This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1443528
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1443528
Happy New Year! Sustainable energy is a response to multiple crises. Humans sometimes need their backs against the wall to make changes.
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Needed
A lot
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The speed with which renewable energy is being adopted is amazing. I knew the world was changing when my son told me he was installing solar panels on his roof, and his company, GM, was moving strongly to electric vehicles.
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Please TPM…
Please
DO NO GIVE ANY CREDIT TO PUTIN FOR HIS WAR IN UKRAINE FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN MURDER, RAPE, BRUTAL TERRORISM AND UTTERLY INHUMAN WAR MOST FOUL.
That it might lead to energy without a national grid is out of a need to survive his evil war and should never lead to any sort of credit to him. This is akin to thanking Hitler for creative ways to ship people to his death camps so they could be killed on an industrial scale.
I am not against clean energy. Far from that thought. Solar panels we have on this house already and it lowers our energy bill. That is a good thing. Mrs darr had a Prius when they first came out but after a few years the huge lithium battery failed. She now has a new Honda CRV that shows mileage in excess of 40 miles to the gallon… we bike when practical. … All of which is no credit to that fucking monster in Moscow
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Putin does not give a shit about clean energy. Oil and gas being a tool of war on Europe. His “contributions” to human kind are blood an misery, not positive needed things. The attacks on Ukraine are beastial murder of innocents and not meant as a positive path to lowering climate change. He is Hitler reincarnated.
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I don’t think the point is to credit him. It’s to show how his war has clarified the need for urgent change in global energy policy. The war woke us up. Renewable energy is right in front of us. But between us and it are the mega energy companies that see solar roof panels and such as liberating people from their corporate supplies and pols that appeal to me me me right now now now.
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I have a profound hatred of the Russian army and civilian national leadership that often clouds my judgement of them and their “motives”. The day Putin dies will be a day of celebration for me that he has been sent to the “Infernal regions”. I’ve dealt with 54 years of ruined hearing, tinnitus and vertigo because of those fucking Russians. May they burn from setting foot in Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia and places Putin has made to suffer for no discernible strategic reason other than personal greed.
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This looks pretty much like another article about how we can run the world on wind and solar if we’d just commit to it. Really?
" The main obstacles to the exponential growth in renewable energy, IEA points out, are antiquated energy policy frameworks, regulations and subsidies written at a time when energy systems, pricing and utilities were all geared toward fossil fuels."
The main obstacles are actually physics and natural resource requirements. The data from years of doubling down on the Energiewende in Germany should convince all but the most stubborn renewables ideologue that you can’t run modern civilizations on renewables alone, or even primarily on renewables.
"Wealthy nations haven’t moved the energy transition forward quickly enough or provided enough support for emerging markets and developing countries to leapfrog inefficient fossil-fueled energy systems.
"
Fossil-fueled energy systems are not inefficient. They’ve been the basis of the creation of modern civilization. The reason is energy density. If you want an example of inefficiency, look no further than wind and solar, two unreliable energy sources that are the antithesis of energy density.
If we were to provide everyone on the planet with the same amount of energy at their disposal as half of what Americans use (which, let’s face it, would be socially just), providing that much energy with wind and solar would require covering an area the size of South America with wind turbines and solar panels. If you wanted to provide that same amount of energy—without the intermittency of renewables—with nuclear reactors like the one that Bill Gates’ Terrapower is planning to build in Wyoming, you could provide all that energy in a physical footprint the size of Buenos Aires.
Running the world on renewables is a fantasy.
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Meanwhile, the unending stupidity, vapidity and vileness of the GOP accelerates the shift to progressive politics:
Is there a dumber thing alive than the average GOP voter who falls for this crap about the “War on chocolate milk” and “hatred” driving anti-Trump sentiment? How can a creature be this dumb and still stay alive?
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Elise Stefanik is a New Yorker. With sincere apologies to New Yorkers who have ventured beyond two blocks from their neighborhood birthplace, New Yorkers have been among the most parochial people I’ve ever encountered. Since I’m an Arizonan, I’ve been asked more than once about whether I had seen any " wild Indians," whether they still live in teepees, etc. That Ms Stefanik can’t see beyond the nose on her face is, to me, unsurprising, and expectable. Again, I apologize to New York folk who actually are cosmopolitan, and able to see beyond their own immediate personal interests.
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I think New Yorkers (at least those in NYC) realize this themselves – it’s kind of a running joke. Are you familiar with Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker cover “View of the World from 9th Avenue” from March 1976?
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She’s from Upstate. Which is basically angry it’s not the midwest.
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I grew up, went to school, worked and have spent most of my life in and just outside of NYC, and I completely agree with you. When I worked on Wall St. I found the “Bridge and Tunnel” types who took the train or bus in from NJ, the outer boroughs or surrounding suburbs to be on the whole quite provincial, small-minded and unsophisticated, especially considering that they worked in one of the cultural capitals of the world. Same for many of my neighbors in Queens growing up. There’s an old saying that the widest river in the world is the East River, because of the vast cultural divide. By far the most cosmopolitan and interesting people I’ve known here were transplants, usually from abroad. Most sophisticated New Yorkers are from elsewhere. So, no apologies needed. And she’s from upstate, which is basically the south. NYC and upstate are like Paris and rural Arkansas. Virtually no cultural connection, may as well be thousands of miles apart. She’s a hick who reverted to form.
Of course, this country’s ideological and political divides are deeply rooted in the country/city divide, which along with the class and racial divide are the big three (thankfully the gender divide is gradually closing but still a ways to go).
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I had a poster of that in my upstate NY dorm room, to stick it to my hick friends.
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If NY is a state of mind then upstate NY is a state of mindlessness.
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Well thanks for the fossil fuel industry take on this vital issue, Mr. Rockefeller! Always appreciated!
And way to discount or ignore the environmental externality costs of fossil fuel-based energy, which makes it by far the most inefficient source of energy ever imagined. Reminds me of the old joke about Mrs. Lincoln: “Well aside from THAT, how did you enjoy the play?”. Sheesh. You don’t get far here with dishonest arguments, dude.
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I think part of the point is the irony of a man made rich in large part by raiding his country’s vast fossil fuel wealth is helping doom that very industry by his atrocities in Ukraine. Hubris always exacts its price. It has brought down arrogant, foolish and cruel leaders since time immemorial.
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Do you remember the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu? He and his wife were executed by firing squad in 1989. A more than appropriate end for Mr Vlad Putin. I am against torture but it would be fair justice considering he reduced the city of Grosny in Chechnya to rubble and his army has committed off the charts gruesome things in Mariupol. There are true killing fields near that town. Mass graves of thousands of civilians just bull dozed into the ground. I have seen satellite images of rubble in Mariupol that were once apartment buildings. People’s homes… obliterated and for what? There are things that the Russians have done in Ukraine that are far far beyond the words “war crime”. I think if he were living that Hitler would be impressed with Putin’s cruelty.
Putin has shown clearly why i hate the Russian army and civilian leadership.
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Kind of a weird thing to say. The problem isn’t their inefficiency. It’s that they are warming the global climate so quickly that “modern civilization” is under threat. You say “running the world on renewables is a fantasy.” Well, unfortunately, destroying the world with fossil fuels is not a fantasy.
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