No matter the platform worldnews comments contain mainly ignorant, overconfident bullshit. Glad to know that there are some things in life one can depend upon.
What a fucking joke. It’s amazing how all these countries set weak goals for themselves and then fail anyway.
We’re all going to die lol
The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.
It’s amazing how all these countries set weak goal
It’s can kicking. Make a promise for something 25 years in the future. Who cares if the country can’t meet it? You’ll likely be out of office or retired by that point. That’s the next person’s problem.
That’s the next person’s problem.
it is until people start getting organized and seeking justice on those responsible
The goal is complete decarbonization until 2045 and a lot of sectors in Germany are already on track with that goal, energy being one of them. That with a minister of finance, that does not want to spend money and a minister of transportation, that is more a puppet of the automobile industry and does not care about decarbonization. Imagine the US without the huge subsidies into clean energy. That’s what Germany is trying to do under their current minister of finance.
I’m much more optimistic, though I do think it will get worse before it gets better. I think we’ll end up with a few mass killer enviromental events before humans start to save themselves properly. It’ll never be too late as Earth is always going to better than anywhere else for us.
Quick list of things hopeful in my feeds of the top of my head.
- Renewable energy is the cheapest energy.
- Agrivoltaics can increase yeilds while also providing power.
- Home Solar & battery pay back time is coming down all the time.
- Electric cars are the cheapest over their life time and the upfront costs are tumbling.
- Electrification of more and more transport types is happening to save costs.
- EVs are going V2H/V2G/V2X which means you get a large home (and office?) battery to take part in energy markets.
- Second life EV batteries will eventury be a source of larger, cheaper, home batteries.
- Just the other day another methane solution : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/22/bacteria-that-eats-methane-could-slow-global-heating-study-finds
- Fusion looks closer than 50 years out now.
- RightToRepair + OpenSource is slowly spreading and will reduce life time costs and reduce e-waste. Regulators are waking up too.
- Vertical farming is developing and will end up cheaper.
- Lab meat or precision fermentation is a path to animal free animal protein at lower costs.
- 5 minute cities as an idea is spreading.
- Covid has normalized WFH
- Green spaces in cities to cool them and improve mental health is increasingly being talked about and pushed in some forward thinking cities.
- Peak population is constantly revised down and sooner. Once population starts to fall, it’s not set to stop for a long time.
There is a lot of movement. It’s all about aligning economics with fighting climate change. Which is natural as using less to do the same thing is better for both.
One thing that is a very good sign is oil companies are scared. They are spending a lot of money pumping out FUD. Doom peddling to slow climate action, but economics is against them. Even without climate damage being costed in. Which governments will do when oil is less powerful.
Fight the doom!
Some of the things you listed are indeed good, but we’re not going to avert climate catastrophe unless we reject the idea that we can only do good things if they’re less expensive than the bad thing alternative.
There’s also a lot of propaganda paid by fossil fuel lobbyists (and some nuclear lobbyists still going for the perceived easy target of renewables, as rediculous as it is…) with the goal to disrupt the energy transition.
And the majority here actually believes they are anti-fossil fuels while they actually parrot their propaganda (for example the “Germany stopped nuclear power to burn more coal”-fairy tale you can read a hundred times by now here - only invented for the talking point of coal being needed, when Germany is actually at a historic low in use) and thus constantly running (objectively wrong) talking points against renewable power.
On one hand I love the obvious panic of fossil fuel lobbyists getting more desperate and rediculous in their massaging by the day. On the other hand, they already brain-washed a massive amount of people that I fear are really lost and will fight tooth and nails against a reasonable green transition to pursue their fantasies of “sane” nuclear build-up (that isn’t sane because nobody is actually building enough capoacities to make sense mathematically), without that “non-working” storage (that nuclear power actually needs to be economically viable) and “expensive” renewables (same, same…).
You get it. But at the end of the day, the fossil fuel companies will lose because of economics. Renewable energy and electrification is cheaper and better and planet saving. There will be economic feedback loops kicking in as less fuel is used, taking up the price.
But “in the end” isn’t fast enough for my taste… or for the taste of people losing their homes or base of life to floods, draughts, forest fires and so on.
And it won’t even get better but just worse even if we stopped co2 emission completely today. We would have need that feedback loop a decade ago. Instead the same lobbyists now sabotaging it got a lot of renewables killed the moment they were too cheap to compete.
If you draw a curve of deployed solar and wind power, the last decade is a hole that basically threw us back more than the missed time even.
And even if renewables take over for economicla reasons now, they will just change tactic and instead sabotage storage and infrastructure to keep fossil fuels relevant.
Germany had a very coal heavy power prodcution originally and massively build up renewables… and the lobbyists were already ahead… they blocked grid extensions to create pockets depending on coal no matter how much cheap green electricity is available. They blocked grid extensions to make diversification less effective. They -also for that reason- pushed antiwind sentiments in one part of the country and anti-solar in another. They made storage commercially unviable by massive double taxation (once as an end consumer while loading, then as a producer while unloading).
And they did all that basically without anyone taking much notice because they also -and much more visible- blocked wind and solar power in general (ffs… they killed a 100k people industry and sold it off to China just because solar was getting too cheap).
Yes, renewables are extremely cheap. So cheap in fact that people fight for their chance to build solar and wind in designated areas instead of wanting subsidies like for other power production. But if we don’t take a very close and constant look, we will be surprised in a decade how all those renewables did not actually help reduce co2 much as the 10-year-infrastructure plans for storage and grid are suddenly about lagging 9 years behind. Just look at such basic projects like the north-south grid connection in Germany. The 10-year plan to build SüdLink is scheduled to be done in ~6 years now… after 12 years. 100% sponsored by conservative local politicians and conservative nimbys cosplaying as environmentalists.
Never give up hope. That’s what fossil fuels companies want.
In 2005 me and my now wife watched “Who Killed the electric car” and it felt hopeless. Now we both drive EVs and you see more and more of them on the road. Home solar used to be a pipe dream, but now I know more people with it and hope to set it up myself. My electricity provider claims 100% renewables. We plan to remove gas use from the house.
Germany will hurt itself by not looking forwards, and as that becomes more and apparent, it will be harder to maintain. Fossil fuel money will start to reduce and with that, it’s corruption of politics and information. At some point, I hope some jail time is handed out to those who knowing slowly climate against for money. Now, climate action and money are more and more lined up. Always have been long term, but now short term too. Aligned on energy and thus everything down stream of energy. Which a lot of stuff!
Australia’s Teals movement shows common sense can win out.
We’re all going to die lol
I agree … but that attitude also encourages people, especially leaders … and especially the billionaires that control this world … to believe that destruction is the ultimate end and to just play along, pick up as much wealth as possible while you can and do whatever you please because the end is near.
As if billionaires needed more reasons to pick up as much wealth as possible while they can lol
Yes, but the goals in germany are written into a law, and the highest council actually blaming the government for failed goals.
Still not gonna change a damn thing. The (federal) government(s) don’t care, they are busy framing harmless protesters as potential terrorists and jailing them accordingly. Or they simply change the law again so that they do not have to be held accountable for their missed goals (see the ministry for transport).
We’ll be fine. We’re gonna throw some reflective particulate into the atmosphere or some shit.
We’ll drop a giant ice cube into the ocean, solving the problem once and for all!
You kid, but we’re not gonna get greenhouse gases under control. We’re gonna find a way to stabilize temps and kick the can down the road to the next issue co2 causes.
That’s fallacious reasoning.
Just because climate engineering is the only way to stabilize temperatures doesn’t actually mean it can be done. That’s all hypothetical tech, just like carbon capture and other fairy tales we tell ourselves to cope with the reality of the end of the fucking world.
I’ll tell you what will happen. We won’t do anything to stop or slow climate change and we’ll reach a tipping point, after which society will rapidly collapse into warring factions and any hope of stabilizing the climate will be gone until we have a nuclear winter reset.
German here.
Even back under Merkel, elected parties had a habit of defining good goals and then rendering them impossible to hit through policy. This meant that no one could fault them for trying, and no one could fault them for not being able to hit them.
Nowadays my countrymen aren’t as stupid anymore. That doesn’t mean we can do anything about it, but especially since Merkel we don’t believe any of these leaks anymore.
Good ol CDU turning almost everything they touched into steaming horseshit
I wonder if they would ever reconsider what they did for the deactivation of nuclear power plants.
Because uranium appears out of thin air and it’s not being extracted in politically volatile areas. Every Euro that’s spent on a nuclear reactor is an euro that would be better spent on renewable energies.
That’s true but couldn’t that also be said for the rare earth metals used in batteries to power phones and EVs?
No energy production is perfect. Just good to look at the pros and cons.
Clearly that only matters with nuclear and magically doesn’t happen in any other case
People also think that nuclear is some sort of magical thing that provides cheap unlimited energy on demand, when really it’s an expensive, lumbering option, that is slow to construct and difficult to maintain. There’s a reason why even China prefers renewables over nuclear, and they have reactors for military research.
You should probably tell China that, then…
I don’t have to tell China they’re finding it out themselves. Yes, China leads in deploying nuclear, for various reasons. Energy, research, military. But despite this, renewables represents by far the largest investment and growth. Though China’s nuclear energy ambitions seem large, don’t forget, it’s a huge country. It’s just a small piece of the pie, the pie being dominated by renewables.
Ah yes… The classic primary source of an op ed from CU Boulder, which isn’t exactly known for having a great Asian Studies program.
I wonder if any of the nuclear bros on here ever consider, that jerking a fuel rod isn’t always the best approach?
Seriously, every fucking time this comes up and every fucking time you guys show nothing but arrogance and ignorance, both usually weapons grade.
I don’t understand the hostility. Germany made a conscious decision to turn off their nuclear power plants.
Facts are facts. Nuclear power is the 2nd safest power generation method per terawatt hour. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Additionally there are ways to recycle nuclear fuel. Most often the arguments against nuclear are fueled by emotion and not fact based.
Germany isn’t failing its climate goals because of getting rid of nuclear power. In 2018 6,3% of our energy (not just electricity) came from nuclear power. May all the nuclear chills please kindly stfu?
Letting those few remaining nuclear power plants stay active for another few years would’ve done jack shit. We’re failing because of shortcomings in many sectors. The worst offenders currently are housing (~25% of total CO2 emissions) and transportation (19%).
I don’t understand the hostility
Possibly a German Green. They are hostile like that towards nuclear. Ironically that made the German Green Party effectively a coal party (they don’t like to hear that).
Every single statement you’ve written is false.
I wonder why your username is AggressivelyPassive. More like AggressivelyAggressive ha.
The German Greens aren’t hostile towards nuclear?
This is the German plan:
- Shutdown the nuclear plants
- Burn more lignite
- WFH
The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic. “Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme,” Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday
The plan for transportation emissions, 2/3 of the target to be cut, is WFH. Yikes!
If all the subsidiaries that went into nuclear power the last few decades went to renewables instead Germany would have no issues at all, but hey… giving tax payer money to some very few giant energy companies is more important than creating a Europe leading renewables energy sector that does not rely on russian fossils or nuclear material.
You should know that nuclear power is very expensive while renewables are absurd crazy cheap. I’ve been to a German Endlager and it takes years and BILLIONS of Euros just to seal this thing off. Guess who is paying? Mostly tax payers.
There’s be no company in Germany which would be willing to run a nuclear power plant if they were responsible for the permanent disposal of their waste on their own instead of letting the tax payer pay (most of) for it.
That’s all well and good in the energy sector. What about transportation? If I understand correctly, transportation makes up the majority of the emissions Germany aims to cut
Sadly, we have a long history of incompetent transport ministers. That didn’t change with the last elections.
If only there was some means of replacing all that coal with a non-carbon intensive source of energy that isn’t dependant on the weather…
Has anyone heard of such a technology?
Sarcasm aside, that Germany shut down their last two nuclear reactors so recently and carried through is astounding. The excuses are mind-boggling. They’re old? Refurbishing is cheaper and faster than new built. They need re-certification? Then do it.
It’s more efficient to use the money required for
- The inspection
- The renovations
- Acquiring new fuel
And spend it on renewables than to do the above.
Also a big factor noone seems to care about: staff. The people who worked there have other jobs now. You can’t just plop a reactor plant somewhere and expect it to make electricity you need highly specialised staff for that. We also did not invest into training new staff because why would we, with the stop for nuclear power being decided 10 years ago.
Highly Specialized staff
I watched this animated documentary from the states called The Simpsons that seems to state otherwise.
“Recommendations” are useless when line must always go up.
Hopefully they wake up to reality and follow Sweden’s approach
Sweden’s approach is over.
They have no targets, the industry isn’t interested, and the government’s analysis has been based on nothing.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Q70mzQ/regeringen-svanger-om-karnkraftsreaktorerna
What is Swedens approach?
The usual fantasizing about nuclear and failing any actual plan, very popular right now. Because nuclear lobbyists pay well.
Or more precise: They want to build more nuclear power. But of course all their planned and their existing nuclear combined will not even be remotely enough to cover just the minimal required base load in a few decades. Because changing most of our primary energy demand (industry, heating, transport in varying shares) to electricity (that is often only making up 20%+ in a lot of countries) will massively increase the demand.
If you are not building (or planning to start the build-up very, very soon) enough nuclear capacity to cover 80% or more of today’s electricity demand then you will not have the minimal base load required in 2-3 decades, because there will be an increase by at least a factor of 2,5 in demand.
But that’s not something you tell people as nobody has a clue how to pay for building even more nuclear (where “even more” means the actual needed amount)…
(A few exceptions with massive hydro potential aside -as they have access to that cheaper base load- there is exactly one country with a plan that works mathematically: France. And even their government is lying to their people when they talk about 6 new reactors with another 8 optional. Because the full set of 14 is the required minimum they will need in 2050 and onward (their old ones are not in a state to run mcuh longer than that).
But hey. Even the most pro-nuclear country and the one with a domestic indutry actually doing a lot of the nuclear build up for other countries can’t tell their population the trutz about costs and minimla requirements. If you want to know just onme thing about the state of nuclear, that this should be it.
Who the fuck are paying nuclear lobbyist? Do they even exist? Like is “Big Nuclear” real? Can I get a job there? I’d love to get paid a shit load to go to the same dinners fossil fuel executives go to, but I’d get to actually advocate for something worthwhile and that would improve life in the future.
Not german but I’m in the same continent and in a country that nobody really cares about and we are nearing the threshold where renewables produce more than we require to run the country.
Funny thing is, private citizens are doing more for that effort alone than government in real terms because saving money is high on the priorities list here and free, renewable energy is a good thing, even more if you can produce it yourself.
Meanwhile, we’ve been fighting the government to cancel the authorization to log nearly 2000 old growth cork oaks for installing a solar panel farm when we have a lot of room to plant off shore wind farms.
Nobody really understands what is going on.
cork oaks
Portugal! What a wonderful country full of wonderful people. We do care about you and your delicious but slightly greasy food.
You’ve been eating at the wrong places… that’s a spanish thing: too much olive oil on every dish and too much fat on every cured meat
I just remember a sandwich covered in melted cheese with an egg on top and some kind of sauce. And a lot of delicious fried food. Both usually with fries as a side dish. Never any salad unless I specifically ordered it. I’m sure I could have gone to lots of restaurants where they would have had lighter meals, but I was on holiday so greasy was perfect.
Francesinha.
You can get those swimming in a pool of fat and you can get it very lean and clean.
You’ve been to Porto, right?
The make or break for that dish is the sauce. Some people can make it very heavy and some are capable of making it very light. Just know the amount of booze it goes in it could fuel a small plane.
Then comes the cheese and some places just overdo it. Four or five thin slices are enough but I do know some places throw half a block over every sandwhich.
I apologise for the fries. That’s fast food influence. And the egg was unexpected; that’s an addition from the croque madame.
Hope you had fun here.
Which country?
Portugal
Oh nice. Yeah, Portugal runs under the radar here. I found rhis https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/portugal
Seems like you got rid of coal already. Oil/gas seem to hover however. Do you have plans about getting rid of fuel cars? And what do you use gas for? In Germany it’s mostly heating, I would have guessed you don’t need so much heating in Portugal and can use the AC in winter.
And good look with these oaks, I hate forest being cut down.
There a few incentives towards the purchase of eletric cars but its something still way out of reach for the majority of people. But the number of eletric cars is rising.
Gas is mostly used to run a few eletric generation plants. AC is a doubled edge sword here as houses are poorly insulated and the minimal recommmended power for having an equipment is 10.35Kva, which is a power requirement where all VAT is applied at 23%. The equipments are also very expensive and the installation even more.
And thank. Lets hope we can make enough noise to have to trees left alone
Shit I had hoped we could leave the nuclear stans over at reddit.
What’s wrong with nuclear?
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Well if you don’t support nuclear because its “too complex,” you de facto support coal, which will inevitably turn into “degrowth” as most of the world can’t support agriculture anymore, and so you will get to nod your head as 100’s of millions are “de-growthed” into starvation.
Why would anyone who’s against nuclear automatically be pro coal? It’s not like the only options available to us are nuclear and coal.
That is the truth. Nuclear competes with fossil fuels, not wind or solar.
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Then why are you here? Your horrid omnicidal wish will be, by your own admission, inevitably granted. You have nothing to worry about.
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If you want degrowth, you want to see billions dead, because that is what degrowth means.
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Poor track record with safety (not talking about the big issues such as meltdowns, but smaller issues such as minor leaks, and workplace incidents). Nobody’s interested in building them unless they’ve got profit guarantees and subsidies from the government. Nobody’s interested in insuring them in full (unless it’s the government). Nobody’s interested in the eventual decommissioning process, which can take a century, and again, still costs. Renewables will be up and running, and profitable, long before nuclear is constructed.
If you see the environment as just another way to profit, and you assume that we can’t save the environment because it costs too much, you are just another shitty fossil fuel executive, but worse because at least the fossil fuel executives get paid for their short-term ideas, you are just supporting them and thereby standing by as hundreds of millions of people are condemned to death, hopefully including yourself, for literally nothing.
So, you’re going to spend, billions, to build a nuclear powerplant, that will decarbonise at a slower rate, never turn a profit, be an economic sinkhole megaproject, or, you could just build a solar panel or wind turbine in like, a year, where it’ll be functional and working. Profits allow you to reinvest into more projects. Losses, mean you’re putting endless amounts of money into less.
Again if you are worried about “turning a profit” you don’t give a fuck about the environment and need to leave.
If you’re constantly pouring money into a loss-making industry, it means you’re not efficiently managing your resources to build more projects. Profits from renewables can be reinvested before a single plant can’t be constructed. And that nuclear plant, will never make enough profit to build another.
What the fuck is the point of “making a profit?” The world is burning because of profits. If all fossil fuel plants were taxed at 1,000,000 Million per ton of carbon emissions would you support nuclear then?
Nothing in general. Well the build times are rediculous in Europe and planning right not to build nuclear soon is too late already for any agreed upon climate goal. But that’s another matter…
The problem is the brain-washed nuclear cult on social media briganding everything. In the last year on Reddit you couldn’t even post any report about any new opening of wind or solar power without it degenerating into always the same story: “bUt ReNeWaBlEs DoN’t WoRk! StOrAgE DoEs’Nt ExIsT! tHeY aRe A sCaM tO bUrN mOrE FoSsIl FuElS! gErMaNy KiLlEd ThEir NuClEaR To BuRn MoRe CoAl BeCaUsE ThEy ArE InSanE!!”
Mentioning the fact that Germany in reality shut down reactors not even contributing 5% of their electricity production that were scheduled for shutdown for 30 years and in a state you would expect with that plan and already more than replaced by renewables got you donwvoted into oblivion every single time.
Reality is uncomfortable for the idealist. But ultimate any sustainable future MUST include nuclear and everything you sarcastically dismissed with that childish spongebob typing is just the reality of our world society. You may as well get upset about how we didn’t leave the “reality stans,” back on reddit.
In fact, I should turn this back on you, I’m upset about the coal-stans that apparently migrated over here from reddit. If there is any world where you want to claim to be “green,” coal CANNOT be any part of the conversation. If it is, you have failed and don’t’ get to discuss environmentalism anymore.
Except nobody is advocating coal. So what do you want to turn back on him exactly?
Just because you developed a hate boner for anyone who’s not on your nuclear train doesn’t mean they’re pro coal. If you need to put words in others people’s mouths to confirm yourself… you’re wrong.
With your reaction you just confirmed what he described.
If you aren’t pro-nuclear you are pro-coal, thats the reality. No one is replacing nuclear reactors with anything but coal. The development of wind and solar generation is going to happen regardless, but for every nuclear plant that Germany shut down, they opened, or re-opened a coal plant.
Saying “that’s the reality” doesn’t make it a reality. You can repeat it as often as you want, it makes you look like a self absorbed jerk - because it’s simply not true. Just because it’s a nice narrative to push for you not every opponent to nuclear energy is a proponent to coal. Quite the contrary I’d figure.
The single last coal plant started operation in 2020, and none has been “re-opened”. Some are kept in prolonged reserve mode until 2024 (half a year longer than originally planned), IF the Alarmstufe Gas stays in effect.
Maybe try with some verifiable facts and stop lying.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/germany-reactivate-coal-power-plants-russia-curbs-gas-flow I guess “reactivating coal power plants” means something different in the original German, an must be semantically different then “re-opened.” Also note that natural gas is still a fossil fuel that has the dubious distinction of being “better” then coal, but infinitely worse then Nuclear.
Now if you are against nuclear energy, it means you have to have a replacement in mind and all replacements for Nuclear Power Plants are fossil fuel based. There isn’t another option. Wind/Solar are great, there is no one accusing you of being against renewables. But renewables are NOT replacements for Nuclear or Fossil Fuel based power. So there is your choice. Pro-Nuclear or Pro-Fossil fuel.
