- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports.
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
It's fun watching the right wing try to square this circle. Especially in the UK where we import most of our fossil fuels.
We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!
But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.
I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...
It's really sad comparing the UK with Norway. The latter did "drill baby drill" before it was cool, but almost exclusively for exports. Some of that money has been invested in rapid electrification - so that Norway can export even more!
Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?
- Norway had and still has a lot more oil in their part of the North Sea than the UK does
- Norway has a vastly smaller population than the UK; more than ten times smaller (5.6m versus 69m). Each Norwegian gets 10x more money coming in than they would as UK citizens, just from demographics.
- Norway gambled by having the state directly invest in drilling (Statoil), while UK governments (both Labour in the 1960s and Conservative in the 1970s) refused to invest public money in drilling. Instead they let commercial companies find the money, the government merely licensed and taxed. The reason they did this was that Britain didn't have enough capital available to fund drilling at the time oil was discovered; it was the "sick man of Europe"
- Norway put its oil money into a state pension fund which continues to pay dividends today. Margaret Thatcher spent the oil money on rejuvenating the London Docklands, which admittedly did improve London's standing as the centre of global finance, which is what currently brings in most money for the UK. Perhaps if she didn't do that then financial companies might have moved elsewhere, we don't know that for sure. What we do know is she didn't spend it rejuvenating anywhere else in the country, like Scotland, Wales and Northern England after she shut the coal mines and steel mills and bought in foreign coal and steel.
My point is that there's no party in the UK that wants to drill as much as possible as well as burn as little as possible. It's either one or the other, never both like in Norway.
jmward01 · · focus · HN ↗
- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
nine_k · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
phatfish · · focus · HN ↗
We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!
But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.
I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...
throwaway473825 · · focus · HN ↗
Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?
amiga386 · · focus · HN ↗
- Norway had and still has a lot more oil in their part of the North Sea than the UK does
- Norway has a vastly smaller population than the UK; more than ten times smaller (5.6m versus 69m). Each Norwegian gets 10x more money coming in than they would as UK citizens, just from demographics.
- Norway gambled by having the state directly invest in drilling (Statoil), while UK governments (both Labour in the 1960s and Conservative in the 1970s) refused to invest public money in drilling. Instead they let commercial companies find the money, the government merely licensed and taxed. The reason they did this was that Britain didn't have enough capital available to fund drilling at the time oil was discovered; it was the "sick man of Europe"
- Norway put its oil money into a state pension fund which continues to pay dividends today. Margaret Thatcher spent the oil money on rejuvenating the London Docklands, which admittedly did improve London's standing as the centre of global finance, which is what currently brings in most money for the UK. Perhaps if she didn't do that then financial companies might have moved elsewhere, we don't know that for sure. What we do know is she didn't spend it rejuvenating anywhere else in the country, like Scotland, Wales and Northern England after she shut the coal mines and steel mills and bought in foreign coal and steel.
throwaway473825 · · focus · HN ↗