I want to say “Why couldn’t we do this 50 years ago?” but, I know why.Turns out, no I didn’t.
In particular: wind and solar weren’t ready for this kind of deployment 50 years ago.
I had Jimmy Carter’s whitehouse rooftop solar in mind when I said 50 years. Maybe not ready for full deployment at that time, but the lost opportunity for investment and early deployment is tragic in my opinion.I had a wrong opinion.
Those were solar hot water heating panels, not photovoltaics. Quite effective for what they did, but not something that could be used as a source of electricity.
No they werent?! WHAT! THEY WERE! I WAS WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING?! Ugh…
Those weren’t even PV panels it was just a solar water heater. *woops, had this comment open long enough while I double checked that that somebody beat me to it
We could have easily had nuclear. But a stupid twist in history tanked it.
The China Syndrome, a popular movie about a total core meltdown, came out 12 days before the 3-Mile Island reactor let a poof of radioactive steam loose. People, being ignorant panicky animals, predictably freaked out. And that was the end of new power plants.
In Oklahoma we were starting a reactor and a bunch of hippies had a hella protest. The government ended up shutting it down.