6thReplacementMonkey t1_jarht9p wrote
Reply to comment by Radulescu1999 in Electric world that kicks out fossil fuels will cost less than combustion economy. 30TW of wind and solar PV will take 0.2% of earth's surface. by DisasterousGiraffe
Think bigger picture. If you can externalize the costs of the ecological damage we are doing, the public health costs, the costs of wars to control resources, etc., then it looks cheaper to use them.
If you include all of the true costs, for everyone, then it would have been much, much cheaper to move to renewables as quickly as possible decades ago.
That's the fundamental problem - the negative effects can always be pushed off onto someone else, somewhere else, until suddenly they can't anymore. It leads to people making decisions that are good for them now, but are worse for everyone, later.
Radulescu1999 t1_jarya84 wrote
Renewables wouldn’t have worked decades ago. Battery capacity was terrible, and wind and solar was extremely inefficient.
Though I agree that we still should have invested more into renewables (the US), an overall switch to renewables wouldn’t have been possible (as in 100%).
Though if we invested more into nuclear, hydropower, and geothermal (for specific areas), and invested in solar/wind (for their development/research), that would have been most ideal.
6thReplacementMonkey t1_jas5hs2 wrote
> Renewables wouldn’t have worked decades ago. Battery capacity was terrible, and wind and solar was extremely inefficient.
Yes they would have. It would have cost more to implement them without more R&D, but that wasn't the only choice. We could have invested heavily in R&D and gotten there much sooner. Despite the extra cost, it would still have been cheaper overall.
The thing people seem to not be getting from my posts is "overall." Big Picture. Total spend. Everything accounted for.
If you draw a circle around a piece of it, then yes, you can argue about costs. That's exactly why they do it.
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