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green_flash t1_j6be6sd wrote

Reply to comment by keithps in Hundreds of climate activists were arrested in The Hague after blocking the A12 highway in both ways on Saturday afternoon in protest at government subsidies for fossil fuels such as oil and gas by DoremusJessup

> But without the upgrades it will shut down, driving the cost up for consumers.

That's a good thing though. It makes alternatives more competitive.

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O_K_D t1_j6bizmi wrote

It doesnt make the alternative cheaper though. It just means everything becomes more expensive, hence a reduction in standards of living and purchasing power.

The key is to make the alternative more competitive by making it cheaper than fossil fuels, not by making fossil fuels more expensive than renewables. And that can only happen if industry keeps doing R&D at low costs by using the cheapest form of energy possible (fossil fuels) until they bring down the price of renewable technology to the level of fossil fuels. Then society will naturally switch to using renewables.

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AGVann t1_j6bsli0 wrote

And that switch is being delayed because there's an artificial economic lever being pulled in favor of oil and gas corporations. You can't have this bullshit about the invisible hand of the free market but also argue for interventions in the market to prevent transitions.

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koreamax t1_j6bxa2o wrote

So, that means for a pretty extended period of time, energy prices will go way up. Most of the world cannot afford that

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AGVann t1_j6bz18t wrote

No, because the price of oil and gas is artificially inflated already due to OPEC. Every time there's a risk of competition, Saudi Arabia intentionally crashes the price of oil to force companies into unprofitability. The US fracking industry was collateral in the Russo-Saudi oil price war.

All these subsidies do is guarantee that western nations are subsidizing the extremely high price of oil and gas that Saudi Arabia sets. If there was genuine competition, the price of energy overall would fall.

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koreamax t1_j6bz9hf wrote

Yes, Opec artificially inflates prices. What does that have to do with the Netherlands? Industrialized society is build on fossil fuels and you can't just replace them right away. Especially with the extremely high start up cost for renewables

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