More Bad News for Coal: Wind and Solar Are Getting Cheaper
Glenn Doty writes about this article on coal, solar and wind as follows:
This is the most cruel truth regarding the GOP push for greater pollution/greater emissions/greater climate change. Renewable energy is cheaper. It’s just cheaper than planet-wrecking, human-health-ruining coal power. (My wife) Rochelle and I stand to save thousands because we switched to solar energy.. IT IS CHEAPER to have clean energy than dirty energy…But the GOP is doing everything it can, including eliminating clean air and clean water regulations that will cause hundreds of thousands to get cancer, just to prop up the antiquated dirty stuff. It’s evil on a level that I simply cannot comprehend.
Oooo! Ooooo! Call on me! I comprehend it!
It’s easy. Imagine a) that your net worth rises or falls based on the combined market cap of the fossil fuel industry, and b) that’s the only thing in your life you care one iota about, i.e., you place no value whatsoever on other people’s well-being. Yes, you have descendants, but those are going to be some filthy rich descendants, able to buy their way out of essentially every calamity.
On top of that, c) you feel that you live in a post-moral world; you’ve justified that your life’s work is acceptable by convincing yourself that the ethical world of honesty and compassion that may have existed in the past has given way to one in which our lives are as devoid of meaning as the deepest vacuums of outer space, and that decency is for the few suckers who haven’t figured that out yet.
And everywhere you look you see proof, from the thieves at Wells Fargo and Volkswagen to the sociopath in the U.S. White House. Did you know that 72% of Republicans think Trump is a good role model for children? I think that says it all.
Craig,
Mt goodness, what a tantrum ! Why don’t you burn down his barn while you’re at it, eh? That’ll l’arn him !
Nearly two hundred and fifty words of vague claims and unsubstantiated rhetoric culminating in a tirade of politically motivated abuse.
The sort of rant one might expect from a fundamentalist preacher to his flock.
Down here under my bridge, I’m trying hard to make any sense out of your outburst. It’s hard because it appears devoid of any facts, logic or even sanity.
There are a few vaguely rational bits. Ol’ Glenn and his wife have finally installed some solar panels thereby saving money by not relying on a coal fired power plant. (always presuming the local power plant is coal fired)
Well done! Not especially novel or original since most of us installed domestic solar some years ago along with millions of other folk, but well done nevertheless.
Hmmm,… moving on from Glenn’s domestic arrangements, he fails to mention how he intends to dispose of these panels in 20years time?
To be fair, Glenn is not alone. Disposal of highly toxic(and carcinogenic) Solar components is an issue yet to be satisfactorily addressed the Solar industry. The State of California solves the problem by shipping obsolete panels of state. The Panels are often dismantled in third world counties to the detriment of the local inhabitants.
Glenn also fails to explain how he intends to operate a large cement plant with “renewable energy”, while also reducing the pollution created by cement and concrete manufacture.
Of course, cement like aluminum and all other industrial processes needs vast amounts of “power on demand’. Renewable energy alone is not capable of producing this kind of power.
Here under my bridge, I don’t see any solutions coming from ‘ol Glenn, or yourself ! However, I do receive the news about a new $218 million coal mine opening in the UK.
Despite $ billions in subsidies for renewable, and the confident expectation of the demise of the UK coal industry, the Woodhouse Colliery in Cumbria has finally cleared all environmental and UK government approvals and been unanimously welcomed by local County Councillors. The mine will provide more than 500 highly paid jobs to a depressed area.
The mine attracts no government subsidies, but should attract hundreds of rent a crowd demonstrators.
Clean(er) Coal technologies are now being implemented on an almost weekly basis. These projects and technologies are producing almost miraculous environmental benefits. The number of even more amazing research projects reaching proto-type or commercialization stage is become a commonplace occurrence completely transforming the nature of the industry.
The US coal, gas and Oil industry, has just announced technology capable of dramatic reductions in methane emissions, while converting methane into environmentally beneficial products.
In Melbourne Australia, two young scientists at RMIT have just demonstrated a major breakthrough in liquid carbon from coal capable of massive emission reductions and a huge advance in cheap energy.
These projects are real. They are not just empty rhetoric, yet you seem oblivious to any developments based on reality.
I seem to be able to receive this information here under my bridge, but curiously in the exalted, Ivory tower occupied by Glenn, yourself and the rest of your little congregation, factually based information and developments in clean(er) technology doesn’t seem to permeate the filter of moral sanctimony at your tower’s front door.
I have no wish to sound unkind, but rants like Glenn’s remind of the lines in Shakespeare’s Scottish play;
“T’is just a tale, told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…”