At this point it’s also a national security concern.
Remaining dependent on fossil fuels ties us to interests that are fundamentally counter to our values and to the interests of our allies.
We should be doubling and trippling down on developing easy to build out green energy infrastructure and deploying it rapidly to replace fossil infrastructure where possible to be placed in emergency only maintenance for a freak situation where it might be needed to keep the lights on until proper energy infrastructure can be turned back on.
Oil is the poison in the veins of the democratic world and taking the antidote is a necessary step to solidify the ability of the democratic world to keep a strong hand against the authoritarians and their fossil monopolies.
At this point it’s also a national security concern.
“Yeah, we should fix it by doing more fracking!” – right-wing suicide cultists
We should be in planetary emergency mode right now. Even if we did stop the fossil fuel industry right now completely, we would still feel the effects for a few more decades or a century or two.
Instead, we keep going worried that we might disrupt the financial markets instead.
The stock market will still be functioning in a hundred years … but we’ll be fighting for scraps of land and water by then.
Back in the 1890s scientists discovered some rocks were extra spicy and the energy inside could power everything, everywhere, forever. The last 100+ years have been a concerted effort all across the globe to ignore that in favor of invasive and destructive drilling, clouds of smog in our cities and massive spills of toxic black sludge for our seafood to swim in. We are not a wise species.
Fermi paradox in action
The green party in Germany is still happy that they finally managed to get the last nuclear reactors offline. In April 2023. Imagine fighting something for 50 years and never adjusting your world view at all despite the masses of new data or “new” issues.
Nuclear in Germany was phased out by the Conservativs under Merkel. Whining about the Greens here is disingenuous.
But the entire Green party was founded out of the anti-nuclear movement, so saying they are happy about it is certainly correct.
I said they are still happy about it. Is that correct or not?
Those reactors were ancient and, even without the nuclear power phaseout, they would’ve needed to be replaced. And contrary to popular belief, they were replaced with renewables, not fossil fuels. The choice was build wind turbines and solar panels and upgrade the grid or spend the same amount of money on building nuclear reactors that still rely on imported fuel that needs to be mined in some third world country in an extremely environmentally destructive way and that, regardless of design, produce nuclear waste.
And did they get replaced? No. Because bad nuclear, they still think like that. It is the only tech we have with a chance to actually reduce CO2 emissions as much as WE need to in the near future.
You say they were replaced by renewables… Sure. But then they did not replace fossiles, which is exactly the issue. Also, they provide base load, only hydro and geothermal can do that, and they did not suddenly get another few GW installed. We are still using as much fossiles as we did 20+ years ago, it is fucking crazy. Have a look at the chart (the absolute values are not better looking)
A lot of this is the problem with companies still selling combustible stuff as they have an overflow based on this stupid decision to overproduce. and act like this bus is too big to turn around to just use something else.
Don’t you see the stock to sell for potential $ $$$ $ is the real issue on every capitalists mind.
Won’t you think of the capitalist?? So selfish!
/s <just in case
I do not think that it has sometime to do with capitalism. Everyone is using fossiles, because they are cheap and abundant. Every form of government etc. used them if they had access to them.
The same way everyone drives cars, even tho accidents are the 3rd highest cause of death. They do that because it is convenient etc.
Those reactors were ancient and, even without the nuclear power phaseout, they would’ve needed to be replaced.
Would the timeline have been the same?
The choice was build wind turbines and solar panels and upgrade the grid or spend the same amount of money on building nuclear reactors that still rely on imported fuel that needs to be mined in some third world country in an extremely environmentally destructive way
Solar panels at least use a lot of imported materials from what I’ve read. So similar issues there. Not sure which ends up as the lesser evil for the third world.
I find it fascinating that we’re all here on lemmy to be part of a more distributed social media since monopolies obviously come with serious consequences.
And then there are still tons of people who’d prefer nuclear, which usually means some big company having a lot of power on a basic need for society, as if there it suddenly does make sense to want huge companies have all the power.
Regardless of whether nuclear is safe or not, or if the waste is a problem or not, the entire reason you’re on lemmy and not on reddit should be the same reason why you’d prefer solar & wind over nuclear.
Uhhh what? Why couldn’t nuclear energy be government funded and owned?
naah, places like France and China don’t exist.
You are making a LOT of really bad assumptions on why people are on Lemmy and why some think Nuclear energy has a place in the entry supply chains for at least the next several hundred years ( unless the current paradigm changes radically).
at what point can i start chucking molotov cocktails? i feel like chucking one at least once in my life.
Try a petroleum alternative molotov cocktail.
i’m afraid they might not be as effective, alcohol is the only thing which comes to mind. that stuff will burn, but will it be as effective as gasoline or kerosine?
Use that archimedes solar death ray that completey failed to work on mythbusters
This thread right below this one is giving me whiplash https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/17620489
Without the fossil fuel industry the medical system would look very different.
Unfortunately we need oil for like… almost everything. But it’d be real nice if those assholes toned it down by a lot.
So, serious question, how do you think dismantling the fossil fuel industry would work? As of the last available data world energy consumption is still about 80% from fossil fuels. It is not possible to replace those energy inputs with renewables. “There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds. This implies a very different social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in place today.”
So, since they can’t be substituted with other energy sources, to eliminate fossil fuels voluntarily would mean everyone, everywhere agreeing to give up a large part of the comfort we have become accustomed to. Setting aside for the moment the inequity of the global energy usage distribution, how would you go about convincing people that we all need to stop using the majority of the gas and electricity we currently do? What would that look like? We have built entire societies dependent on on endless low cost energy. What happens in places that can’t function without it?
It’s going to happen eventually. Fossil fuels are non-renewable. Once we use them up they’re gone. I just don’t see any way we will agree to an organized, cooperative, managed decline in usage. I think we instead we will fight for what’s left and pretend everything is fine until it all just collapses. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what that will look like.
Serious answer: the oil dependent society is barely a century old.
We are all just selfish assholes.
A lot of coal was used for another 100 years or so before that. Lower global population back then.
Start with a carbon tax. It’s crazy that the one thing in the world that’s free everywhere is air pollution that destroys the whole planet. And many of the activities that contribute to it are heavily subsidized. Just make things cost what they should cost, and the rest solves itself.
