The Germans deciding to turn off their nukes was probably one of the most stupid decisions made by any democracy anywhere. Especially when combined with their desire to phase out coal. The fact that they have effectively stagnated by choice is mindblowing, though my suspicion (I didn't pay much attention to German politics until fairly recently) is that the Greens basically lied and claimed there would be no such stagnation and enough people believed them. Of course they are now about to get wiped out electorally because it has become obvious that they lied.
Actual intentional decarbonization in general by Western nations is pretty stupid when, as you point out in an earlier article - https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/the-real-reason-greenhouse-gas-emissions , developing nations are doing no such thing and have no plans to either. The developing world is 80% (? something like that) of the worlds population. In fact, in general we want the developing world to get richer because overall richer people care more about the environment so what we actually need to work on is mitigation for actual climate change issues and a push for stuff like nukes which are less environmentally polluting ways to get energy.
I don't share your alarmism about the climate, and I'm rather positive on the prospects for climate repair as an option as needed, but for sake of thoroughness I think you may have overlooked at least two other courses forward:
Climate adaptation: Less ideal than repair, but it's the null case in the absence of any other effective effort, which seems likely if the climate cult continues to insist on measures the public will refuse to bear and continues rejecting geo-engineering.
Technological progress: This probably looks like an all-in bet on Nuclear power and drastic improvements in transmission and storage.
Honestly if the incoming admin can really effectively deregulate things like NEPA and the NRC to a reasonable extent, none of the Paris agreement stuff will even matter.
Replacing the 100 biggest coal plants in the world with cheaper fracked natural gas would be a massive climate win and that just requires economics to work. Unshackling nuclear and allowing prototypes to be built without commercial NRC Regs would make a huge difference in development and deployment speed.
If we make energy and electricity 10x cheaper then things like heat pumps would make economic sense and everyone would be better off.
The rallying cry needs to be for innovation and abundance. Leave the green doomers on the ash heap of a dead political coalition.
We can do much more than we think, we just need new tools that can be used from the grassroots.
Reality has a liberal bias, and we can use that, compassion, and mutual understanding to disassemble the authoritarian game from the grassroots.
Knowledge is an emotion, as Justified True Belief only works if you have a reliable model for truth. That’s how propaganda works. Interfere with the emotional channel, and you break authoritarians down. Otpor knew this.
I guess my next article will have to be about the #SemioticResistance
I can see the same happening in Australia. People realising there’s a prosperity tradeoff involved when you switch to green energy, and further, that the wealthy are very good at shielding themselves from the consequences of low growth. The next ten years will be interesting across the developed world.
The Germans deciding to turn off their nukes was probably one of the most stupid decisions made by any democracy anywhere. Especially when combined with their desire to phase out coal. The fact that they have effectively stagnated by choice is mindblowing, though my suspicion (I didn't pay much attention to German politics until fairly recently) is that the Greens basically lied and claimed there would be no such stagnation and enough people believed them. Of course they are now about to get wiped out electorally because it has become obvious that they lied.
Actual intentional decarbonization in general by Western nations is pretty stupid when, as you point out in an earlier article - https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/the-real-reason-greenhouse-gas-emissions , developing nations are doing no such thing and have no plans to either. The developing world is 80% (? something like that) of the worlds population. In fact, in general we want the developing world to get richer because overall richer people care more about the environment so what we actually need to work on is mitigation for actual climate change issues and a push for stuff like nukes which are less environmentally polluting ways to get energy.
I don't share your alarmism about the climate, and I'm rather positive on the prospects for climate repair as an option as needed, but for sake of thoroughness I think you may have overlooked at least two other courses forward:
Climate adaptation: Less ideal than repair, but it's the null case in the absence of any other effective effort, which seems likely if the climate cult continues to insist on measures the public will refuse to bear and continues rejecting geo-engineering.
Technological progress: This probably looks like an all-in bet on Nuclear power and drastic improvements in transmission and storage.
Honestly if the incoming admin can really effectively deregulate things like NEPA and the NRC to a reasonable extent, none of the Paris agreement stuff will even matter.
Replacing the 100 biggest coal plants in the world with cheaper fracked natural gas would be a massive climate win and that just requires economics to work. Unshackling nuclear and allowing prototypes to be built without commercial NRC Regs would make a huge difference in development and deployment speed.
If we make energy and electricity 10x cheaper then things like heat pumps would make economic sense and everyone would be better off.
The rallying cry needs to be for innovation and abundance. Leave the green doomers on the ash heap of a dead political coalition.
Economic sustainability always trumps environmental sustainability, because you run out of money long before you run out of natural resources.
We can do much more than we think, we just need new tools that can be used from the grassroots.
Reality has a liberal bias, and we can use that, compassion, and mutual understanding to disassemble the authoritarian game from the grassroots.
Knowledge is an emotion, as Justified True Belief only works if you have a reliable model for truth. That’s how propaganda works. Interfere with the emotional channel, and you break authoritarians down. Otpor knew this.
I guess my next article will have to be about the #SemioticResistance
I can see the same happening in Australia. People realising there’s a prosperity tradeoff involved when you switch to green energy, and further, that the wealthy are very good at shielding themselves from the consequences of low growth. The next ten years will be interesting across the developed world.
Excellent analysis. Climate policy focus has to shift from carbon to albedo.