Solar, Wind, Wave, Geothermal, Hydroelectric....

[edhopper]

The Planet can provide us with an unlimited supply of renewable, non-polluting energy that would not only save our future but make us secure from threats due to unfriendly and oppressive nations that control fossil fuels.

The cost and investment to do this would be returned a thousand fold.

Thanks to President Biden, we are doing something towards this, but much more needs to be done.

I am posting this because I was reminded that Jimmy Carter started an initiative to ween us from fossil fuels in 25 years.That was 50 years ago. Reagan reversed everything Carter did and set the Republicans on their anti-environmental, anti-science, destructive course.

[flying_wahini]

1. Republicans are just posers of the opposition. They

No policies but greed, no ethics or moral fiber left. They stand for nothing. The GOP keeps their followers fearful and emotional with lots of chum thrown in the water.*
They plug in candidates that won’t fight back And are too stupid to notice. They had already agreed to let GOP control the elections but
the rise of MAGA/Nazis I think took them by surprise.

Scott and Desantis will be their Pres and VP . What a hit!

[edhopper]

3. Agree

except for the last line. They can't, same State. DeSantis and MTG more likely.

[Auggie]

2. Yes. Absolutely. Except that everyone keeps ignoring the elephant in the room ...

Too. Many. People.

[edhopper]

4. Like Paul said

[edhopper]

5. But seriously

renewable energy can lift people out of poverty globally, which is the best way to bring down the population.

[Auggie]

6. Perhaps ...

though, honestly, I don't think it's possible to get the nations that matter on the same page. The engagement or desire just isn't there.

[edhopper]

9. Nice Hopper

[Auggie]

16. It's one of my favorites

"Hills, South Truro" -- 1930

You must be a fan too -- your user name.

[edhopper]

19. Yes

my user name is after our late cat, who was named after Hopper.

[hunter]

7. How are those huge dams on the Colorado River working out?

Sadly, aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like Germany, California, and Denmark have failed.

The experiment has been done, the data is in. These schemes will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

You can look at the data from a place like California and determine "how many houses" a purely renewable energy system, wind-solar-hydro, could support and how much it would cost ("houses" being a popular unit of energy in the renewable energy community, rather than joules or even kilowatt hours). The numbers are not pretty and getting worse as drought reduces the state's ability to source and sink electric power by moving water around.

Personally, as an environmentalist, I oppose pretty much all energy development of previously undeveloped land. Covering the world with solar, wind, and hydro crap won't save the world.

By my rough calculations a purely "renewable" energy system can't support 8 billion people. Our world civilization is dependent on high density energy sources, which are now mostly provided by fossil fuels. That's a tough place to be in. If we don't quit fossil fuels billions of us are going to suffer and die by global warming. If we quit fossil fuels and don't replace them with other high density energy sources, billions of us are going to suffer and die for lack of food and industry.

The only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely is nuclear power.

I used to be a hard-core anti-nuclear activist. I'm not anymore. Watching California's experiments with renewable energy changed my mind.

You can keep your own eye on the data here:

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

At this moment 50% of my electricity is coming from gas power plants.

Mind you, this is just the electric grid, and doesn't include automobiles, gas heating, etc..

[edhopper]

11. 22000 Sq miles of solar will provide

All the US energy needs. And that is only solar at today's technology. Using all renewable is the only answer.

I don't buy the Nuclear Industries' PR.

[hunter]

12. Do the math. It ain't pretty.

The problems are the same at any scale, from a household to a state.

You could quit electricity and fossil fuels right now. Go turn off the main breaker to your home, lock it down with some epoxy glue. Go pour sand in the engine of your car.

Then what?

A huge solar roof, a tesla, a powerwall, a backup generator powered by canola oil you grow and process yourself? Would that do it? What about supplying energy to your work, and your means of getting to work?

Multiply that cost, in both dollars and physical resources, by 8 billion.

Ouch.

I'm an advocate for removing dams. I'm against solar "farms" on fragile undeveloped desert and wind turbines on undeveloped hillsides and ocean. That's all garbage. It destroys the natural environment and will not, cannot, "save the world."

Rooftop solar, parking lot solar, those don't bother me. Destroying stable ecosystems is what got us into this mess, destroying more of them won't get us out.

You're welcome to check out my journal here.

[womanofthehills]

13. We are not seeing much in the way of nuclear because the cost to build a reactor is obsene

And the new wind farms are producing high watts- higher then all of our old reactors. Corporations do not want to go there - yrs of regulations to build a reactor when within a yr or two they can have a wind farm putting out large wattage. Also, after the reactor is built millions are spent yearly dealing with radioactive spent rods that need to be replaced frequently.

So, corporations can spend $8 billion on a wind farm or $16 billion for a nuclear reactor that produce similar wattage. Plus extra cost - millions continually to deal with spent rods.


S

SunZia Transmission will enable access to over 3,000 MW of wind power to meet the needs of more than 2.5 million Americans, providing clean, reliable and affordable power across Western states

SunZia Transmission and SunZia Wind together comprise the largest renewable energy infrastructure project in U.S. history with a total investment of over $8 billion; Construction expected to begin in 2023

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pattern-energy-acquires-sunzia-transmission-project-

301587906.html

[Kaleva]

8. It doesn't matter much if we do it but China and India dont

It can take hundreds of years for the CO2 in the atmosphere to dissipate on it's own. It's going to take a massive world wide effort and that's just to a avoid a worst case scenario.

[edhopper]

10. Agree

But if we had pioneered inexpensive renewable, other nations would follow.

[Ron Green]

14. Embrace a recession, shrink the economy. That's the only way now.

It’s too late to keep up this level of consumption and hope to fix it with electric cars and renewable energy.

Planetary degradation is tied to GDP. That’s the truth. Where is the politician who’ll say this?

[hunter]

17. For affluent consumer society yes, for people now living in poverty, no.

Everyone on earth, all eight billion of us, deserve safe comfortable shelter, healthy food, clean tap water, indoor plumbing, sophisticated sewage treatment plants, and so on. That's going to take some energy.

What this world can't support is an automobile for every human adult. It's not just the automobiles themselves, but all the infrastructure required to support automobile culture.

If we had any sense we'd be rebuilding our cities, turning them into attractive affordable places where car ownership is unnecessary.

That reconstruction is going to take some energy too.

People are beginning to understand this too. That's why a home in a pedestrian friendly urban neighborhood, with coffee shops on the corner, weekend street markets, and easy access to public transportation is generally worth a lot more than a boring house in the suburbs, places only accessible by cars.

[electric_blue68]

15. Because I had to unexpectedly move and seriously downsize I had to leave ....

a whole lot behind (which included al ot of Art, Craft supplies) including important environmental stuff.

I had gotten back in the late '70s the ?Dept of Enegy's
Renewable Energy booklet. Most of it was Solar at that point. But that was under Carter's Admin. We werw beginning to be on our way


Then we had Ray-gun. 🤬

[NNadir]

18. Um, this endless chant has left the planet in flames.

It's reactionary rhetoric.

[edhopper]

20. I am not sure what you mean?

what reactionary rhetoric?