet calling for heretics to be burnt at the stake both are happy to ruin the lives and careers of those they disagree with if they can.
While we do not (yet) have book burnings we are seeing increased bo
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Not shelving a book in a public school library isn't a "book ban", it's a purchasing decision.
If you can order a book from Amazon, walk into a Barnes & Noble and pick it up, that book isn't banned.
If the librarian would be fired for shelving that book, it's a book ban. The ban is limited in scope, but the scope was selected for maximum impact.
Re:Republicans' grasp of reality dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly it is the anti science stance that has gripped the GOP in the last few decades. Also Republicans are getting tons of junk mail (snail mail and email) claiming how everything is a hoax. It is a constant barrage that I see in some inboxes and in physical letters. Campaign letters for Trump asking for donations will mention that he's against renewables, etc. Whereas Democrats do not get this barrage claiming that everything is a hoax or that science cannot be trusted.
Remember, politicians send messages down to the voters, that is a major direction of information flow, poltiicians are not passive beasts who only do what voters want them to do. Paying voters yes, politicians listen to them of course. Non-paying voters or cheap-ass voters are instead told what to think in various ways. Ie, most voters in Idaho are opposed to total abortion bans, including most Republicans, and yet the state legislature as is predicatable ignored them. Because the donor class said otherwise.
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I don't follow your argument. Members of both parties are showing lessened support for renewable energy but you claim that only Republicans are getting this "anti-science propaganda". Where are the Democrats getting an argument to lessen their support for renewable energy? If this shows anything its that Republicans are more resistant to the "propaganda" since the shift in numbers for both parties is much the same.
Where is the support for nuclear power from both parties coming from? I remember Andrew Ya
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I used to get all kinds of phone calls for political polls in the past so the politicians certainly wanted to know what voters think. Some of these polls were "push polls" where the primary intent was to ask questions to steer people to a certain conclusion, but even then the politicians would be looking at how people responded.
I notice the phrase "in the past" here and "used to", which suggests to me that they no longer care what you think....
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I notice the phrase "in the past" here and "used to", which suggests to me that they no longer care what you think....
Or...
It suggests I canceled my landline phone service and there's policies/rules/regulations against calling people on a cell phone for polling. That I got a service to put my phone number on some do-not-call lists. There's that one time I got a phone call for a poll and I screamed at the guy for asking such stupid questions which got me on some other kind of do-not-call list. I didn't vote in the last election and so my voter registration doesn't show me as a voter. I got a new cell phone that is bette
Re: Republicans' grasp of reality dropping (Score:2)
And republicans are 2 out of 3 in favor of renewable power, how immense is the difference between democrats 75% support vs republicans 66% support?
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Democrats, by contrast, break in favor of renewables by 75 points, with little difference across age groups and no indication of significant change over time
Didn't you read the summary?
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Personal attack and appeal to emotion. Not bad for a propaganda post.
Still butthurt for losing me hitting you on the head with a Mark Twain reference and missing it entirely I take it?
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Re: Republicans' grasp of reality dropping (Score:2)
expensive nuclear (Score:2)
Expensive? UAE had a 5.6 GW plant installed for 20 billion, about the cost of 4 hours of battery backup for a 5 GW actual capacity, 20 GW plate, solar installation.
France has the cheapest electricity in mainland europe
https://euenergy.live/ [euenergy.live]
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France nuclear generators are heavily subsidized and falling apart.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/ener... [lemonde.fr]
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Weird sheep (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a weird sheep-like behaviour amongst people, exacerbated by social media.
Back in the pre-social-media days, it was possible to choose positions by thinking about each issue carefully and deciding your own position on each issue. Now, it seems you have to buy into the whole basket of positions that everyone on your "side" does, otherwise you're seen as a traitor.
So because the Republican consensus (it seems) is that renewable energy is bad, all the sheep feel they need to agree with that, even if renewable energy is actually a very conservative thing, in the purest sense of the meaning: It's less wasteful and it increases energy independence and resilience.
I just don't get it.
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Yeah, it's not like the people on one side of that "imaginary line" were holding millions of people in slavery and were trying to secede because they feared the new president might free those slaves or something like that - it was just a fight over a line.
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The recent debate highlights that democracy guarantees you get the president you deserve.
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Possibly that's just how we thought the world worked but people had been sheep like all along? Maybe it's a thing about being younger - you spend time looking at the issues, reading through the ballot initiative's text, listening to debates, etc, and perhaps you think everyone else is doing the same?
But perhaps there's a little truth there. People were always in their own camps, but they weren't so divided. This family is always Republican, that one is always Democrat (and the kids possibly just keeping
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Well "abortion" wasn't really a right vs left issue until Nixon and Reagan got the evangelicals as a solid wing of the party, then many became single-issue voters. I've voted GOP and Democrat in the past, sometimes on the same ballot, and maybe other parties on rare occasions. I'm a very solid centrist and decline-to-state voter. But these days as I get older, the GOP is actively pushing me away because of extremism, dogmatism, and a far too cozy relationship with conspiracy theories and populism. And a
Re:Weird sheep (Score:5, Insightful)
So because the Republican consensus (it seems) is that renewable energy is bad, all the sheep feel they need to agree with that, even if renewable energy is actually a very conservative thing, in the purest sense of the meaning: It's less wasteful and it increases energy independence and resilience. I just don't get it.
Nobody has anything against renewable energy, so long as it is a cheap and reliable as what they had before.
Re: Weird sheep (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody has anything against renewable energy, so long as it is a cheap and reliable as what they had before.
Nobody, other than the guy crying about windmill cancer and getting electrocuted by sharks, making it part of his political strategy to be against renewables, for reasons that don't matter beyond winning.
This is where we insert the I don't pay attention to what he says, I don't watch the news, the media lies, he was just joking, etc etc while daily dosing on TikTok and YouTube shorts of rehashed trumkinism that is most definitely against anything other than oil.
I saw in real time how the fingers got pointed at renewables during the freeze in Texas. Natural gas generation and delivery frozen, points fingers at windmills. Oh and the shift in sentiment started to shift in 2020? Well no fucking shit, it's a political strategy.
Nobody is irrationally against renewables, my ass. Don't look up!
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Nobody has anything against renewable energy, so long as it is a cheap and reliable as what they had before.
Except NIMBYs, and BANANAs.
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Nobody has anything against renewable energy, so long as it is a cheap and reliable as what they had before.
Then why are (especially) older republicans so mad about solar and wind?
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp... [arstechnica.net]
That's literally what the article is about.
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Re: Weird sheep (Score:2)
Greg Abbott does not build or run power generation in Texas, nor does he run ERCOT.
Republicans, including the governor, repeatedly blame wind for all their problems as natural gas and coal fired generators freeze.
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
Texas is also a red state with the nation's largest share of sSsoCcialisSt electric power cooperatives they love not talking about. It is not a credit to modern Republican state leadership, JFC, you brain clot, and it will 100% become a political football too, once
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The state government has made moves this year to restrict the speed of wind/solar deployment. Not sure how substantial the effect will be, or if it's political theater.
I do know the state government is acting in bad faith and without any focus on problem-solving, at all times. Which is why "Bipartisan consensus in favor of renewable power is ending" in the first place. One of the many symptoms of that underlying issue.
As a resident of Houston I've had to deal with my power being out for most of a week alre
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Nope, just people defending their jobs and prefs (Score:2)
So because the Republican consensus (it seems) is that renewable energy is bad, all the sheep feel they need to agree with that, even if renewable energy is actually a very conservative thing, in the purest sense of the meaning: It's less wasteful and it increases energy independence and resilience. I just don't get it.
Nope. Until about 2020 renewables and fossil fuels were coexisting. Jobs available in bother area. Customers able to use whichever was preferred.
Then about 2020 it became government policy to eliminate the fossil fuel industry, rather than let public preference determine how fossil fuels would be displaced. This being primarily a democratic effort. People with jobs related to fossil fuels, and people who would prefer to have a choice rather than a gov't mandate are pushing back, and they happen to be rep
Re: Nope, just people defending their jobs and pre (Score:3)
Pushing solar particularly in the US where it's abundant is quite sensible, it's a natural resources just like oil you have plenty of, why wouldn't you take advantage of that? Jobs? Well yes jobs, but that means you're akin to training the next Gen in hand making cars when the rest of
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What a condescending and paternalistic position. To assume that someone else needs to lose their power of.choice because "money skews everything, capitalism needs correction". And who then is empowered to make this determination? You, but not anyone who disagrees with you?
Tyranny by any other name is still tyranny.
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For paternalistic, well that's the point of the state, to look after it's citizens, would you be complaining if a there was no benefit state because that's paternalistic too? If you agree with that statement then you'd need to consider that the US would become a police state due to the increase in crime, which is exactly the trouble seen in a few third
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Non American mid right wing view (mine): Sometimes capitalism needs a *correction* because money skews everything; votes, vested interests and actual innovation, the very thing it was supposed to be better than Communism at.
American life long independent opinion:
Whether capitalism needs a correction or not isn't the issue here. These people are not operating on economic or political theory, they are operating at a lower level, pure self interest. Something that occurs under both capitalism and communism.
Pushing solar particularly in the US where it's abundant is quite sensible, it's a natural resources just like oil you have plenty of, why wouldn't you take advantage of that? ...
Again, the pro-fossil fuels people did not mind this as long as fossil fuels were also allowed to operate. It is only when the gov't position became "end the fossil fuel industry" did the conflict begin.
Jobs? Well yes jobs, but that means you're akin to training the next Gen in hand making cars when the rest of the world has moved onto robot assembly lines.
Its not that they are o
Re: Weird sheep (Score:2)
They accept them, that's what you don't understand.
Republicans that support Trump know and accept his limitations, Democrats (until 9:00 PM EDT Thursday) denied Biden had issues, but by 9:20 PM EDT I suspect a majority of Democrats were shockingly aware of some of Biden's limitations.
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The panels still work after 20 years. They become less efficient.
Also, now that we've had 20 years of modern panels, it turns out the accelerated wear studies that came up with 20 years were wrong by a lot. It's more like 30-40 until the efficiency goes down significantly.
And oil and gas are absolutely renewable. Do you think they just appeared like magic?? They are produced by the earth!!
Nope. The atmospheric and biological conditions that allowed the formation of oil no longer exist.
I didn't see that coming. (Score:2)
No, wait, I did see part of this coming. I saw a big shift in Democrat policy as Andrew Yang was running in the 2020 Democrat primaries for POTUS and he kept saying nice things about nuclear power. This forced other candidates to respond. Well, most candidates had to respond since Biden seemed to keep real quiet on any specific policy and somehow he got away with that. I recall Warren being asked about nuclear power and gave an idiotic middle-of-the-road reply, or maybe it was more like a split-the-baby
Ask the right questions (Score:2, Interesting)
>"What's behind these changes?"
The biggest reasons for the changes are the state of the economy, inflation, and the national debt. Ask the right questions and you might get answers that reveal this. Everything is now too expensive, including energy, and people are hurting and want a way out. A major motivation for renewables is energy independence- something that is very good for security, reducing conflict, and reducing uncertainty/volatility, something everyone is in favor of. Easy to support in ti
Re:Ask the right questions (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest reason is that the Republicans made renewable energy into yet another boogieman to scare voters with. "It will cost you $$$$" and "your lights will out out when the wind doesn't blow!" Just another bit of culture war garbage.
Renewable are cost effective. (Score:2)
In some sense it doesn't matter whether you care about climate change and the consequences of burning fossil fuels; often renewables are the best choice from a purely economic perspective.
Yeah, Republicans are malevolent cunts. (Score:2)
Pure logic (Score:2)
topping out at a three-to-one margin in favor of fossil fuels among those in the 65-and-over age group
I guess they think that, if they have been breathing the damn fumes all their lives, why should the next generation be exempt from it?
No surprise there. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow you sound real smart with that intelligent post.
lol
We already knew this (Score:3)
Huh, how about that (Score:2)
Re:Maybe the left makes everything toxic (Score:4, Interesting)
What's he up to? $150m in lawyer fees? 34 felonies convictions too, seems like wasted money. But I guess the judge in the documents case is keeping it from going forward in time for the election.
Re:Maybe the left makes everything toxic (Score:4, Interesting)
What is Trump's opposition going to offer? They're bought by the same corporations as the Republican party. Trump isn't talking about what he can give to corporations so he should be losing popularity. Trump is a celebrity, and that's valuable to a party with little to offer the working-class. His sycophants will create all sorts of cognitive dissonance to excuse, justify and support a famous person who is little more than a sock-puppet for Christian extremism.
Since the Tea-party fiasco, it's obvious the Republican party doesn't want anything that rich people either have to pay for (such as taxes), or even think is unpleasant. A few states, such as Florida, are so busy protecting rich people, the slightest contradiction to their needs is 'woke' leftism. As a rich person, Trump is the only choice for those states and those people.
Why would Trump be easy to beat? In 2016, the Democrat party decided it was such an easy win, they could put a total yes-man (yes-woman) into the White House. They didn't campaign on policy or the 'needs' of the voters. Voters saw the Democrat party rigging their own primaries and deserted the party.
While today's Democrat party is a success, their policies aren't helping people with employment, housing or child-rearing and education. Trump may win states because of that inaction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:they should call it intermittent power (Score:4, Informative)
The inconvenience of reality, wind turbines cause a tiny fraction of bird deaths, have a look at the real figures. 300,000 from wing turbines, 4 million from buildings and power lines, are you ignorant or just uninformed?
https://www.fws.gov/library/co... [fws.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Though I guess they could be deliberately hunting rare birds in packs. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Hazard/Type Min Range Max Range Median/Avg. Estimated
Habitat Loss/Conversion N/A N/A N/A
Collision - Building Glass
Loss et al. 2014a 365,000,000 988,000,000 599,000,000
Collisions - Communication towers
Longcore et al. 2012 6,600,000
Collisions - Electrical lines
Loss et al. 2014c 8,000,000 57,300,000 25,500,000
Collision - Vehicles
Loss et al. 2014b 89,000,000 340,000,000 214,500,000
Collisions - Land-based Wind Turbines
Loss et al. 2013b 140,438 327,586 234,
Re:Easy, rational explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine - if the competition were just a cut above Joe Blow, this whole Trump nonsense would be dead in the water.
Why is the election even in contest?
Re: (Score:2)
The above poster would like you to forget about all the subsidies to boost fossil fuels. Especially the implicit ones.