11-04-2017, 03:48 PM
(10-30-2017, 09:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The horrors of 2100 could be severe, but meanwhile we already have the horrors of circa 2020 in the current 4T, which are bad enough.
Solar energy and wind do have their problems; the prospects for quick and easy energy transition seem poor. Solar energy plants and wind farms face environmental hazards. Some of them can be overcome, but these hazards limit where they can be put. There's plenty of space for solar energy on rooftops, but these for now just take care of the energy needs of those particular buildings. Utilities show no inclination to pay homeowners and commercial building owners to put solar panels up, so the owners have to pay for them. Solar panels are still too expensive for many people, and another wrinkle now is that most residents are not owners of their home. The USA is becoming more of a feudal society every day, in which aristocrats own the land and property where people live and work, and the people have to pay exorbitant rent to the landlords. The residential or commercial building owners have little incentive to put panels on the roofs of their properties, since they weren't paying the utility bills. Unless, that is, the utilities pay these property owners to put them up, or the state pays, and/or makes the owners pay. So, I'm feeling more pessimistic today. The political will does not exist yet among voters to pay the subsidies that will be needed to put up the panels and wind farms in the right places.
Even the most rapacious plutocrats have strong incentives to reduce costs. That tenants get no economic benefits (they will still be gouged), and especially if the Master Class is exempted from taxes because they own the political system and everything in America, including the people who are degraded to serfs, cost-cuts raise profits.
Quote:And all-electric cars are not a bargain either. Renters may not have access to electricity for their cars either. Some hybrid owners report great gas mileage, but hybrids still use some gasoline. And again, most people today are living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford new cars, let alone Teslas. So this transition is taking a while too. I do see quite a few of these all-electric and hybrid cars on the roads here in Silicon Valley though. Those who are both wealthy and environmentally-conscious are making the switch, and electric cars in CA don't run on coal-generated electricity.
There will have to be means of taxing electricity for use in motor vehicles just for upkeep of roads unless tolls or mileage taxes become the norm. But maybe the serfs of a new and rotten America, the one that Donald Trump seeks to establish, people won't need cars. The slums will also be the homes of the sweatshops in which they toil.
Yes, a political leadership that denies climate change is a big problem.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.