Other Ways Biden's Infrastructure Plan Could Power America's Shift From Fossil Fuels (msn.com) 243
The Washington Post explains exactly how the new infrastructure plan of U.S President Joe Biden would "turbocharge" America's transition away from fossil fuels:
The linchpin of Biden's plan, which he detailed in a speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh, is the creation of a national standard requiring utilities to use a specific amount of solar, wind and other renewable energy to power American homes, businesses and factories... [Including hydropower and nuclear energy.] Biden has said he wants a carbon-free electricity grid by 2035, so the proposed standard will probably be large...
He also plans to ask Congress to provide $174 billion to boost the U.S. market share of electric vehicles and their supply chains, from raw materials to retooled factories. He reiterated that he wants to establish 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 and electrify 20 percent of the nation's yellow school buses.
Biden also requested $10 billion for a new Civilian Climate Corps, a name designed to echo President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. Biden's version would hire an army of young people to work on projects that conserve and restore public lands and waters, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration through agriculture, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and build resilience to climate change...
Biden is also asking for $16 billion to put "hundreds of thousands" of people to work plugging hundreds of thousands of "orphan" oil and natural gas wells that were largely abandoned after their useful life but which now leak methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The plan also calls for tax credits for solar panels -- and for companies researching carbon-capture technologies -- as well as new funding tools for power transmission lines. But it also seeks $35 billion to pursue a breakthrough technology (as well as $15 billion for climate-related demonstration projects.
This offers a way to commercialize and scale up today's already-existing innovations for clean energy, an official at the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy told the Post. He suggested the government's purchasing power could ultimately be crucial in lowering the cost of clean technologies like carbon capture and sustainable aviation fuel, and even the cost of producing hydrogen fuel by splitting water molecules.
Slashdot reader DanDrollette also adds this note from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The Biden administration announced what the Washington Post calls "an ambitious plan to expand wind farms along the East Coast and jump-start the country's nascent offshore wind industry," with enough windmills to be built that they could power more than 10 million US homes, and cut 78 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions...
The Biden administration said it will invest in associated research and development, provide $3 billion in low-interest loans to the offshore wind industry, and fund $230 million in changes to US ports to accommodate the expected influx of shipping and construction... While offshore wind is probably one of the fastest-growing sectors in renewable energy, the United States is still far behind Europe, where windmills are a common sight off the coast and the technology is widely accepted...
He also plans to ask Congress to provide $174 billion to boost the U.S. market share of electric vehicles and their supply chains, from raw materials to retooled factories. He reiterated that he wants to establish 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 and electrify 20 percent of the nation's yellow school buses.
Biden also requested $10 billion for a new Civilian Climate Corps, a name designed to echo President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. Biden's version would hire an army of young people to work on projects that conserve and restore public lands and waters, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration through agriculture, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and build resilience to climate change...
Biden is also asking for $16 billion to put "hundreds of thousands" of people to work plugging hundreds of thousands of "orphan" oil and natural gas wells that were largely abandoned after their useful life but which now leak methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The plan also calls for tax credits for solar panels -- and for companies researching carbon-capture technologies -- as well as new funding tools for power transmission lines. But it also seeks $35 billion to pursue a breakthrough technology (as well as $15 billion for climate-related demonstration projects.
This offers a way to commercialize and scale up today's already-existing innovations for clean energy, an official at the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy told the Post. He suggested the government's purchasing power could ultimately be crucial in lowering the cost of clean technologies like carbon capture and sustainable aviation fuel, and even the cost of producing hydrogen fuel by splitting water molecules.
Slashdot reader DanDrollette also adds this note from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The Biden administration announced what the Washington Post calls "an ambitious plan to expand wind farms along the East Coast and jump-start the country's nascent offshore wind industry," with enough windmills to be built that they could power more than 10 million US homes, and cut 78 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions...
The Biden administration said it will invest in associated research and development, provide $3 billion in low-interest loans to the offshore wind industry, and fund $230 million in changes to US ports to accommodate the expected influx of shipping and construction... While offshore wind is probably one of the fastest-growing sectors in renewable energy, the United States is still far behind Europe, where windmills are a common sight off the coast and the technology is widely accepted...
It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:2)
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 4 or 8 years the other side takes over and reverses course.
Texas generates more electricity from wind than any other state. Red states such as ND and OK are also big producers. Profits trump politics.
Trump promised to bring back coal.
During his presidency, coal's share of power generation slid from 30% to 20%.
Nobody is going to invest in a dying industry because of a temporary shift in the political winds.
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Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think it won't change?
People will install them in their homes for their electric cars. Businesses will install them to draw in customers. Anyone can install an EV charger anywhere there's electricity. EV chargers aren't like gas pumps, where you need thousands of gallons of toxic and flammable liquid stored safely, and you need it inspected regularly to be sure that it's not dangerous or causing environmental hazards.
And you need a fraction as many EV chargers as gas pumps. Most people will charge at home 99% of the time. You get home, plug in, next morning you have 200+ miles of driving before you need to charge. Given the average drive of like 20 miles a day, that meets most people's needs almost every day of the year.
We need gas pumps all over the place because 99.99% of the population doesn't have a gas pump at home. Everyone who owns a home will have the ability to "refuel" their EV at home, as will a subset of those who rent. I've already seen advertisements for new apartment construction with EV chargers in parking spaces! It's now an amenity!
This leaves us people renting with no charging spot and people traveling more than a couple hundred miles a day in need of EV chargers in public. That's a much smaller subset of the number of people needing a gas pump currently.
In the very near future gas stations are going to be going out of business, and gas pumps will be as scarce as EV chargers are now. Gas stations run on thin margins, and as we move to EVs, those margins are going to evaporate.
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In the very near future gas stations are going to be going out of business, and gas pumps will be as scarce as EV chargers are now.
Not in our lifetimes.
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There are vastly more EV chargers than gas pumps in TX. A 110V outlet is an EV charger.
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Yes, but kind of a crappy one. 240V is way, way better and a cheap and easy jump. Expect that as local building code in all garage installations in the next few years.
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but still usable for most commuting.
Many houses already have a 240V outlet in or near their garages: the dryer outlet.
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What's the ratio of gas pumps to EV chargers in TX though?
Most EV owners have a charger in their garage.
Many companies have chargers in their employee parking lots.
Not good, and not gonna change in 4 years.
Why not?
Installing the charger in my garage cost $200 and took the electrician about two hours.
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Have you thought about the profit margins on EV chargers? You're charging VASTLY (10x?) what you're paying for the electricity.
They're not considered profitable right now because of installation costs and utility connection charges, but Texas is exactly the kind of low-regulation state that could figure out how to build a LOT of these cheaply and make a killing.
Solar panel prices are competitive or cheaper than other systems? How about if you can sell the electricity you make not at utility rates but at 1
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, fusion should be here in about, what, another 20 years do you figure? No one technology will get our collective tail out of the global warming track.
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently, solar's cost per kWh is around 3 - 4 cents. Five times cheaper? That's a minimum of
Now, solar might not be the most efficient source in regions where sun isn't that constant (hello, PNW), but at .6 cents a kWh, I'm having a hard time imagining anything else that could compete even in those conditions.
Even fusion, unless it can generate electricity for less than .6 cents a kWh ($0.006).
I'm sure that fusion will have many applications, however.
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather optimistic: There's a limit to how long that price per KWh can continue to drop before physics throws up brick wall, so I wouldn't bet on 5x cheaper than today. But it's still going to be cheaper. Just need to solve the storage problem.
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Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
More importantly, we've got tons of space for solar. We've got massive amounts of roofs, parking lots, and roads that can all be covered without impacting anything. In fact, covering them with solar panels will probably negate some of the heat island impacts of them just absorbing the sun as heat.
While you can definitely use land around wind turbines, they do take up some space. I can't set up a wind turbine in my back yard, but I can definitely cover my roof in solar panels. At the current price of solar, it's almost silly not to install it in most of the world. In another 4-6 years, I think most people will be actively losing money by not installing solar in most places.
We do need to address the storage issue, but that's looking doable on a shorter timescale than fusion is. Until then, what is absolutely doable is improving our HVDC transmission lines, to shunt excess power to parts of the country that need it.
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Now, we need to add in more hydro, but esp. Geothermal, along with Nuclear power.
Technically, Geothermal from America could easily power the world several times over. However, stats like that are worthless. Instead, we need geothermal for energy diversification, along with stopping/minimizing eruptions from Long Valley and Yellowstone.
Then combine these with:
1) NuScale, which is just safe, and fast to put up and can go into old coal plant's spo
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Umm, no. If price falls by 50% every five years, in 30 years the price will be about 1.5% of today's price..
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And that is cheaper than the costs of the materials, the energy to make them etc. p.p.
Hence: not gonna happen.
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Wrong. Commonwealth has their SPARC device coming online in 2025:
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
Even ITER is coming online in 2035, and that's been a laughingstock of delays for years now. No clue when Lockheed will finally show some results but they had originally planned their civilian-spec reactor for 2024.
20 years? No.
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I believe it will be more like this, perhaps:
in 20 years a net positive fusion reaction in ITER like reactors
in 40 years a long pulsed or continuous reaction
in 60 years a way to extract heat or electricity (via MHD effects) without disrupting the reaction
Actually I doubt ITER like reactors will ever be commercially used on earth. Fusor like reactors (based on electric fields mostly, instead of magnetic bottles) look more promising.
However if we ever build big enough star ships, the 40 years break through mi
Re: It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:2)
Did you even glance at the summary before posting your knee jerk idiocy?
Why would he support nuclear and not fusion?
You make no sense.
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I'd assume because fusion has been 20 years away for the last 50 years.
Irrelevant. It will either work or it won't. In either case Biden isn't going to force people to use wind and solar instead. That was just a stupid claim, shown wrong in the summary even.
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The summary does nothing but quote the Washington Post.
fusion is possible (Score:2)
...Fusion may be the future, but it's one of those "is it even actually possible".
Fusion is obviously possible: there is a very reliable fusion power plant, currently up and running, just 93 million miles away.
The Sun fuses hydrogen by subjecting it to very high pressure. We can't achieve such pressure, so we use high temperature combined with what pressure we can manage. Getting it all to work is an engineering problem.
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The Sun is a very inefficient fusion reactor, something like 50 or 100 watts per cubic meter IIRC. It's just so large that those cubic meters add up.
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Another one of these guys. Try 5 years.
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Yes, that's why I posted my "knee jerk idiocy" as you call it. It's more political patronage for Biden's party friends. The point is that politicians don't understand enough about energy or the market to accurately predict what people will need in 10-20 years. All they know how to do is lavish money on their donors. Why "require" utilities to take power from wind/solar projects when we're ~5 years out from something much better? Surely Biden's own science advisors know about the very public drive towards
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Is that before or after you perpetual motion machine goes into mass production?
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You know something Bill Gates and Lockheed don't? They think they have it working. They're spending hundreds of millions on it. CFS has picked up $215 million in funding. Lockheed has likely thrown billions of dollars at their project by now. Uninformed skepticism doesn't make you clever.
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Biden will be dead before there is fusion. You can interpret that in two ways. I'll leave it up to you.
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Biden might be dead by the end of the year. He might already be dead, depending on which conspiracy nut you listen to.
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Biden has said exactly nothing about fusion. He has shown no indication he even understands that his own military/industrial complex has been working on a fusion reactor which was announced in 2014:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-w... [thedrive.com]
Nuclear isn't "fission or fusion". They're very different technologies that require different levels of safety standards and regulation. When an old fart like Biden talks about nuclear, he means fission.
Re:It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he did. The fact that this was an enterprise worthy of King Canute shows how venal he is and how stupid his voters are.
For example:
"Four years ago today, then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned in Abingdon. With coal miners in hard hats behind him, many holding signs that read âoeTrump Digs Coal,â Trump promised to revive the Appalachian coalfields if he became president.
âoeWe are going to put the miners back to work,â he declared.
This was hardly a one-time promise. Earlier in the 2016 campaign, Trump appeared in Radford where he made a similar vow. âoeWeâ(TM)re going to bring back King Coal,â Trump declared that March. âoeWeâ(TM)re going to bring it back.â
https://roanoke.com/opinion/ed... [roanoke.com]
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At least he kept nuclear and offshore wind. Those are the only real renewables that can meet scale due to the fact that they generate at high volume and can be located near the highest demand areas, coastal cities.
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Just like the Republicans repealed Obamacare. They just took their complete control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress and delivered on a promise that only required a stroke of a pen...
Actual programs with contracts let and people and businesses employed are much harder to cancel than pure rhetoric. The Republicans were never able to cancel Obamacare because they didn't have a replacement, and repealing without replacement would immediately and most important noticeably accelerate the closure
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The pipeline really was not going to nearly as useful as the proponents claim. It was far better at being a political football than being a practical solution to American problems. It was mostly about Canada anyway, that's who had the oil, and many of the final customers were not American. Changes along the way did allow use of the pipeline for American oil. The final phase had the pipe all the way down to Houston so the oil could be shipped to other countries. Demand for foreign oil in the US has alread
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Re: It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
: Just part amicably.
Because frankly: The bigger a country, the fewer things its people will have in common, the less happy they will be. And the more force needs to be applied so everyone obey the one-rulebook-to-rule-them-all.
Hey, maybe you could even do it gradually. Give states more and more autonomy. Give counties a choice which state they want to be part with. Even if not adjacent! And stop when you found the sweet spot.
I had a poly-sci professor in the 1980's state that he fully expected the US to "Balkanize" within the next 75-100 years, because of that very reason: there was too much political division that would never find common ground. We're about halfway to that 75-year mark and I suspect he was right. I've seen not a few political comments on this. Fully 26% of the country is politically disengaged, Another 26% is either Traditional or Passively Liberal, 19% are Conservative, while Moderates make up about 15%. The "Wings" if you will--the progressive left and devoted conservatives make up 8% and 6% respectively.
The Red/Blue division is far greater than even a decade ago. If you look at maps of how people voted, we could divide into as many as 24 different red or blue 'regions'. Federal, State, and even local governments would likely dissolve and be replaced by some form of regional government. The form this might take would be mind-boggling. There could be regions where business is unregulated, while others would be regulated down to minute levels. Or, regions where gun ownership is completely illegal (at worst) or severely limited (at best). Whole new modes of inter-regional commerce would need to be developed. The effects of such a breakup would be staggering--and frankly could be dangerous on not only at the local level, but also at a global level.
Sadly, I don't think there is any doubt this will happen, the only question is when will it happen, and what form will it take. I doubt I will live to see it come to fruition, but my children could see the beginning and my grand-children would have to survive through it, and that frightens me.
Re: It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes I'm depressed and see it your way. But in reality, most of the country is very firmly in the middle. We are not a bar-bell country where we lump up under either American-liberal versus American-conservative (both of which are conservative to the rest of the world). We're mostly lumped up in the middle, but the minority views at the extremes just happen to be the loudest and angriest. Those extremes are where the political donations come from, so even centrist candidates give them some lip service. We do have common goals, we disagree a little bit about how to achieve them, and all the anger and frothing at the mouth of those fiddly details is not much different from the anger and frothing at the mouth at sporting events.
Re: It will fail for predictable reasons. (Score:2)
The problem is every time this is tried, the side with the correct answer about how to do things will succeed and the side that was wrong will claim that this is some kind of intentional discrimination or dividing into a ghetto.
So basically you're forced to live with them while they scream how wrong you are but if you split up and actually succeed without them that's wrong too.
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Stimulus checks.
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Do you have even a single example where Trump wanted to do something popular with the majority that the Democrats tried to block?
Sure - border control. It is popular with over half of the country.
Require? (Score:2, Informative)
Why the forcing? Nobody likes violent people.
Make it available as a good deal, and they will come by themselves.
If it isn't, ... make sure the fossil fuel industry haven't "forgotten" to include the cost of taking back their thrash (like CO2 or spilled oil) again.
(So the problem is not the price of solar/wind. It's the hidden costs of fossil fuels.
If fossil fuels were a complete cycle, everything taken back, everything given back, then it would be environmentally neutral and nobody would have a problem with
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For once I agree with you. Fossil fuels will fall by the wayside when other sources of energy beat them on price. All you have to do is stop forcing people to use fossil fuels. And maybe grease the skids a little by building out grid infrastructure and making grids more friendly to local power generation/storage.
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Some local governments are making alternative energy sources difficult to stand up. There are two sides to the forcing you decry.
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Who said I was decrying anything? Some examples would be lovely since you're quite unclear in how "some local governments are making alternative energy sources difficult to stand up". Are you referring to Hawaii where they are going after rooftop solar?
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Stop putting words in people's mouths. It's rude.
And no, I don't support a carbon tax.
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Well duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the forcing?
Because of climate change, fool! Many people are shortsighted, profit-driven fools, just like you.
Make it available as a good deal, and they will come by themselves.
Oh it's already a good deal. What you are forgetting is that everybody has had 100% subsidized on pollution for the last 150 years. If the government were to tax companies the amount of money that it costs to remove the pollution from the air then they wouldn't have been polluting in the first place.
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I just imagined cars with big balloons hanging off of the back of them...
Oh, they explain exactly how! Thanks! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm so glad this completely non-partisan news reporting so thoroughly analyzed the nuances of this new plan to... legislate outcomes directly, by federal mandate. Because that approach to government has an excellent track record and totally doesn't cause unintended consequences.
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Morans do. [knowyourmeme.com]
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Re:Oh, they explain exactly how! Thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it does. See the TVA and rural electrification. The biggest energy boondogles in recent US times have come from capitalist Enron and PG&E in California, who spent millions on lobbying and enriching executives instead of upgrading infrastructure. But waste and fraud are cool with Randian dipshits as long as they come with quarterly dividends. Whereas a serious Green New Deal would see our coal and nuclear grid replaced with wind and solar, which would only create millions of jobs in the process and bring the greatest economic boom this country has seen since WWII.
But, you know, dipshit Randian priorities.
Re:Oh, they explain exactly how! Thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Government mandates, tax policies and funding (both U.S. and internationally) were the reason solar and wind took off. Both have been around for decades. But the costs were vastly higher than for fossil fuels and no utility would buy them on its own. But the mandates, tax policies and funding generated large sales of these products and the large sales resulted in lower costs and further sales.
School buses (Score:2, Troll)
This is but one exaple that highlights how pathetic modern westeners are. THey will do anything but actually walk, or their planned lives or lack of planning has made it impossible to do anything basic without commuting in any form.
Re:School buses (Score:5, Insightful)
American suburbia has plenty of planning. It's just not planning for walking. Some housing areas don't even have sidewalks - the assumption is that if you are leaving your house then you are going to be driving, so why waste the space? There's also some ugly history going back decades, with suburban areas designed to force car ownership and keep housing density low and prices high to make sure that undesirable poor (and by proxy, black) people couldn't afford to move in and ruin the neighbourhood with their uncouth lives.
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And thats the real problem that needs to be fixed.
As mentioned there are many activities that are badly organised. As mentioned in other comments, take banks, amost always employees never goto the closest branch for work. Same mistake is for many other businesses/orgs
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Indeed. Why don't you load up the previous save and build it right this time? Or maybe just ask people to move out of their houses so you can tear down the neighborhood and do it right?
Kid, you need to stop playing your Sim games and go visit the real world sometime. "Just fix it" is a tad bit more complicated than you seem to think it is.
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Re: School buses (Score:2)
Unfortunately you are right. I immediately noticed as a young child wanting to go about the neighborhood that the rules are written in a way that basically bans anything useful without a driver's license.
I kind of thought that the rules would be about safety or emissions or something. But it's actually clearly spelled out that if there is a motor or any way to self-propel the craft it is banned.
I always thought this was ridiculous that we could pedal our bikes anywhere we wanted but if it was an electricall
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Re: School buses (Score:2)
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The "poor" areas subsidize the "rich" areas because many businesses that generate revenue (refineries, factories, warehouses, office towers, etc) make their immediate surroundings less desirable to live in.
This is an accounting trick. If city revenue were based entirely off of personal income tax or residential property tax, instead of sales tax or commercial property tax, then like magic the "rich" areas would bear most of the burden.
They do now too, except that the revenu
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Because nothing. You're trying to rationalize the city government transferring wealth from poor neighborhoods to rich ones. Your socialist arguments won't work on me, Yuri!
Re: School buses (Score:2)
"Ivan" is the traditional stereotypical Russkie name, comrade.
And in case you're serious, I'm not justifying anything. What I'm doing is telling you why you're fighting a mirage created by an accounting trick, not an actual injustice.
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Why cant american kids just walk to school ?
This is but one exaple that highlights how pathetic modern westeners are. THey will do anything but actually walk, or their planned lives or lack of planning has made it impossible to do anything basic without commuting in any form.
When I lived in the city my school was 2 blocks away. In the suburbs my kids school is 5 miles away.
And fuck you anyway
Re: School buses (Score:2)
In the suburb where I grew up, school was a mile and change away. I could walk for 25 minutes or so, or ride the bus for less than 5 minutes.
That was all pre internet. I'm glad there is now a stranger somewhere out there who can tell me how morally wrong my choice to not waste 40 minutes a day walking were.
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5 miles is nothing on a bicycle, fucking idiot.
Project management (Score:4, Interesting)
A noble goal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of fossil fuels... (Score:2)
Instead of fossil fuels, they will be burning the money in your wallet.
Nuclear (Score:3)
“Environmentalists can’t say climate change is an apocalyptic, unacceptable risk then they turn around and rule out the most obvious way of avoiding it, nuclear power. They’re not only inconsistent, they’re insincere.”
— MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel
The real reason Biden wants to plug old wells ... (Score:2)
" From the low point, in 2006, when it imported 60% of its oil [from the Middle East], the US became an oil powerhouse – eclipsing both Saudi Arabia and Russia – and by the end of 2015, was the world’s largest producer of natural gas."
Hydrolic fracking was combined with horizontal drilling to make the US an energy exporter. Horizontal drilling had two main features: 1) a single well head could extract oil and gas from all directions for a distance of 2 miles or more, which is equivalent
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Venezuela is already destitute (relatively speaking). They will undergo almost complete collapse without oil revenue.
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Thanks to a couple decades of America trying to destroy their economy and overthrow their government. Even FOX [foxnews.com] was hailing their economy before Obama ramped up efforts to protect the petrodollar. And to levy sanctions, Obama had to claim Venezuela represented a security threat to the United States, which is of course laughable.
Venezuela has a perfect climate for agriculture, but they can't com
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Re:What of third-world nations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they could start other industries once the US pays them a few trillion in reparations for American imperalism.
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Well, they could start other industries once the US pays them a few trillion in reparations for American imperalism.
If only we had known how simple it all is! We could have solved all of our problems decades ago. Thanks comrade.
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We could have continued building nuclear plants and not been in this predicament.
I for one curse GreenPeace to my last breath for propagandizing against nuclear power, they have been the primary reason that our society has depended on fossil fuels.
what Libertarian kool aid (Score:5, Insightful)
The "free market" would happily see the planet burn and the human race go extinct if it meant saving 5% a kilowatt hour by sticking with coal.
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>"The "free market" would happily see the planet burn and the human race go extinct if it meant saving 5% a kilowatt hour by sticking with coal."
The "free market" will respond to what consumers want, if it really is a free market. If customers ONLY care about price, and not source, quality, side-effects, support, reliability, etc, then you are correct. If they don't, then you aren't. A free market requires competition and consumer choice to work correctly. So don't blame the "free market" when those
Re:what Libertarian kool aid (Score:5, Insightful)
The "free market" will respond to what consumers want, if it really is a free market.
Customers want both cheap energy and to survive.
If we permit a race to the bottom in energy prices and pollution then it will happen because people gotta eat and if you get outcompeted then you go out of business.
There's nothing good at the end of a race to the bottom. This is why when you use capitalism, you have to make a bunch of corrections to it. That doesn't invalidate capitalism, it only invalidates laissez-faire economics.Ironically, there is no such thing as a free market without deliberate intervention and correction.
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Too often what customers want is being restricted or seen through a narrow lens. Yes, customers want cheap energy, but customers also want other things like an improved environment, tackling climate change, fairness and equity, and other things you don't measure to easily by just looking at money.
There is also the issue of short term versus long term outlooks. Right now too much focus is being paid on short term profits at the corporate levels, whereas the infrastructure proposals are all about long term
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Moving away from fossing fuel is good and just, but it's also important to think about a plan for those who used to work in the sector. There are whole communities that, for instance, used to rely on coal as their livelihood. Telling people who are 60 years old and have picked coal all their life to just learn to program apps isn't going to work. What they'll do is to vote, at the first occasion, for someone who promises to make their communities great again; and who could blame them.
This is a good point. Any plan that obsoletes whole industries needs a way to replace the lost jobs. How about building a factory that assembles solar panels in every coal mining town? Anybody who can work in a coal mine can easily learn to assemble or install solar panels.
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Telling people who are 60 years old and have picked coal all their life to just learn to program apps isn't going to work.
If they can pick coal, they can pick cotton.
We need someone to compete with the Uyghurs
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Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe that was true 100 years ago, but not today.
Since 2011, more than half of all coal mining jobs have been lost [bls.gov]. Right now, only about 40k people work in the coal industry. The high point was closer to 900k back in the day.
There is no need to spend time and energy worrying about those people. Give them early social security and medicade, and lets get on with the important shit. Seriously, 40k people is not worth any sort of major retraining program or anyt
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is this going to be like keystone where , it looks good for headliens but really the oil just gets shipped in more dangerous / higher carbon footprint ways while liberals circle jerk
No, it will be 99% successful. And you will find the 1% and try to turn that into a Solyndra meme. While ignoring all the good it did.
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If only there were devices capable of storing electricity...
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Power production is moving away from fossil fuels anyways as other options are getting cheaper. The GND just aims to speed that process up and fill in the gaps (like baseload and power storage).
Climate change is already having severe negative effects on the world so something has to be done. The alternative of just doing nothing and hoping it all works out (or we'll be dead by then) is worse than a joke, it's a fantasy by boomers that won't have to suffer the consequences.
Re: Green new deal scifi (Score:2)
Uproot the economy to save the world.
That's a delusion of control, competence, and dare i say it, feasibility.
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Well I guess instead we could just give tax cuts to the rich, though the return on investment is quite a bit better if we invest in clean infrastructure
Re:They're not even pretending to think (Score:4, Insightful)
because it takes so damn long to charge an EV compared to ICE, and half of people don't have access to a home situation where they can charge in a reasonable amount of time. Hint: 36 percent rent, you think the landlord is going to install outlets in parking lot or parking garage for this? nope.