Nothing about cost? Seems like that should be a consideration when debating energy sources...
I agree, but I find that more theoretical than practical, when looking at vision. Here's why:
Essentially, over time, various energy sources change in price. Engineering, science, economies of scale, real estate opportunities, use efficiencies, integration efficiencies, etc., all come into consideration, and eventually, the costs will go from some huge numbers here to some huge numbers over there in the equations, and even the equations will change. It's sort of a moving target, and eventually, you get to a point that long-term, anything you pay attention to that has a good outcome for us as a species (and by extension our environment) is what is most economical, but sometimes the money path isn't really efficient at getting us to that state quickly. Money becomes sort of a description of what and where everything has been and the process of things turning into new things and places. It's an accounting method that is very good, but doesn't always look at the bigger picture of what it's for in the first place as quickly as us humans can do it if we put our attention to something. Because a lot of what we do is made manifest by our attention to do it, that becomes a more essential element when looking long term.
After that, the money comes into play, and we
have to pay attention to it, so it feels redundant to mention it first, from my point of view. But, I also think it's integrated, in its own way. Money is part of the plan like arithmetic is part of science. Sure, it's there, but we learned it in elementary school and before. At some points, of course it's used.
Sometimes I think you're pretty out there in your statements, and this time, it seems like the other way around, because I feel like I'm being that way this time
Let me throw out an example. I'll use nuclear power, since it's dying, but it should have had a better life.
- Very dangerous.
- We know how to tame it.
- We can recycle it. There is no such thing as nuclear waste, practically speaking.
- Politically, nuclear waste is the biggest reason voters have voted to eliminate it.
- "Proliferation" potential is way overblown but also exists, and has been artificially kept high in order to use as blame by political forces.
- Lots of lies.
- Politicians and business men have poorly managed a lot of the process. This has caused huge disasters.
- Transport danger of the "waste" (i.e., recyclable goods).
- Insufficient recycling capability.
- Political impediments to fixing it.
- Jealous/scared foreigners infiltrate companies and governments that are implementing nuclear power, and sabotage it, in various ways. Some of these ways result in some of the mismanagement and political disfavor described above.
So, nuclear power becomes insanely expensive, because there's always problems with it, due to political pressure and mismanagement. Let's say real men still ran business and government and decided to do nuclear power right; that's unlikely today because no one wants real men doing much and because throughout all time enough of them were corrupted anyway that the impetus to do everything right wasn't strong enough, but let's say that pie in the sky thinking happened anyway in real life (it almost did around the Greatest Generation, but not quite, what with WWII and everything). Nuclear power would be recycled, wouldn't leak so much "waste" into the environment, would be allowed to output more good energy, any political favors about good locations to put plants would be ignored more in favor of engineering quality locations, when faults were found there would be better backups, and less political opposition to relocating the plants to better locations causing such ideas to be tenable, and generally speaking the energy from nuclear power would drop in price greatly. But, it didn't happen that way in today's history. Now, we're left with a legacy of bad politics
and mismanagement of nuclear power, and looking forward, I don't even see it as a good thing, because it causes a net warming of the planet due to causing reactions that would have not happened in nature, whereas collecting sunlight that would have warmed us up anyway seems OK to me. But, if we had 200 years of perfect nuclear power use for 90% of our electrical needs (by perfect I mean 90% of our electrical needs served by nuclear power with no more disasters
total than we already experienced in our current use, i.e., a huge proportional better quality of management), we would have almost no pollution, and the net warming of the planet would probably be within tolerances, and we would have had the extra money and resources to spend on things like building out solar panel farms, once we realized that's important. We'd have less oil wars, and more time and money to be bored and
want to do things like build solar plants.
I see money as not the sole driver, but more as one description of history, when I look at it from that perspective.
Money may have bought jealousy from Chinese, Soviet, even OPEC operatives who interfered with our nuclear ambitions. It may have bought corruption. It may have bought power enemies within oil war mongers and oil concerns. Yet, what if China, USSR, OPEC, and oil companies never existed? Nuclear power would be the same thing today as Oil is (only cleaner and less war), and we'd be complaining that "solar power is the future, but no one will look at it!!!", when instead, solar power is starting to look like eventually it will do OK. Or, maybe there would be some new country called "Sovese" in that alternate reality that doesn't have oil and does have nuclear power, but comes in and sabotages a nuclear power plant in our country, not to cause the world to stop using nuclear power, but in order to gain some advantage over us politically for some other weird reason (maybe they like pointy noses and want more roses and we grow them plus they're addicted to our corn or something weird). Anyway, then nuclear power would become messy, again, and more expensive. I see cost as not the sole driver, there, either, but as a way to account for it, from one point of view, but not all points of view.
