Saikat Chakrabarti - Green New Deal not about Climate Change

[desy]

Just end oil and gas subsidy and redirect that to efficiency efforts, still don't need a specific tax

 

[darkswordsman17]

I haven't seen anything scalable to replace FF industry because it would have changed by now due to economics, the reason a coal plant gets taken offline every 15 days in the US is because of NG substitution, not solar. Its a fantasy to say otherwise. What I'm saying is it will be virtually impossible considering man's short sightedness to do anything other than BAU as the substitutes just aren't shovel ready.

https://www.infrastructurene.ws/wp-...-primary-energy-supply-by-source-figure-1.jpg

How do you figure that? Electric (replacing saying ICE in cars) can absolutely scale displacing a lot of fossil fuel use and renewables haven't shown much limit to their scalability, but costs simply aren't there yet. But they are dropping. A decent battery breakthrough alone could shift the economics so thoroughly that natural gas and gasoline would immediately start teetering on the brink of economic viability in many areas. Which it might not even take a breakthrough to get to that point, as iterative improvements in battery technology has improved density while decreasing costs substantially. Now imagine public sentiment starting to change, leading to divestment from fossil fuel companies, followed by governments ditching their subsidies of fossil fuels. Within a decade we could see the economics at play change and massively tilt against fossil fuel production. They're just now starting to really seriously try grid storage, and their findings seem to be that its actually a lot more economically viable than it was thought to be. And costs are the reason they weren't doing that before.

You know what else is a fantasy? Acting like I somehow implied whatever it is you're inferring I did there. I certainly didn't say anything about solar alone putting coal plants out of business. I said that renewables are even starting to hit natural gas plants economic viability (because if those plants aren't capable of filling in for gaps in renewables, they become economically unviable). Its already happened in California.

https://arstechnica.com/information...-plant-closes-down-as-renewables-get-cheaper/

 

[desy]

Again, could be, not yet, battery breakthrough etc. Scalability is also related to cost Certainly there are lots of places where it can doable but the world will continue to use FF for the next 30 years by a majority over other types.
I absolutely know we move from FF to other energy platforms, however technology isn't the only hurdle to overcome.. Self interest, Status quo, Geopolitics, local politics, existing infrastructure, short term quarterly thinking. . . .
I think we are disagreeing on the time scale more than anything else. In the mid 2000's GM used to say they'd have a battery by 2010 good enough to replace ICE.
Jevens paradox comes in where even if we clean it all up we will keep consuming and consuming and consuming. I'm saying it won't be easy, it will be hard and decades long.

In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand. The Jevons paradox is perhaps the most widely known paradox in environmental economics. However, governments and environmentalists generally assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility of the paradox arising.

 

[K1052]

Tactic 2:

Huge subs to build windpower.

Give farmers and rural property owners new revenue streams. Many of the best areas for wind are right across the Midwest.
Go right after the red states with money. Use the renewable energy to power all the heat pumps we are building.

Get but American provisions in to give us manf jobs.

Bonus goal. Repeal/ban the ability to use eminent domain to build pipelines, and undercut the ability of NG to compete by stealing land.

This is already happening already. Wind has and is going nuts in the midwest. Largely the impediment now is transmission, you need major DC transmission projects to move vast amounts of power to the east or west. The problems now are largely getting state approvals and land acquisition for the routes. Going to still need ED to do this in a big way.




The middle part of the country is poorly connected to where most of our energy is utilized:

 

[Bitek]

This is already happening already. Wind has and is going nuts in the midwest. Largely the impediment now is transmission, you need major DC transmission projects to move vast amounts of power to the east or west. The problems now are largely getting state approvals and land acquisition for the routes. Going to still need ED to do this in a big way.

View attachment 8525


The middle part of the country is poorly connected to where most of our energy is utilized:

View attachment 8526

Agreed. I was going to write something about this as a #3, but had to get back to work 😀

A poster above had also mentioned it.


Basically I think the strategy and message has to be "build build build, jobs jobs jobs, green is green, let's go get rich together."

Getting bogged down with technicalities of the science, tax debates, telling ppl they need to give things up, etc is a bad position to argue from.

It has to be a positive message of opportunity and prosperity to get national buy in.

Obama pushing cap and trade was a tactical error. Pushing building projects, esp right after the great recession, was a missed opportunity.
Gov has made limited progress on CC since, other than allowing fracking to kill coal.


Lastly, IA is winnable. All these programs should be aimed right at IA and key congressional races. Promise voters jobs and opportunity and dare Trump to call it a hoax.

 

[1prophet]

Green new deal is a feel good farce, you won't fix the problem of pollution, which climate change is a subset of until you fix the addictive throwaway consumerism greed based, it's all about me, mentality that is ingrained in most people, sure many claim that they believe in climate change but few are willing to pay or make the drastic lifestyle changes necessary to fix it.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/americans-care-about-climate-change-more-than-ever-but-1831956983

Overall, these polling results are good stuff. People get climate change is an issue, they want to address it. But there is a serious lack of understanding on how serious the issue is or what it will take. Using a carbon tax to restore nature sounds nice, but it is not going to yield the type of climate dividends of that, say, reinvesting that tax money in the aforementioned renewables would.

The same poll also asks if people would be willing to pay a steady fee on their utility bill. At 57 percent, most folks would fork over a dollar a month. But ask for $10 per month—cheaper than Netflix!—and support drops to just 28 percent and dwindles from there.

that is why the cowardly democrats refused to vote on climate change in the senate and instead said present, money talks political talking point bullshit walks and that mentality of expecting change without sacrifice is why pollution and climate change is going to get worse not better.

Democrats claim that they voted present because of a Republican “stunt.” But failing to vote for a plan they have touted so highly tells the American people exactly what Democrats intend to do with the Green New Deal: use it score political points, but not get it passed in Congress.


For months, Democrats have enthusiastically praised this unaffordable and outlandish proposal, including every Democratic senator running for President in 2020. “You cannot go too far on the issue of climate change,” said Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) when discussing the proposal on ABC’s “The View” on March 1, 2019. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said at a campaign rally on February 22, 2019, “Green New Deal—I’m in all the way.” But when the time came to vote, Sen. Warren could not bring herself to even dip her toe in the water. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have all given fervent variations of these endorsements.

 

[K1052]

Agreed. I was going to write something about this as a #3, but had to get back to work 😀

A poster above had also mentioned it.


Basically I think the strategy and message has to be "build build build, jobs jobs jobs, green is green, let's go get rich together."

Getting bogged down with technicalities of the science, tax debates, telling ppl they need to give things up, etc is a bad position to argue from.

It has to be a positive message of opportunity and prosperity to get national buy in.

Obama pushing cap and trade was a tactical error. Pushing building projects, esp right after the great recession, was a missed opportunity.
Gov has made limited progress on CC since, other than allowing fracking to kill coal.


Lastly, IA is winnable. All these programs should be aimed right at IA and key congressional races. Promise voters jobs and opportunity and dare Trump to call it a hoax.

Rural America is rapidly coming around to the advantages of energy production as an income stabilizer to hedge against volatile commodity prices and unpredictable trade policy. Especially as more traditional energy extraction businesses increasingly go bust (coal). Republicans managed to find tax credits they hated (PTC and ITC which benefit renewables) until they saw the money start rolling in to their states/districts. There are precious few places for funding and renewables are a life raft for small town America. Too bad they keep voting for people that would take it away if they could.

The US has made some progress on carbon by switching over to gas and deploying more renewables but it's not near enough. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit like the remainder of the coal fleet which could be pushed off the grid entirely in less than 10 years and we'd save money doing it. Decarbonizing the grid is the easiest thing to accomplish since we've got cost effective technologies and its pretty straightforward. Transport is the real challenge facing us now.

 

[Bitek]

Rural America is rapidly coming around to the advantages of energy production as an income stabilizer to hedge against volatile commodity prices and unpredictable trade policy. Especially as more traditional energy extraction businesses increasingly go bust (coal). Republicans managed to find tax credits they hated (PTC and ITC which benefit renewables) until they saw the money start rolling in to their states/districts. There are precious few places for funding and renewables are a life raft for small town America. Too bad they keep voting for people that would take it away if they could.

The US has made some progress on carbon by switching over to gas and deploying more renewables but it's not near enough. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit like the remainder of the coal fleet which could be pushed off the grid entirely in less than 10 years and we'd save money doing it. Decarbonizing the grid is the easiest thing to accomplish since we've got cost effective technologies and its pretty straightforward. Transport is the real challenge facing us now.

Yes sir. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Money talks. Ds need to focus like a laser on that point.

IMO, these voters are gettable. As you point out, Rs have backed themselves into a corner with rabid CC denial/pro-oil agenda. Plus Trump has completely failed to provide on the infrastructure and jobs renewal front. They will be hungry for change if someone can speak to them right.

Ds need to come at them with money and jobs, not fights on science and taking stuff away. Money will win them over.

Otherwise it's Rs that will figure it out, hypocritical as usual, and will cash the checks to keep the money flowing. Plus they will be dicks about it and figure out how to only benefit red states and fall short on our cc targets.

Figure this out, actually win a few of these seats, and then they'll have the votes to do other things on the agenda.