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solarbirdIt’s a dang good thing the pro-democracy party also fights climate change.
Seriously though, isn’t it?
We’re getting lucky in that, I suppose. The pro-authoritarian pro-fascism carbon-fuels companies are all on the fascist side, but I could imagine a world where somehow they weren’t, and that somehow the authoritarians ended up being the ones… not on the side of reality, gods no, but on the side against the oil barons.
It’s not even for economic reasons. Some might say that, but it’s a lie. They’re on the side of the fascists not for reasons of the economy, or for reasons of production capability, but solely to extend the lives of their dead-end end-of-life money machines for another decade or two longer, the world be damned.
So it’s a win-win, for us. The choice with Kamala Harris is just as clear as it was with Joe Biden, which is to say impossibly stark. She cast the deciding vote in the Senate on the Inflation Reduction Act which was also the biggest climate bill in the history of the US. When running in 2019, her campaign was more aggressively pro-renewables than Biden’s, and with a majority in Congress, she’ll pick up where Joe left off and take the ball much, much further.
My state’s three-time governor – who ran on climate change – appeared on television calling Project 2025’s plans to destroy renewable energy and ramp up climate change what it is: an assault on every living person. The interview starts at the 4:25 point, but the intro has information that some might find interesting or relevant. And he’s exactly right, not even just on climate – but on the future of industry, as well.
We’ll get to that last part in a minute.
Meanwhile, Trump is out there literally selling the country’s future for a billion dollars to oil companies, a quid-pro-quo of the clearest – and yet, most filthy – sort. He and the screaming disinformation machine called the GOP are out there saying windmills cause cancer and kill birds and that solar panels are toxic.
When given power, they use the law to suppress science, not just on climate, but every kind of actual science that contradicts their endless grasping for power and money. The appoint corrupt judges who revel in their own scientific and technical incompetence as they throw aside law in favour of their patrons’ demands. They hide reality from the public at every turn…
…all while throwing the country further and further behind in technology and industry, as other, less determinedly blind governments charge forward on the next great technology conversion staring us right in the face.
Like I said, we’ll get to the industry part, and now we’re here. Thanks for sticking around.
Remember how the UK used to be a global industrial leader? Probably not, I mean, I don’t either. It’s before my time. But it was true. Now they’re an also-ran, at best.
A lot of events combined to make that fall happen. I won’t talk about all of them. But I can talk about one:
The transition from a coal-based production economy to an oil-based production economy, and their complete failure to make it happen.
Fossil fuels, as a class, are now recognised as a disaster. But if you don’t know that yet – and this is in an era when people genuinely didn’t know that – if you’ve figured out how to make oil work? From the ground? From wells?! It just comes up when you drill?! It is an amazing power source.
You don’t have to mine it. You don’t have to haul it out of the ground, one agonising carload at a time. You don’t have people getting black lung, you don’t have collapses that kill hundreds, it’s so much easier and so much cheaper and so much faster that it’s barely even comparable.
And once you’ve got it – it’s a miracle fuel. Compared, again, to coal. The energy density is unlike anything anyone’s ever seen. It burns so much cleaner, and so much more controllably, than coal. The precision you can achieve with oil is, again, an entire quantum leap forward.
The technologies you can create with it are just as much a jump ahead. The materials you can make with it – not just burning it, but creating lubricants, plastics, detergents, water repellents – it’s flexible like nothing you’ve ever seen. There was even talk for a while of making food from oil, and frankly, it mighta coulda worked.
The US, after its Civil War, had a coal-based industrial complex. But, what with the US being a major oil producer, they made the switch over quickly and enthusiastically.
The UK, on the other hand…
…did not.
Not really. Yes, some, but not enthusiastically, and not for decades. There were too many vested interests in coal production, in a legacy coal industrial base, in all of it.
And by the time the so-called “London Fog” – actually not fog, but impossibly thick coal smog – cleared, they’d lost every advantage they’d ever had, and more.
That’s what Trump and the Republicans are doing, whether they know it or not. Sacrificing the future for a few more years out of the old technology of oil, a technology being swept away world wide both by necessity, and, more and more each day, by economics.
There is not one good argument left for oil. Not one. It is solely now about nostalgia, corruption, and power for the fossil fuel industry, not for production. It is a legacy technology, one which the sooner we lose, the better off we all will be. Yeah, there are still a few places where it’s still an arguable necessity, but those won’t last. Not for very much longer.
You may know people who still think oil and gas are “economically” better choices. They are not. Just as people insisted coal was the “economically” better choice in 1930s and 1940s Britain, it is not.
The days of oil and gas are very fucking numbered. The revolution really is here. And we’ll get to see it, or more of it, and soon – if the MAGAts can’t stop it.
And that, really, is all anyone should need to know.
Climate change is very real. Republicans know it, but don’t fucking care, because it doesn’t make them money, and they don’t want you to know it at all. And when push comes to shove, it is the most important issue, because it is literally a matter of civilisational survival, and they and their goddamn death cult friends are on the wrong goddamn side.
Tell your friends. Tell your family. Fight this fight…
In more ways than one.
97 days remain.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-30 05:44 pm (UTC)However, in the 21st century, solar and wind are domestically produced energy sources not subject to arbitrary price increases or embargo by foreign powers. For a party that claims to be big on sovereignty and isolation, you'd think that they'd be trying to cover every rooftop with solar panels.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-30 06:05 pm (UTC)And solar and wind now are just flat-out cheaper! Prices have gone negative, not just once, but multiple times, in certain fluke circumstances.
This obviously won't be the norm, particularly as everything electrifies. But.
It's just flat-out cheaper now.
Wrong. Side. Of. History.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-30 06:09 pm (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
no subject
Date: 2024-07-30 06:14 pm (UTC)Britain's not unique in fucking up this kind of transition. We just have to help people realise what's up. Dramatic spikes down in price - e.g., the swings into negative will help, and a lot.
Besides, even when it's absolutely necessary, people are a lot more likely to actually do something if they see an upside they actually like.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-05 08:15 pm (UTC)I've heard talk elsewhere about how the ascendancy of renewables is locked in now, but that Economist article really drove it home. It's one thing to know that the cost of solar panels in the past was mostly due to them being a sideline, and that energy density is not nearly as much of a problem for batteries if you're using them for straight storage, but it's another thing to see it actually happen.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-05 08:19 pm (UTC)