by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-10-18 02:54:10+00:00
I'm not sure I understand how severely this is being misinterpreted. The pivotal year of our times? Post-oil age? The AI bubble being worse than 2008? Starving to death if we don't stop using fossil fuels? Sorry but all of this is incredibly wrong.

First off, the pink elephant in the room: a PV panel is not an energy plan. A PV panel is a cheap way to generate electricity, yes. But there are many, many, many other things you need to take that PV panel and make it a sustainable source of energy on a national scale. Here's a short list: 1) a continuous production source of cheap panels, 2) a continuous demand of cheap panels (supply-demand being one of the reasons they're so cheap, but they also last 12+ years, so there is a built-in economic time-bomb when demand drops off), 3) residential and commercial equipment and processes to send the PV energy to the grid, 4) a grid that can handle it all, 5) enough batteries to store it both overnight and on cloudy days, 6) a cheap source of plentiful batteries (and again the same supply-demand issue), 7) space for the panels, and (though nobody thought this would be an issue, but apparently it is) 8) the political interest in investing in (and not intentionally tanking) the renewable sector. Each of these is a big enough deal that if they don't work out just right, there goes your PV energy plan.

We don't get a more advanced society just because it's possible; someone needs to make a profit off it first. Ideas like "B2B" and "V2G" charging, electric trucking, etc are still a pipe dream because they aren't significantly commercially viable. If it's expensive, doesn't net you an immediate return, and is risky in general, nobody does it. Let's use a very well established example: Trains. Extremely cost effective for transportation, but you'd have to be insane to build or upgrade existing track.

Anyone thinking the world is gonna get off oil or coal isn't aware that USA, the EU, and China, are not the only countries/regions on the globe. There are 6 billion other people on the planet. The vast majority of them are poor and live in poor countries. They can't even afford fucking vaccines, and you think they're all going to develop cutting-edge energy generation and distribution systems? It would take at least 50 years for most developing nations to match developed western nations.

Not only will developing countries stick to oil and coal, the US will certainly see a return to it too. Remember that there is still 3 more years for Trump to find new ways to destroy the renewables sector in the US and alienate us from foreign renewables. Texas benefits from the country being dependent on oil, not panels. Whatever feeds the political monkey wins. And from a national security perspective, it would be impossible to replace our military's vehicles with EV alternatives in any reasonable time frame, so we continue to be dependent on oil for defense. If the military needs it, then we keep making and using it. In many ways, oil (that we can continue to extract in our own borders) is a far more secure energy source than ones that depend on rare materials we might not have in abundance here.

We are not facing an agro threat. We have far more agricultural resources than is needed to feed all our people, even with higher temperatures and less water. We would simply grow fewer livestock and switch from corn to actually nutritional food. Even just tripling the amount of oats we produce (a tiny amount) would provide most of the nutrition we need. We aren't dependent on foreign countries for ag; we just like the cheap prices. And this is without talking about bioengineered crops or using more northern land for farming. (our country is fucking huge) Other countries will definitely be at risk due to climate change, but we are still rich enough and have enough resources to get along just fine. Everything will be more expensive, and people won't be happy, but we won't even remotely starve.