Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry' (theguardian.com) 530
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk has accused politicians of bowing to the "unrelenting and enormous" lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry, warning that a global "revolt" may be needed to accelerate the transition to more sustainable energy and transport systems. Speaking at the World Energy Innovation Forum at the Tesla Factory in California, Musk claimed that traditional vehicles and energy sources will continue to hold a competitive edge against greener alternatives due to the vast amounts of subsidies they receive. The solution to this energy dilemma, Musk says, is to introduce a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon content of fossil fuels. "The fundamental issue with fossil fuels is that every use comes with a subsidy," Musk said. "Every gasoline car on the road has a subsidy, and the right way to address that is with a carbon tax. Politicians take the easy path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles, which aren't equal to the applied subsidies of gasoline vehicles. It weakens the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and energy."
What about (Score:2, Insightful)
all the massive subsidies that solar/wind get? How about we remove subsidies from ALL and then wait and see what and who can stand on their own?
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes - lets squabble about this little blue marble, when there are quadrillions of tons of rare earths to be found in the asteroid belt.
Let's get off our collective butts, slap ourselves out of our collective malaise, and get the space elevator/ private sector affordable space launch vehicles/ Mars mission technology working NOW - so we can solve these problems without further destroying the earth.
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Getting stuff into space isn't the hard problem. The hard problem is the months it takes to get to the asteroid belt, find the ones with stuff we want, and then push those lumps back here or mine it there and ship it back here.
Now, how about you do some serious thinking and calculate the energy it would take to do the job. Also calculate the missing techno whizzies we'll need to do the job (hint, there's not a lot of gravity up there to rely upon). Regarding the energy, it isn't enough to get something whiz
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I would suggest parking any asteroids to be mined in the Earth-Moon L1 or L2, that way they don't get in the way, and are rather easy to reach. Also, it allows factories to sit in the gravitational equilibrium spots. Even shipping the finished products around the solar system is damn easy from there.
As far as moving the rocks, just design an automated ion "tug" that can anchor to an asteroid, kill its spin, and push it here slowly using the ITN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As far as gravity, just spin
Calculating "environmental cost" (Score:2, Insightful)
Computed by who?
Talking about "cost" only makes sense, when there is a free market with competing suppliers using different technologies...
"Environmental cost" is notoriously incalculable — as both "Greenpeace" and the oil companies will attest from their respective sides of this barricade.
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Even if the cost assigned is incorrect (too high or too low) at least it starts the conversation. Some energy generators do not like the benefits/subsidies given to other classes of power generation and some energy generators can point to their type as having a lowe
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Wow, talk about begging the question. Are they neutral? Or will they happily (ab)use this power you propose we give them to reward supporters and punish opponents?
And even if they are free of any agenda [washingtontimes.com] — just how can they (or anyone) calculate these costs? The people, who can't keep almost any project within budget
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-1 Stupid.
Wind energy doesn't use rare-earth minerals, it's just a big fan with a motor.
And at least with solar, you only have to dig it up once and make the panel once, and then it produces power for decades. And you can then recycle it afterwards.
With fossil fuel, once you burn it, it's gone, into the atmosphere, and you have to keep digging more out of the ground and burning it.
-1000 Extra stupid for calling someone out when you are actualy wrong. http://www.frontierrareearths.... [frontierrareearths.com]
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
The magnets in wind turbines use neodymium, which is a "rare earth", but is not actually very rare, nor particularly expensive (about 30 cents per gram). Most production is in China, but America and Canada are also producers. Mining rare earths is not a major environmental problem. Comparing it to the environmental cost of fossil fuels is absurd.
Rare earths do not fuel wars. Tantalum mining was used to fund rebels during the Congo civil war, but tantalum is not a rare earth metal [wikipedia.org].
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-1000 Extra stupid for calling someone out when you are actualy wrong. http://www.frontierrareearths.... [frontierrareearths.com]
The only 'stupid' I saw was a millionaire saying that the proper way to counter unfair subsidies is with new/more taxes.
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And how exactly would you suggest countering the massive subsidies being poured into fossil fuels? Some are simple, in principle if not in politics - we could eliminate the many tax breaks and direct subsidies. But how would you compensate for the extensive subsidies that come in the form of things like pretty much every war in the middle east for the last century?
Re:What about (Score:4, Informative)
-1 Stupid.
Wind energy doesn't use rare-earth minerals, it's just a big fan with a motor.
And at least with solar, you only have to dig it up once and make the panel once, and then it produces power for decades. And you can then recycle it afterwards.
With fossil fuel, once you burn it, it's gone, into the atmosphere, and you have to keep digging more out of the ground and burning it.
The common applications for rare earth magnets [wikipedia.org] seems to list wind turbines.
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
The big motor in a turbine uses rare-earth magnets.
But the pollution issue with rare-earths is due to the extraction techniques. It's much easier to fix a mining operation than it is to retrofit scrubbers on to every fossil fuel plant out there.
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Duh. It's not a motor. It's a generator. And yes, it typically uses neodymium permanent magnets, but it certainly doesn't have to. Just as the AC induction motors used in Tesla cars do not have any permanent magnets, you can make generators which do not have permanent magnets. Alternators in cars do not have permanent magnets. Electric hydropower generators do not have permanent magnets.
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
you can make generators which do not have permanent magnets.
The reason rare earth permanent magnets are popular in wind generators, especially small ones, is that electromagnets continuously burn power to make the field, and this comes out of the power you generate.
Further: The slower the machine turns, the less energy you get from it (by a CUBE function!) and the more field you need (by a linear function in strength and a SQUARE function in consumed energy) to get it to generate a given output voltage. Small machines generally have to generate a higher voltage than an associated battery pack to achieve "cut in" - or use a voltage converter (which is more to fail, has losses, and has losses that are a higher percentage when the input voltage is lower). So when wind is slow, and you're already hard up for power, electromagnets are at their worst. This raises the cut in wind speed and greatly reduces the utility of small machines.
With permanent magnets you pay the magnetizing power once, for nanoseconds, as you manufacture them. No ongoing power cost, so you can use every bit of your generated power for your load.
Rare earth magnets are preferred to other types because they're stronger - strong enough to easily saturate flux-guide silicon-steel winding cores, strong enough to keep the machine small, which means the coils are small and have less resistive losses than a larger arrangement. Again, more power at low speed - which translates to a smaller, lighter, less expensive machine.
A big industrial machine is big enough to have a gearbox and spin fast enough that it can get away with using electromagnets. Nevertheless, permanent magnets, or a mix, also gives energy efficiency advantages to the big mills.
The REAL measure of efficiency for a wind machine, though, is power generated / cost of equipment, maintenance, and site. When your fuel is free the economics doesn't work the way most people are used to thinking.
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"The big motor in a turbine uses rare-earth magnets"
Most do but it's not a requirement; Enercon is the 4th largest turbine maker, has 18,000 employees and doesn't use rare earths in their designs which go up to 7.5 Megawatts
https://yes2renewables.org/201... [yes2renewables.org]
Re: What about (Score:2, Insightful)
About 1 millionth of the number killed by climate change due to fossil fuels
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You make an assertion with no proof whatsoever
Re: What about (Score:5, Informative)
You make an assertion with no proof whatsoever
There are many studies of bird deaths from windmills, including this meta-study [smithsonianmag.com]. Windmills kill a few hundred thousand birds a year. Very few of those are from endangered species. By comparison, several BILLION are killed by domestic cats, and many millions die from collisions with buildings.
Objecting to windmills because they "kill birds" is idiotic, and even the people that raise that issue don't really believe it is valid. They just aren't bright enough to think of a more rational objection.
Re:What about (Score:5, Funny)
300,000 US birds killed by wind turbines annually, compared to the 3 billion birds killed by cats every year.
Learn to check statistics before opening your damn mouth, you fossil-fuel shilling waste-of-space intellectually dishonest cunt.
Maybe we should be trying to run over more cats?
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have a source?
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who can stand on their own would be the ones with the most money in the bank.
So it would be the older established companies, vs. the newer companies who are spending a lot of money in R&D.
The subsidies allow such companies to be competitive with the big names who have money to sell at a loss until their competition is dead.
If you think subsidies are unfair, realize the big companies have the ability to change the rules.
Re:What about... (Score:2)
How about we remove subsidies from ALL and then wait and see what and who can stand on their own?
Yes. That's what he's suggesting. Get rid of subsidies and implement a carbon tax. Let the market rather than the politicians decide which alternatives to support and which will fail. If you make the carbon tax revenue neutral then you can reduce income and sales tax - two things we ought to be encouraging rather than taxing.
That second part is a problem (Score:2, Informative)
Carbon tax hurts _you_, the consumer, not companies who are passing their costs to you. It also tends to harm the poorer areas who have less income. People in the Ozarks who rely on coal plants don't have the extra income to tax and pay for replacement power plants.
Shaping society with a hammer does not work, it has never worked. Carbon tax is a huge hammer. The working alternative is public funding through merit based incremental updates. That method is how we achieved national coverage for railroads,
Re:That second part is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Carbon tax hurts _you_, the consumer, not companies who are passing their costs to you
It's not intended to hurt the companies. It's intended to alter the market by making a particular product more expensive, and thus less enticing. Other products can then compete better on price and thus become more enticing.
A subsidy or tax break can have a similar type of effect but in the opposite direction.
Re:That second part is a problem (Score:4, Informative)
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Two people sell items that solve the same problem, both are $1. The government steps in and decides one needs to be taxed a dollar while the other does not. Now you have two items, one at $1 and one at $2. The $1 item is now free to raise its price either slightly below or at the $2 item as it's competition is no longer limiting it.
So now you have one product at $1.95 and one at $2. This is the problem with carbon tax - if you raise the cost of gas you give competing technologies such as solar or wind t
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The $1 item is now free to raise its price either slightly below or at the $2 item as it's competition is no longer limiting it.
No, it doesn't work that way. A solar panel company doesn't just compete with fossil fuel companies. It also competes with other solar panel companies, wind companies, and even companies selling conservation via LED light bulbs and better insulation. A single company cannot just arbitrarily raise prices without losing market share to competitors producing similar products.
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A subsidy or tax break can have a similar type of effect but in the opposite direction.
The problem with subsidies and tax breaks is that they require the government to "pick winners". If you subsidize solar panels, you will get more solar panels. But if you instead tax fossil fuel, you leave it up to the market to find the most cost effective alternative, which may not be solar panels. It may be wind, or LED light bulbs, or better attic insulation.
Another problem with subsidies is that, once in place, they are politically difficult to remove. During WW2, we subsidized mohair [wikipedia.org] to use in fli
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Oh, man! That's so funny [wikipedia.org]!
Carbon tax is just a fee for garbage collection. It is a perfectly valid way to pay for the necessary clean up. But since the voters elect tycoons and won't oversee their government, it will just turn into another scandal. One way or another, passively or actively, together we set policy.
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But it does ultimately hurt those companies because it makes competing energy sources more viable. If fossil fuels are priced higher, it makes alternatives relatively cheaper and more competitive, and at some point, when everyone starts using, say, electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the oil companies are going to feel the pain.
Which is why even oil companies are preparing for a post-oil world. Everyone is. The Saudis are creating the largest sovereign wealth fund in history precisely because they know
the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil. (Score:2)
Which is why even oil companies are preparing for a post-oil world. Everyone is. The Saudis are creating the largest sovereign wealth fund in history precisely because they know the game is up, and oil has only decades left.
It was a Saudi minister of oil and mineral resources who said "The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil."
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The "massive" subsidies for solar/wind turn out to be small compared to the subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry subsidies are simply invisible because they've been in place so long.
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-foss... [ibtimes.com]
Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
By "subsidies", you apparently mean normal business expense deductions that ALL businesses get.
I propose a simple metric: cost per megawatt-hour delivered to the grid, with no non-standard deductions and no outright subsidies.
Until we get a picture free of EVERYONE'S politics, and have some purely objective data to work with, we're talking apples and oranges here. . .
Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
By subsidies, many of us mean that everyone else gets to pay for the damage done by the use of fossil fuels, while the companies reap profits.
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Whoever and however the product is used, the product is causing significant harm, therefore the product should be priced in such a fashion as to reflect the harm it does. It's that simple. You can bitch and moan about "collectivism", but carbon pricing is about using the market to deal with the problem.
Oil, coal and even natural gas lead to significant climate-changing climate changes, and the price of oil, coal and natural gas should reflect that damage. Otherwise, the fact that current pricing benefits us
Re:What about (Score:4, Informative)
The U.S. uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year [eia.gov]. So even if you assumed the entirety of that subsidy were on gasoline (less than half of a barrel of oil [eia.gov] becomes gasoline), that works out to a subsidy of just 26.8 cents per gallon.
The average fuel tax on gasoline in the U.S. is 48.7 cents/gallon [wikipedia.org]. So gasoline has a net tax on it - it is taxed more than the subsidy it receives.
The difference is even starker in other OECD countries, where gasoline is taxed to the tune of several dollars a gallon. We are addicted to gasoline and fossil fuels because the easy access to energy acts as a multiplier for our productivity, allowing us to increase our standard of living relatively cheaply (in terms of financial cost). Even with the net tax, we are still addicted to it. So even if all the complaining about oil subsidies works and they're completely rescinded, it won't make a dent in our oil consumption. The price of gasoline has fluctuated more this year due to market forces, than the above calculated subsidy amount.
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
Problem with cost per megawatt is that it ignores all the externalised costs. Healthcare to deal with the effects of pollution is expensive and very long term. How do you value all the energy saved having to vacuum homes or replace filters less often?
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
By "subsidies", you apparently mean normal business expense deductions that ALL businesses get.
No. Do a quick internet search for "oil tax credit" and learn something new. If you're too lazy for that, try this article: http://www.investopedia.com/ar... [investopedia.com] If you're too lazy for that, understand that you're incorrect, and there are specific tax benefits that are given to oil investments.
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You don't hear about money spent on solar clean-ups. You don't find entire coasts of the United States that have been poisoned for a generation due to a solar spill.
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Yes, to be fair, oil can be a very bad thing to allow to get out of your control.
However, if we're going to be completely honest with ourselves, characterizing Solar as being "unable to have a spill" is a nice sound byte, but its a deceptive one.
Yes, solar energy can't have a spill, but oil and solar have different characteristics that go beyond "fossil" and "green".
It is important to point out that, oil's liquid state is also one of its prime advantages. It is high density fuel that you can easily store o
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Renewable energy gets less than half as much subsidy as petroleum, and it becomes less than 1/5th of what petroleum gets if you exclude subsidies for ethanol.
I'd be happy if they simply made it equal.
=Smidge=
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I totally agree and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Wow, why make americans so retarded comments?
Who would set up a wind plant if it is not in a way profitable and can compete?
Who would research building such a wind plant if not a government would give research grands?
When would the planet be finally powered by green energy if we do nothing and wait for the invisible hand?
How can you be so retarded?
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Does "removing subsidies" also mean pricing energy sources for their environmental and climactic costs? If you're not pricing energy sources in that way, you're effectively subsidizing them, because somehow someone somewhere is going to have to pay to deal with issues like remediation, environmental damage and yes, whether the Koch meme repeaters like it or not, significant alterations in global climate.
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His argument is that every engine or generator powered by fossil fuels has an inherent subsidy because they are not paying for all of the environmental damage they cause.
If you look at the impacts of carcinogenic waste products, global warming, and acidic rain / ocean acidification, then you can see there are huge costs associated with fossil fuels that the producers and consumers of those products are not paying.
He is arguing that fossil fuels have an unfair advantage in the energy market until we slap the
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It will take a long, long time for solar wind subsidies to catch up to what oil/gas have already received!
Another billionaire wanting to tax the serfs (Score:3, Insightful)
I generally like Musk, but this is bullshit. As someone said years before on Slashdot, "carbon credits" or any sort of carbon tax is nothing more than a scam by the ultra rich to make you and me live like bugs.
Why not just end the fossil fuel subsidies? Why must the answer *always* be to further tax the consumers?
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Why must the answer *always* be to further tax the consumers?
I would be all about *changing* taxes from sales/income to consumption taxes. But it has to change not just add another tax. Taxing energy usage per person over a certain level would encourage conservation. I think it makes more sense to tax fuel, alcohol, electricity than it does to tax labor. This also has the advantage of being automatically progressive because the people with the bigger houses, private jets, etc... are the ones that would pay more taxes. These are the people who are actually consum
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Yeah, that was my reaction too. Why is everyone's answer to anything a new Tax? If the fossil fuel industry receives so many subsidy's how about slowly phasing those out and giving them manufacturers, the states and the general public to make electric cars cheaper and more affordable then gas powered cars? Give incentives to the states to put more recharging stations along the highways so you can drive an electric car almost anywhere and not be afraid that you won't be able to find a charging station.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, that was my reaction too. Why is everyone's answer to anything a new Tax? If the fossil fuel industry receives so many subsidy's how about slowly phasing those out and giving them manufacturers, the states and the general public to make electric cars cheaper and more affordable then gas powered cars? Give incentives to the states to put more recharging stations along the highways so you can drive an electric car almost anywhere and not be afraid that you won't be able to find a charging station.
Imposing fees (via taxes, or cap-and-trade, or manditory insurance, or other methods) on things that are not currently well reflected in the cost to produce stuff or deliver services is generally a good idea. Fees for releasing greenhouse gasses, air pollution, mining, or whatever else, can make the producers and consumers pay for those externalities in a more transparent way without requiring others to shoulder the full costs.
In theory, if you manage to properly reflect the true total cost of all these typ
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As someone is saying right now on Slashdot: carbon taxes are the most market-friendly way of getting the right balance of power generation methods. The fossil fuel subsidies we're talking about are the amount of cost of fossil fuels the companies get to dump onto other people in general, and carbon taxes are precisely the right method to remove those subsidies.
Carbon taxes can be implemented in a revenue-neutral way by reducing other taxes.
Covering the cost of pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone said years before on Slashdot, "carbon credits" or any sort of carbon tax is nothing more than a scam by the ultra rich to make you and me live like bugs.
A carbon tax is not some big plot by rich people. It's a way to put an economic value on the cost of dealing with the pollution created by fossil fuels. It's no different in principle from forcing a manufacturer to pay for the cost of cleaning up a byproduct of their production process. Right now the fossil fuel industry is basically allowed to dump certain of their pollutants into the air without further financial consequence. The goal of incentivizing companies and individuals to pollute less is a good one in principle but difficult to pull off in practice.
Carbon credits are a silly political compromise and so far are largely ineffective (for several reasons but mostly because they issue too many of them) but it isn't a scam either. Carbon credits aren't as effective as a straight tax but unlike a tax they are politically palatable even though the net effect is substantially the same. Call something a tax and people freak out but give them something that has the same effect but isn't a direct tax and they calm down because nobody is saying the magical bad word "tax'.
Why not just end the fossil fuel subsidies?
That would be a nice start but it still doesn't cover the cost of the pollution that fossil fuels generate. Right now we not only don't make the oil and gas companies pay for the full cost of their pollution but we actually pay them (subsidies) to generate it! That's bonkers.
Re:Another billionaire wanting to tax the serfs (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe that polluters should pay for the damage they cause, and if you believe that CO2 emissions impose a nonzero cost on the environment, then ending the fossil fuel subsidies is just not sufficient reparation.
And if the carbon tax were revenue-neutral as many advocate, then if the tax were $50 per ton of CO2 and the average person creates 20 tons per year, then everyone would receive back $1,000 no matter how much CO2 they created. The average person who makes no change to their lifestyle would be no better or worse off, the poor who use less energy would get a windfall, and the wealthy who do more flying and have bigger homes to heat and cool would pay more in taxes than they receive back. So a revenue-neutral carbon tax would transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, not the other way around.
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administrative churn (Score:2)
While I agree with his position, the method is (IMHO) wrong. What Elon is requesting is that the government take away from fossil fuel subsidies by a post-facto tax on awarded monies. The inefficiencies of administrative churn will impose a longer time to balancing energy subsidies. A more straight forward solution would be to simply mandate that the sum of all non-renewable energy subsides on a per joule basis be strictly less than the aggregate renewable energy subsidies with a monotonically decreasing no
Film at 11 (Score:2)
Coming up later - short hair is the in thing, claims barber.
the right way... (Score:2)
"Every gasoline car on the road has a subsidy, and the right way to address that is with a carbon tax. Politicians take the easy path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles, which aren't equal to the applied subsidies of gasoline vehicles. It weakens the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and energy."
The "right way" is to eliminate all the subsidies, then only have taxes based on the known effect on the environment, based on current scientific understanding.
Note that all k
Great (Score:2)
I say great, let us start with the 1% who can afford an extra vehicle. An electric car won't take me where I want to go at present. This makes them a very expensive toy to me. Make them equal in utility to my current vehicle and I will be first in line.
Obsolete Testa! It can be done. (Score:2)
For city areas, it is easily possible to build systems of small transporters similar to ski slope gondola pods holding 2 -6 people which travel above sidewalks and parking places on overhead rails with linear motors.
"Pods + people" would use dramatically smaller amounts of power compared to cars or buses and they wouldn't require double decking or widening of roads. Pod rails could be supported by posts that also serve as street lights. With modern engineering including lightweight construction, sensors and
We have already had one. (Score:2)
We've been investing in solar and wind (to a lesser extent nuclear) for quite a while and it has PAID OFF.
Currently, wind and solar, in high useability areas, are cheaper than fossil fuels. That wasn't the case 50, or even 20 years ago.
Right now, the main thing holding us back is a combination of storage costs and the variability of the energy source.
Right now, the only thing holding back a purely electric car is the battery (storage) cost. And cellphone technology has caused us to invest in battery tech
Government power = corruption (Score:2)
Is there a list of specific oil/gas subsidies? (Score:3)
And by subsidies, I mean specific transfer payments to the oil/gas industry or specific tax credits offered to the oil/gas industry. Things that make direct contributions to the oil and gas industry bottom line and allow them to sell the product at a higher margin.
I'm less interested in hearing about indirect costs of greenhouse gas emissions, etc. I believe these are real costs to society as a whole, so it's less clear whether the oil/gas industry should pay for these costs or whether they should be charged at the retail level to consumers of the product who actually do the emitting.
Re: (Score:2)
And by subsidies, I mean specific transfer payments to the oil/gas industry or specific tax credits offered to the oil/gas industry.
The answer is "no". The "subsidies" that the looney left yell about all the time are standard tax breaks available to manufacturers in the US.
Re:Is there a list of specific oil/gas subsidies? (Score:5, Informative)
These are all subsidies that have been around for a long, long time. I don't think anyone is saying they were a bad idea at the time - there is a public good aspect here - but if the same service (personal transportation) can be delivered differently, do we really need to keep subsidizing oil and gas?
It should at least be discussed. I know having an adult conversation is hard for someone who uses phrases like "looney left" but try. Or , just be quiet and let the grown ups handle this one.
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How about the trillion dollars plus we spent to invade Iraq, or the money we spend to keep Isreal and Saudi Arabia happy and Iran contained? If the business of oil was not in these areas we literally not care.
Not all subsidies are about giving dollars to a specific individuals.
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Run for VP, Musk! (Score:2)
I'm waiting for the announcement of Trump-Musk 2016.
We will definitely need more popcorn.
Every Tesla (Score:3)
Musk is full of shit (Score:2)
How convenient that he rails against the fossil fuel industry for getting subsidies. Isn't that exactly how he got Tesla (and Solar City for that matter) off the ground? And where does he think the electricity comes from to power his little hippy-mobiles? In the USA the majority of electricity is produced by burning coal. Yeah, the same fuel source that environmentalists are constantly telling us is too dirty and should outlawed. How about the batteries in all those cars that will some day be depleted? What
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The batteries are not dumped, they get recycled!
Would be pretty stupid to dump a 250kWh battery where the raw material alone is worth thousand dollars.
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Butanol can use the existing gasoline/oil distribution infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It has almost the same octane and air/fuel mix as gasoline so retrofitting older cars isn't needed. Its a renewable and could be carbon neutral once its production gets high enough.
Still not at the point where it is commercially viable but several companies are working on it. And the oil companies are already trying to kill any competition in the production of it.
http://technical.ly/delaware/2... [technical.ly]
Not thought through. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not thought through. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not thought through. (Score:4)
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_en... [ucsusa.org]
And that doesn't include property damage from harsher storms or rising sea levels.
If you know Elon Musk, please pass this along (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm serious. I want to like Elon Musk, but seriously his entire business model is based on getting the government (at all levels) to help him. His cars are subsidized heavily by the government, meaning that poor people in California are helping to pay for rich people buying expensive cars. That's not right. Now he wants more governmental help to hurt his competition. He needs to simply do the right thing, and that means competing fair and square.
And don't bother telling me about the massive "subsidies" available to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies are tax breaks for industry in the US that are available to Tesla, also, and I guarantee that they take advantage of it all.
I don't even want to go into the fact that his cars are, for the most part, coal powered.
Fossil Subsidies of trillions & thousands of l (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone knows the reason for Gulfwar I and Gulfwar II was oil. We ignore every other tiny nation on earth that's doing horrific things to their citizens but we got involved in Iraq because oil.
And that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the ongoing trillions of dollars for ships and bases in places we wouldn't care about if not for oil.
Oil's subsidies are so deeply embedded into the u.s. military that we think of them as national security interests instead of as the subsidies they are.
We wouldn't even need them if we invested in solar, batteries, wind and a fleet of electric vehicles.
If 10% of the U.S. fleet were electric vehicles, the value and price of oil would collapse to under $30 and stay there. And as a "commodity" it would lose it's geopolitical value. And the u.s. would be able to greatly reduce the urge to be involved with large parts of the globe.
It would also cripple a factory for terrorists who want to kill us and put a severe crimp in Putin's military aspirations.
Mid east military presence = indirect subsidy (Score:3, Insightful)
The US military expenditures around the world that support oil production both directly (US company presence) and indirectly (to prop up supportive regimes) is effectively an additional subsidy that US tax money funds, above and beyond the actual subsidies paid or exempted by the government. I suspect that all of these together are significantly higher than current alternative energy subsidies.
Musk's opinion is Musk's opinion (Score:3)
Yeah. Not. Everybody can guess there's much lobbying from the oil industry, no surprises there. However, nobody, and I mean nobody should come up to me and demand a revolution until they can actually create a suitable replacment.
Yes, I know how many people juuust looove Teslas - especially those who've spent pretty amounts for them no sh*t - but not everyone has a fast chargr at home, not everyone has a garage with a private always available charging source, not everyone uses their cars to only go short distances, not everyone has so long a life to spend hours on end for charging on a roadtrip, and I could on with this for hours.
Oh, and mind you, I actually like electric cars and support the direction these companies are trying to go towards.
I just don't like when they seem to be dilusional.
One more thing, which is actually beside the point, but I've just remembered I've read some people actually call the interior of the P90D luxurious. Now, come on people, we know love is blind, but there's only one thing there that's luxurious, and that's the price (yes, I know the'll release the cheaper, shorter range, less "luxurious" new model in like, a few years or so...).
My point is, if you want a revolution, you create it, then, we'll buy it. NOT the other way around.
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How about making "campaign contributions" taxable? I think a rate of 99.9% might be acceptable.
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You might want to take a look at the relative size of subsidies he's talking about.
The well established oil/coal/car companies get huge subsidies compared to electric cars.
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That's because those industries are also much larger. If you look at subsidy per unit produced it's actually quite small in the whole scheme of things.
However, our goal should be zero subsidies for everything.
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Including direct subsidies, manufacturing credit, tax credit, etc, yes it's probably in that same range.
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It would at least be less self serving and hypocritical.
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Nah. We just need their hearts to. . . . Full Stop.
(evil grin)
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Throw everything out of your house that was made by industry.
Including the computer you're typing on.
And food, and power, and most of the parts of the house you live in.
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Another perspective --- why is he still building Individual Cars. I read an article where the author pointed out ---- it costs about the same to build A Car. That car still uses the roads/bridges and clogs roadways requiring larger roads to be built. And those batteries. They will become the next pollutant of some kind.
The author argued that the real way to the future is via Mass Transit. Fewer individual cars should be built. More sharing. That is the big step forward.
Some have even painted the pic
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No, that's actually a big step backward. Believe it or not, being able to get from anywhere to anywhere any time you want in your own space is actually a good thing, just like bigger houses, more books, more movies, and all the other things civilization brings.
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Sharing should reduce the total number of vehicles in existence (anytime you have a pool - the total needed goes down). Mercedes issues a statement last year opening "worrying" about this and highlighted how the market may change with the combination of autonomous vehicles. And if carpooling were used it would also reduce the number of vehicles on the road at any given time - kind of a mini bus line.
Mass Transit couple with autonomous cars that fill in that last mile still allow people to go anywhere.
The
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The short version then is that FlyHelicopters wants to drastically lower the average standard of living over the long term, by allowing the planet to be trashed by the costs of fossil fuel borne by the public.