454
Oil industry has sought to block state backing for green tech since 1960s
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
454 points (98.1% liked)
World News
39153 readers
1782 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Maybe we could have been ready sooner if oil companies hadn't systematically obstructed funding and research, while spreading disinformation about the harms of fossil fuels, for many decades.
I don’t know what happened to solar water heating, but that was a thing in the 1970s, at least in warm climates
Solar panels existed. Some of what has brought their prices down, is just volume: more production, more installs, better setup, google planet. Even if we couldn’t have hurried some of the scientific and technical progress, they could have reached an inflection point sooner.
Wind turbines were there and ready. Again, scaling up, both 8n volume and size, has been critical to get them where they are today. That part could have happened sooner.
Anything having to do with transit and 15 minute cities, could have been triggered by the oil shocks of the 70s, and could have helped rebuild cities from the poverty and crime then.
We could have started electrifying everything - the writing was on the wall. My parents built an all-electric with time of use metering rural house in the 1970s on the promise of nuclear power. Especially for rural houses, how did we backslide into propane and oil? If we had gone with time of use metering, we could easily be ahead of where we are now, with more intelligent use of energy.
Even if you just count vehicle efficiency - that exception for light trucks has surely been an environmental catastrophe. Surely we had the technology to word that regulation better
There are still companies that do it. And it seems like they are getting better. Or at least that's what I have heard.
Note: not an endorsement of the company that I linked just using it as an example.
Technology takes time to develop. I’m not saying they are not faultless but we are now reaching the spot where we can really do something. We had electric cars in the past. They were garbage. The tech wasn’t there yet. It’s still not there but it’s close enough now.
You know what helps speed up development? State backing.
In France, we've had electric trains since the 60s, diesel train were phased out except for some lines with exceptional difficulty.
We also had electric streetcars in big, medium and small cities before ww2, they were taken out to make more place for... ICE cars.
Public transportation tech has been ready for a long long time. Cars are the worst way of transportation, saying tech was not ready because electric cars were "garbage" does not make a lot of sense.
France also had most of its grid on nuclear power decades ago.
And as far as I know. They’ve run it successfully.
I want more nuclear power but everyone is afraid we will have a Chernobyl event. Nuclear power is highly regulated and I’m OK with that. I wouldn’t mind even more regulations to keep it safe.
The one issue we refuse to solve is long term storage
From what I've read, and it's been a while), engineers plan for safety, but project managers and other company execs convince clients to take "cost-effective" corner cuts, leading to disaster. Looking at companies like Duke, Fluor, Dominion.
At the end of the day, you have to produce a product that is safe but cost effective. Nobody wants to pay 1per kWh for a safety level that is unmeasurable.
That is why utilities are regulated since they are monopolies. I feel the regulations need to be cleaned up but that’s the goal.
I think fines should be taken from executive pay. Bonuses should also be set to safety and environmental factors.
My point is that it's not cost effective, in human, environmental damages, but the cost of "clean up" alone negates any savings fun* not doing it right from the jump.
Autocorrect but leaving it.
Yes, in the USA, Goodyear Tires and GM (I believe they were the ones leading the initiative) lobbied against trollies and buses and other public transit so they could make more money seeking their products
France is not the United States.
Now you could say cars created the spread in the United States but we are a spread out nation.
Our train system is subpar and the government won’t invest the money to improve it.
Most Americans won’t or can’t give up their cars.
https://www.wanderingfrance.com/blog/articles/182/how-big-is-france
Think of all the government regulations, the subsidies, the trillions of dollars , that went toward making cars such a compelling choice. Surely some of that could have been used for transit, making that a very different decision all along.
We all helped cement cars as the transportation of choice, both by investments and action, and lack of action, partly in response to industry lobbying. We would be in a very different place now, if someone had stepped back to look at the bigger picture
https://kbin.social/m/world@lemmy.world/t/888215/-/comment/5607478