Comment on When you want to be Meta, but you just a Beta
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years agoI agree with your first point, but not the second or third. I am not anti-renewable. I am anti-communist planning and dumping taxpayer cash into the newest fad to curry favor with environmentalists.
For my bachelor thesis I was working with Solar companies to change panel material mix to cheaper substitutes. I think wind/tidal/hydro are far far far cleaner than Solar due to the huge amount of toxic chemicals needed for Solar fabrication. Definitely, I am 100% in favor of Wind.
But, politicians have screwed the transition. Decarbonisation IS murdering the poor. When your bills are 3x and you get disconnected, what's next in life for you ? A stroke or a heart attack from stress ? Not getting treatment for other diseases because you have no $ left ? Green levies don't just reduce standard of living for middle class, for those working paycheck to paycheck it will shave years off their life.
My solution: Govt should cut the Green subsidies out of the energy price so the poor can still afford it. Don't shut down existing fossil fuels like natural gas or petrol cars. Richer customers prefer green/electric and will migrate first and bring down the prices for poorer naturally.
goldenballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Sure tidal is the most ideal for many countries (obviously great for the UK, not so useful for Mongolia). I agree that PV manufacture is problematic, but if in the future we could install orbital solar panels, and beam the energy down or covert it into transportable storage, it would be pretty good too.
A lot of green companies went bust when LNG went up I have been chilling in tropical Asia during the pandemic, so I don't really know what life is like in lockdown land, it seems pretty miserable, and now with inflation continuing (and i tend to think real inflation is about 3 times CPI, housing costs are much higher than reported). There are big problems with lack of energy mix and storage. Germany strongly illustrates that.
The UK is lucky in terms of potential, and it is entirely selfish to want the benefits of wind equipment export. There are British and Danish companies off the coast of New England doing work Americans can't do (there are probably a couple of Americans, but they will have to adapt to North Sea safety standardsi), but also in the North Sea, and in Taiwan. It's boom time for that sector, and yes its probably paid for by governments, but not necessarily "ours".
In the UK we have a very different health system from America. In Asia, have to buy insurance and experience something more like America. Canada is amongst many countries experiencing health service failure, and the UK too - its the main part of the national budget that keeps growing, and i think is unsustainable. This is a separate, but overlapping issue.
Govt has limited influence on the cost of energy. They have a bit of influence on the cost of energy wastage. Tax on fuel is already much higher in Europe than anything in North America. It is grossly underinvested in, and i think a change will be forced, but the world is facing some volatility in energy prices for sure.
I think the netzero idea is a bit of a gimmick, and a pivot towards an export industry from the UK perspective. The UK is economically different from the USA, the UK is a densely populated archipelago, where cars aren't as universally essential as in north america. We need ro maintain presence and expertise in the maritime and offshore sectors, so offshore wind is partly about that. We probably should have more nuclear. If we had several tidal sites, the UK could potentially export electricity (particularly to Ireland) as well as be self sufficient. I think most people don't care where their energy comes from as long as its cheap.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I agree with everything you said. The example about health was just an example, I know National health care exists in UK and Germany. I just wanted to highlight the plight of those who are the worst affected by energy costs.
Yes and No. Govt cannot influence the Market price. However, the consumer price includes tax, which is the problem. This is a heavy burden when all new green projects are subsidised by it, rather than letting market forces compete to bring prices down. Bad for the poor.
goldenballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
The NHS is shit though. It's like a religious cult. Constantly used by Labour (a mix between Canadian Liberals and NDP) as a political football. The mantra "free at the point of use" and always using it to justify immigration. They used the 2012 olympics to push the holy church of the nhs, but it"s been in the red ever since. Like we should be taxed to pay for sex change bullshit. Part-privatising healthcare in some way (by adding insurance and up front payments) is essential to correctly price risky behaviour. Only a few core expensive things like cancer and brain surgery should be public funded. Too many fatties, fogies, and faggots overuse the system. The last time i used it was when i was 4, apart from borths, where i'm not really the user. Getting rid of the BBC is the first step to freedom, getting rid of the NHS is second, and then purging the schools and police of far left political activists. There are groups working on all of these 4 problems. Brexit was just the beginning.
I would say that the lower end energy cost impacts are more a function of general inflation and income disparity, due to low interest rates, qe, and immigration, keeping wages down and costs up. Now that atagflation is coming globally, we're all going to feel that across the developed world.
Yes we agree on energy costs, but what i'm saying is that there's a lot more tax in Europe than in North America already, and a lot of govt spending is supported by that already. The point of tax cartots and sticks is usually meant to direct behaviour. I mean if you want to protect something, you usually have to pay to enforce regulations anyway, and tax is used as a force multiplier to distort or change market behaviour. You wouldn't get rapid development in some areas without it. Without seeing the whole cost benefit anakysus spreadsheet on this, i can't be sure. I certainly know that pushing it will create plenty of losers and harm, and its just a question of how much worse that us than not doing it, or delaying it. This is where the argument over models and justifications comes in. To my mind, there are simply too many people, but reducing population (as is happinging in Japan and China) prompts economic contraction by definition.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
You nailed it. We need to know what data justifies all this misery for the poor. Its the same govt opaqueness, inefficiency, corruption etc during Covid. The avg. age of Covid death according to ONS in January was ABOVE life expectancy, i.e. 83 years in 2021. In spite of this, there were all the heavy handed restrictions. This should tell you how bad govt is at making data driven decisions.
RE: modelling, you are aware of the SAGE controversy that broke ~3 weeks ago, where the modellers admitted to only making the absolute worst possible case, because the govt asked them, regarding Omicron. Climate modelling is the same, make the worst predictions, with a little '*' next to it and in the footnotes you find all the caveats, i.e. total bullshit. For example, a prediction that there would be a 10% decline in agricultural output by 2030, while the footnote says that there could also be a +45% increase.
I think govt always was this corrupt and inefficient. Its just the internet and smartphones allow us to experience this in real time now.