You must log in or register to comment.
Every right winger 5 years ago: Impossible!
Every right winger today: lies!
Every right winger tomorrow: “But think of all the diesel trucks that have to drive and service the wind turbines!” (an actual thing I’ve heard)
Oh yes, also ‘wind turbines need oil lubricant’ - checkmate environmentalists.
Never mind that they use a tiny fraction of the fossil fuels of a gas or coal plant.
‘Any step towards reducing fossil fuels is completely pointless if it uses even a tiny shred of fossil fuels’ is some deeply stupid logic that they keep falling back on.
Vegans get told this all the time.
Interesting to note that this is being spearheaded by lower-income developing nations.
There were those on the left who were worried that the phase out of fossil fuels would be like the developed nations pulling the ladder up behind themselves. But with the way things are going now countries in the global south may actually end up leapfrogging the imperial core, as they build out cleaner and more advanced infrastructure.
Yup, with people stupidly voting against climate action in Canada, US and Europe.
This had always been a faulty line of thinking by those who claim that the less-developed world would start to use as many resources as the developed world already had.
Like, no. Why would theY bury copperlines all over the place instead of just going mobile directly. Rinse and repeat for everything else - like using solar instead of coal.
Conservatives parroting fossil fuel propaganda):
- it only makes sense in small countries, we’re too big
- it’s only a science fair experiment
- hail storm right?! Haw haw haw stupid scientists
- it’ll never make a realistic amount of energy
China:
Just does the thing
China does both. They have also heavily expanded their coal usage
Arguments I’ve heard from conservatives on the street usually amount to, “That solution isn’t 100%. Not good enough.”
No, solar can’t cover 100% of our energy needs.
No, taxing the snot out of the rich doesn’t magically solve our financial problems.
They seem to have this all-or-none idea about problem solving. I suspect that comes from Fox News propaganda and not an inborn quality like their lack of empathy.
Those on the left also tend towards simplistic solutions, you can see it on lemmy everyday. But they’re far more reasonable about taking healthy steps rather than trashing partial solutions.
It’s like the conspiracy mind, one small idea and it either makes or breaks everything.
They always say anything “good is impossible”
We’re using much more electricity, and the new source is mostly solar, but, we haven’t reduced the coal and fossil fuel burning. In other words, we’re standing still on this, not making an improvement. Not adding to is, is not good enough.
We’re using much more electricity, and the new source is mostly solar, but, we haven’t reduced the coal and fossil fuel burning
“We’re” is doing some heavy lifting there
In the two largest markets, namely China and India, which together accounted for 71% of the global coal consumption
Meanwhile
On the contrary, coal phase-out policies contributed to reducing coal consumption in OECD countries, such as the USA (-4%), the EU (-11%), Canada, and the UK
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-world-consumption-data.html
It’s fun to blame India and China, but at least China is pumping out renewable capacity at a crazy rate. They should be doing better, but this isn’t an US vs THEM problem.
The US might be using less coal, but it is replacing it with just as much natural gas, which is slightly better, but still bad.
I credit China for their efforts on renewables and criticise them for their efforts on coal, and give shit to india for sucking.
But I hear “we’re doing too badly” too often around this place and not enough credit where credit is due
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care for the government of China. That being said, all the papers I have seen on them building coal power plants, seem to indicate that those power plants are replacement plants, and mostly stopgap measures. So they are building a new coal power plant to replace an old, and much dirtier, coal power plant, with the intention of spinning down the new plants as soon as their solar and hydroelectric capacity can take over. That isn’t great, but they are also testing out the nuclear power plants that we designed in the '60s and '70s that never got tested because of Western beaurocracy. If they can get the molten salt reactors working, I suspect they will abandon coal and gas rather quickly.
