| | | OT--
You know as well as I do that I don't have a "Grand Plan" to do that, although there have been some plans that have been proposed by various people. I am not in a position to judge those plans. Furthermore, I have never said or implied that switching from a fossil fuel based economy to a solar or some other alternate energy economy (say, hydrogen or thorium) would be easy or cheap. You also know that I do not believe that we cannot just dismiss fossil fuels in the near or even intermediate term.
But to say that doesn't mean that we should just reject alternative energies or pretend that fossil fuels are the best way to energize our society in the long run. Surely we can acknowledge the good that they have done while at the same time recognizing that they have limitations and unintended bad consequences. And recognize that alternative energies can play an increasingly important role in powering our society, especially when the storage issue is resolved.
When you do under guesstimate the trillions - then tell me what those trillions could do for the poor of the world if they were invested for their welfare.
I have heard you and other people say this sort of thing before. But it is a bogus point. First of all, investing in alternative energies is investing for the welfare of the poor as well as everyone else. Related to that point, if that money was not being invested in alternative energies, it is hard to see what it would be invested in that would better benefit the "least among us" in the long run. This is, for the most part, money that is looking for a profit, which is fine as far as I am concerned. It is not, by and large, money that is looking for social justice, like, e.g., Gates Foundation money is. There is a need and a place for both types of investment, not one or the other.
Other considerations: It tends to be the poor who live in the most polluted places in the world (unless we are talking about whole cities that are polluted, a number that seems to have been increasing over the past 20 years especially in developing countries). It is also the poor who tend to be most affected by pollution--not only by proximity to it but by lack of access to medical care. Further, I have read articles that say that solar cells are already being used in rural areas that don't have access to centralized power systems (or can't afford them) for electricity where there was none before. It is giving them light at night to read or work by and even powering computers.
At the end of the day, though, this sort of discussion is simply not very fruitful. You represent the vested interests, the sunk costs and an already developed vast, complex infrastructure, and now say you want "a plan, a cost and a schedule" for how those things can possibly be replaced. I seriously doubt if anyone ever formulated "a plan, a cost and a schedule" for the enormous energy infrastructure that exists today. It would have been impossible--even if someone tried to do so at some point in the past, that plan almost certainly looked different from the way things turned out. All of these plans have flaws and unintended consequences that must be worked through as they are revealed in the ripeness of time. We can only work piecemeal on these things, and if we don't see any problems with fossil fuel use and we believe that fossil fuels will always be the cheapest and best way to power society, why bother? Our discussions will always run into that problem, Bob, which is why I am loathe to do it any more. |
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