this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] TheFeatureCreature 215 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Capitalism is all about short-term profit. These sorts of long-term questions and concerns are not things shareholders and investors think or care about.

Further proof of this: Climate change.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Funny thing is that capitalism accidentaly solves global warming same way as it created it - turns out renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel, and the greed machine ensures the transition to more cost efficient energy sources

[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's a hopeful idea, but it may be too late.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Should not stop us from trying though

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I seriously doubt it's too late, it's more of a question how much damage will it cause

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Alternatively: too late for who?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that the previous accumulation of capital has centralized a lot of power in actors who have a financial incentive to stop renewables. If we could hit a big reset on everything then yes, I think renewables would win, but we're dealing with a lot of very rich, very powerful people who really want us to keep being dependent on them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They are only slowing us down though. They really cannot stop the change, because solar power is simply cheaper than oil. Once governments stop subsidizing oil, the big oil companies will be done for if they haven't innovated by than. That is also one of the reasons why they are slowing us down, so they can buy more time to innovate and remain on top with a new, green business model.

I hope all the big oil bosses get locked up for crimes against humanity, but I think they'll just change their business model into something green and exploit us in some different way.

This is why they say "they're too big to fail".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Sort of like how Phillip Morris sells vapes now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Except numbers aren't confirming that theory Look at Wikipedia article about growth of photovoltaics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

Solar power is booming world wide, consistently since many years. At >20% annual expansion rate, the exponential growth will start putting a dent on fossil within few years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Everywhere except countries that have subsidized non-renewables which means they'll become dumber and polluted and regress. And these countries (the US, specifically) have nuclear weapons and a lot of authoritative policy power.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is not "capitalism accidentally solves climate change". This is the effort of many people pushing for more development in green energy until it was able to be produced at a cost efficient way. From there, capitalism took over, as intended. For green energy to be be feasible, we needed it to get picked up by the capitalist machine, because the capitalist machine has all the power and infrastructure in place to make it into a succes.

I predict that the same thing will happen with large capacity, small size home batteries once they become economically feasible. They are on the brink of becoming profitable and once they do, they will become a huge success and help reduce energy waste.

Same thing goes for fusion, but we're a long way off making that economically viable.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

This is the effort of many people pushing for more development in green energy until it was able to be produced at a cost efficient way

I think this oversimplifies it a lot. There were a lot of different actors involved - I'm sure a lot of development was coming both from the semiconductor industry, and from state funded research, but in the end, the greed machine (aka capitalism) takes care of further researching and scaling it to the global level.

Also it's not like there wasn't any money in that business years ago - even back then solar was commonly used as a remote power source in mobile applications (calculators, camping and so on). Also NASA, but this was purely state funded

[–] JoshuaFalken 1 points 5 months ago

Last I heard, there were proposals already put forward that would quintuple the current natural gas supply. Even though it's more expensive than renewables.

The companies that got natural gas off the ground in the first place might not see a return on that investment for another decade or two. There's a reason every year demand for natural gas has been going up.

Back around the housing collapse, natural gas was being touted as a "bridge fuel" that could get us away from filthy coal and serve as a temporary energy source until we got renewables up to speed. Funnily enough, what's been built doesn't seem like much of a bridge because there's no plan for ramping down natural gas.

Colour me shocked.

[–] FlyingSquid 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

turns out renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel, and the greed machine ensures the transition to more cost efficient energy sources

Cool, when is that going to start happening? Because I only see a handful of electric cars and I see a whole ton of coal power plants.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] FlyingSquid -2 points 5 months ago

Wow! More than 30%! Global warming over!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Did you mean to say shareholder and corporate management? Investment itself (especially diversified) is completely about long-term performance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

These sorts of long-term questions and concerns are not things shareholders and investors think or care about.

Well that's not true at all. The vast majority of investors are in it for the long run.

[–] Blubber28 0 points 5 months ago

Yup, economics are all about "LiNe mUsT gO uP!!!!!" It's infuriating as all hell for people that can actually see further than the tip of their own nose.