My biggest issue with “big green” is that the politicians who push it go for an oversimplified approach (as usual) and ignore the other consequences, including environmental ones
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The oldest trick in the book is to convince people there’s a crisis and that giving me power, money and influence is needed to save everyone.
That’s right I said give me money. I’m the guy with the answers. Put me in charge.
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Upfront bias disclaimer: I work in renewable power
The subsidy point isn’t apples-to-apples. Conventional power generation has experienced an enormous benefit since its inception: the ability to emit carbon freely (more or less) without ever bearing any of the cost incurred through its emission. This is why I’m a proponent of a functioning carbon market to replace the ITC / PTC that underpin the solar / wind industry currently, as I think it would be a more fair and transparent look at what it actually costs to produce power. And people may not have asked for wind turbines, but I guarantee they didn’t ask for the CCGTs (or whatever) that preceded them either.
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I’m not arguing that traditional power generation is free of any of these problems or aren’t worse. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t oversimplify
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And I agree with you. Politicians or agenda-driven people of any sort routinely overlook (or just outright ignore) the effects you describe, which isn’t helpful at all and contributes to the perception that it’s all tree-hugging bullshit that isn’t grounded in reality. To imply that renewable power has environmentally detrimental effects proportionate to conventional power (which I realize you’re not doing) would plain wrong though.
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Can you(or others) quantify those costs?
It is true that lighting shit on fire has been very useful to humans since, well, all of human evolution.
Is that unfair to emerging technologies that aim for the same end result, sans lighting any shit on fire?
I suppose it is, but that’s why we’ve always subsidized emerging technologies that show promise. I’m generally fine with that as long as it is done without upending society or the economy.
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I think there are two separate questions here:
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What is the dollar value assignable to the environmental, health, commercial, etc. costs incurred through carbon emissions past, present, and future? I have no idea - scientists and economists dedicate a lot of time to this so I’m not going to presume to speak for them. However, I think we can establish two things: 1) it’s an enormous figure and 2) it’s not a cost that is 100% recoverable.
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Is it possible to apply a price to carbon emissions such that we see competitive parity between carbon-emitting and carbon-neutral generation & transportation sources while we work towards carbon neutrality? Absolutely. It’s a fact that we’ll continue to be reliant upon hydrocarbons in one form or another for quite a while, and it’s a much simpler (though still not simple) problem to solve for a pricing mechanism that brings balance to the carbon equation than it is to quantify the 1st question. Something like 50 countries have done it thus far (China, most recently) so I’d like to think we’ll move away from tax credits to that model at some point in the future, though at this point carbon pricing is largely paid lip service while the legacy tax credits keep getting extended.
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You don’t have to speak for them. Post a link or something.
I’d say it’s possible to apply a price to anything in order to make something less efficient its equal(in some ways, at least) if the desire exists.
No shit. It will be arbitrary however.
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I’ll do you one better - here’s a bunch of links: social cost of carbon - Google Search
This is a broad, universal truth. Yes, we could start charging conventional power generators $1 million for every molecule of carbon emitted. Somehow, I don’t see it happening.
Are there any that don’t talk about future costs? Color me skeptical that people can calculate future costs but not past and present costs.
Does that speak to your belief in the (in)efficiency of other sources of energy?
@anna_5588
Skipped over the last 50 posts or so because i think they diluted your point in wanting to discuss this topic.
I used to categorically deny climate change (even after looking at the data). My engineering brain knows that statistics especially are subject to a lot of (often wrong) interpretations. I didn’t realize though I was viewing most of the studies through my conservative confirmation bias lens.
I now believe climate change does exist and it appears from the data we have that humans have been changing the earth’s atmospheric temperature more rapidly than in the past. Is it as bad as fear based media and politicians would have us believe? I highly doubt it (fear gets votes and views).
I think the biggest issue with climate change is that there are many nuances to the what variables affect it and how that scientists are still trying to comprehend. Who’s to say some other technology to “correct” climate change won’t have other similar consequences down the road? Atmospheric science is highly complex (chemistry, fluid dynamics, and space-time all play a role) and most people cannot wrap their minds around how complex the issue is. Therefore, people (especially politicians and media) either categorically deny it or employ hyperbole to force an emotional response from the layman.
Overall, I wouldn’t worry too much about absolutely catastrophic change in our lifetimes. If you find it a concern, maybe try encouraging others to do one more “green” thing per day (use a water bottle instead of bottled drinking water etc…).
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Well ok - I don’t feel the need to convince you on this point. If you’re using the haziness of a future cost calculation to dismiss the problem, I’d compare that to using the uncertainty of future cancer expenses to justify continued smoking, all while disregarding the cost of buying cigarettes.
I’m not sure what you’re asking - the example I gave was intentional hyperbole. Are you asking me if I think renewable power sources (collectively) are less efficient than conventional power sources? If so, then my answer is that I don’t think so - I know so. Excluding hydro and geothermal, which are very geographically specific resources, the net capacity factors of wind, solar, and other mainstream renewable sources are a fraction of those associated with conventional sources like coal and natural gas (and nuclear, but I’m actually a proponent of nuclear as a clean-er generation source). The sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day and the wind doesn’t blow consistently, so anyone trying to assert that we don’t give something up by switching away from conventional power is smoking crack. Because they are less efficient in producing power, the power they generate costs more in comparison on a $/MWh basis (which is currently subsidized through tax credits, RECs, etc.). The point is that you’re getting something for that additional cost, and that the cheaper power derived from hydrocarbons carries the same cost. The difference is that that additional cost is projected onto everyone else in the form of health / environmental consequences - potentially in an irreversible way (depending on what you believe).
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THat makes sense. Thank you so much for your insights.
I am honestly quite pleased with how this thread is going considering what I’ve seen in some of the other PWI threads
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I wouldn’t. You can look at smokers past and present and the cost. I mean, maybe we can look at average lifespans before and after harnessing the power to pollute The Environment. Maybe we can look at how hard people work to stay away from that dirty energy. We can look at how much more desirable things are that don’t pollute The Environment. Anything, really.
I’m just asking for past costs before I accept future cost projections.
Ok. You’re right, of course, that the analogy breaks down because we have historically quantified cigarette prices and medical expenses but have never done so for carbon emissions - which is the whole point.
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You really can’t. How do you calculate the cost for someone’s suffering from lung cancer or some other smoking related disease? You miss the point. It’s like a court deciding how much to pay in a wrongful death case. How do you calculate the value of someone’s life? You can look at how much they would have earned (which doesn’t take into account any changes to income that may have happened had he lived), for example, but how do you put a price on the impact the death will have on his children and their ability to cope in the world? In the end it’s an arbitrary amount that does not factor in everything the death will impact because you can’t put a monetary figure on everything. It’s like putting a dollar amount on the extinction of a species. How do you calculate that loss? The reality is, in the end, the universe does not care about cancer, pollution, extinction or emotional suffering. So trying to put a dollar amount on everything as if that is the only way to measure value in the universe is weak Ayn Rand thinking. I mean, does concern for cancer boil down to dollar cost or the fact, it’s cancer?
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All of what you say goes doubly for something from which we can’t even determine the damage done. I don’t dispute it. How do we calculate the value of lives saved by efficient heat, by products made possible by time freed up by “dirty” energy, etc.?
Why should something like climate change be looked at from a cost perspective? If we can all generally agree that heating up the earth to a certain point would be bad - isn’t that something that should be addressed?
For reference, the areas where the wet bulb temperature is exceeding the survival point are increasing:
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