Won’t or can’t?
I’ll have a cup of the latter please.
So that’s it? The Mascot / Klopptimist bromance is over? A sad day. Your call, your choice and as ever, your insult.
Yes - 100% renewables is very difficult to get to - but more storage capacity assists significantly. The electrical generation sector is simply a poor argument for why we cannot substitute for fossil fuels, because it can and has been done. There are multiple other sectors where there is no clear pathway right now.
At a continental scale, the ‘when it’s windy’ idea becomes meaningless.
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Just Stop Oil’s demand is not, and never has been, an immediate cessation of all fossil fuel use. They just think we need to stop exploring and exploiting new Fossil Fuel reserves and get on with the transition that we have been talking about for decades without ever actually getting round to.
100% clean energy is entirely possible, but we need to radically rethink our relationship with the concept of energy. We waste so much and we use so much frivolously. A combination of investment in renewables with reduced demand would get us to 100%.
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In particular, increasing subsidy support for extraction projects through direct funding and/or tax credits doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Public funding for oil and gas extraction dwarfs funding for renewables.
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So we mine more lithium causing hideous environmental damage or built hydro storage (again, goodbye valley). Any other solutions? The problem is too many people using too much power. Moving to 100% renewable is an admirable goal but the environmental impact “could” be equal to the impact of just burning coal. For example:
0:38 to 1:30
Oh dear, an entertainment video from Youtube…first claim is wildly off to begin with. Nickel mining no longer looks anything like it did (nor does Sudbury). The Top Gear ‘experiment’ is moronic and long-since debunked, driving a Prius at top speed tells as little as an idling test between the two. If your use-case is 100% autobahn at off-peak hours, the M3 wins. Any real world test, it won’t.
Lithium has environmental consequences, but at least count the oil and gas effects by the same metric. Other more benign forms of energy storage are moving along the cost curve as well.
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I haven’t forgotten the Top Gear stopping distances experiment that Clarkson did, in which he set out to show that stopping/braking distances, as set out in the Highway Code, are a load of lefty, namby pamby, nanny state, PC nonsense.
Off he went, on to a test track, to prove his case, and sure enough he brought his car to a stop well in advance of the suggestion in the Highway Code.
However (and this is notwithstanding the simple observation that your stopping distance isn’t a measure of how quickly you can stop your car, but a measure of how quickly you can process that you need to stop your car, and then stop it, or that the Highway Code can’t assume everyone is driving high performance cars with superb breaking systems) what was not broadcast was the twenty or so attempts Clarkson made at stopping his car before he finally managed to do it.
This only came out on one of those blooper shows. Take after take of Clarkson ploughing through the plastic cones, while people pissed themselves laughing.
The reality is though that millions of people saw Jeremy Clarkson prove Highway Code stopping distances were bollocks on Top Gear. It isn’t hard to image that some of them took unnecessary risks on the roads as a result, and possibly caused accidents or even deaths.
It is the height of irresponsibility, and the mark of an absolute cunt of a man.
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I have a cousin who adores Top Gear, but also spent years as a competitive race car driver, in the lower rungs. It is fascinating listening to him critique Clarkson’s driving at speed on a track, where Clarkson is happily pontificating about the vehicle’s strengths and weaknesses while systematically getting the lines wrong. He is an entertainer, not a driver, he just plays one on TV.
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I’m surprised at the number of people who do take Clarkson seriously. I think all three of them have been quite upfront about the fact that their public personas don’t necessarily reflect their personal views.
That’s handy for them. I wouldn’t like the public to think I was a racist bigot if I acted like one on television either.
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That’s why I only referenced the first part.
I’d have him as minister for common sense. Right up there with Musk in my book, absolute hero.
When they are filming to camera he will be driving very slowly or on a trailer. When they are showing the car being thrown around the track it will be a professional driver.
TV is all about smoke an mirrors.
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The one where he attributed sulphur and acid rain to nickel mining in the Sudbury area? The acid rain that has not been a problem for about 15 years, and not a crisis for 25 years? Or the part where he makes it sound like the Prius batteries uniquely have a global logistics chain that includes Europe and China? Or do you like the ‘recent study’ about the Land Rover Discovery, presented without attribution as an authority that he uses to then set up his nonsensical test?
Ok, let’s just imagine your oh so simple plan has convinced me.
Tomorrow I’ll get rid of my diesel car and have my gas central heating replaced with whatever you decide is acceptable.
Can I borrow £30,000 please?
Simple really, just send it via Paypal
To be fair I think @Mascot is rightly saying that nothing happens until politicians take it seriously. Doing a bit, while not doing anything of any significance for fear of plummeting poll ratings as we are is clearly not working
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You’ve just (perhaps accidentally) hit upon the answer to your own question.
The thing that is stopping you, me and millions of others from adopting the technology that would help us get to 100% zero carbon is money.
As a society we place more stock in the movement of money than we do the viability of our planet to sustain life.
A few years ago I was working on a campaign on solar panels and the Feed in Tariff. There used to be a rebate on your energy from the National Grid, whereby whatever you fed back into the grid above and beyond your own use, you were paid for. Because photovoltaics were massively expensive, it offset the cost and brought the technology within reach of more more people. As the industry grew, and the price of PVs fell, the feed in tariff could come down too, and maintain that balance of just about incentivising adoption.
At around the time the solar industry was buoyant and looking like it was going to take off big time, the fossil fuel lobby had a tantrum at the (by this time) Tory government, and the government responding by slashing the FIT and kneecapping the industry. They pushed solar out of reach for the majority of people. The response from the minister at the time was that Solar’s role was as an option for the ‘altruistic wealthy’.
Ultimately, it all comes down to political will. The subsidies that have been handed out to fossil fuels could more than pay for a clean energy revolution in this country. The country could retrofit homes with insulation and solar. We could prioritise solar and wind.
Money is not an excuse. It’s consistently incredible to me what we can find money for in this country when some fucking Lord or Baron holds shares in the company or has a vested interest.
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I think that video is pushing 20 years old. The fact stands though that being environmentally friendly can be more damaging.
But things are happening…
The answer to going 100% renewable:
