Thank you for pushing back on Aliya's total B.S. both-siderism. Aliya seems to equate being disappointed with people who are good intentioned but somewhat inept at implementing them as equivalent to being disappointed with people who have nefarious motivations and skilled at implementing them. Same regarding Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy ghost. Gates was wrong on far more of those initiatives. Ignoring the demand side and distributed energy solutions is wrong because they are far more rapid and effective than the "big" projects Aliya is promoting. Not that those projects are not important, they are just not going to happen as fast.
I had high hopes at the start of this. It was instructive to hear her break down the two essential stages of "environmentalism," essentially (1) conserving land, and (2) reducing pollution/toxins. I thought maybe she would get into how these desires are being turned on solar, wind & batteries (& transmission, which almost everyone has hated forever) and how to reverse this. But no, their answer is to promise "innovation" which will produce some invisible, non-toxic, cheap, compact generation which will avoid those complications of wind and solar and batteries.
I just visited the sites of two 120ish MW proposed solar farms that had county p&z permits denied. They were sitting under giant transmission lines. Actually under-utilized power lines. This was in Colorado, and talking to young progressive-seeming types in the local ski town, the level of disinformation was astounding. Much related to those two basic enviro themes, IMHO much exaggerated. "Solar only lasts 15 years." "The projects will stop the plants/soil from absorbing carbon, more than the advantages of generation." And always, "Important habitat" for something. "We need to preserve all ag land." "The lead will leach out of the panels." "Mining lithium is more destructive than fossil fuels." "Toxic battery fires..." "We can do geothermal/nuclear."
So yeah, I guess we need to wait for nuclear and geo, built w/union labor and local "benefits," etc. and all the waffling purplish folks and districts will get on board.
This line really stuck out to me: "Climate world is not for the faint of heart. You have to have some pretty thick skin and you have to really be willing to go through a lot and try to see the light at the end of the tunnel."
There's nothing that has grown me as a person like climate activism. It's hard with lots of setbacks and is deeply, fundamentally human - including both human brilliance and human foibles.
There's some great back and forth here between two key sides of the movement! While easy to view it as a debate that one side wins or loses, I genuinely think these are the tough conversations we have to have to find our way out of the wilderness.
-Making the economy work for everyone is probably key to both keeping democracy and slowing climate disaster.
-Big, shiny new "innovation" is distracting from commonsense deployment.
-Climate communications going forward will need to abandon empathy as a motivator and focus on self-interest and tech literacy for people and politicians.
-Great illustrations of how lefties like to shoot each other in the foot.
The novel "Ministry for the Future" also has some good learnings if anyone is looking for a fun holiday read.
great interview and awesome pressuring questions on her centrism. but on the other hand I sort of respect her position in terms of bridge building to the non insane republicans/free market types. super smart people, you and her. thanks
Joe Manchin's conspicuous role in negotiating the IRA sausage formula is just one demonstration of how fraught the democratic process really is. Every lobbyist had to be guaranteed their "fair share" of the outcome, including all the fossil fuel producers and big utility monopolies. They all got what they wanted, but it was never going to be enough to make them turn their backs on MAGA promises to gut regulations, shrink government & corporate taxes under Trump. Musk was a poster-boy beneficiary of Biden's policies, but he hates taxes, labor unions & public health bureaucrats too much to support democratic governance. To the public, the IRA was a complex, slow-acting behemoth, much like the ACA that republicans are still trying to dismantle.
Contrast that kind of publicly stupifying complexity with the fast-acting, highly visible & tangible, proletarian policy recently adopted by both France & South Korea, mandating solar canopy powered microgrids at ALL large parking lots (>80 spaces), nationwide, within 5 years! With financial penalties for non-compliance! Public utility monopolies forced to rapidly adapt to widely distributed energy resources! I know, mandates for relatively wealthy commercial property owners & utility investors & bureaucrats just sound so authoritarian don't they? Don't you hate paying for government to tell people what to do, like Elon Musk?
I love Volts but episodes like this one really hit a button for me. What's the end goal? It often seems like some sort of sci-fi electro-steampunk world is the goal but the realities of nature and our dependence on it are forgotten. Coral reefs are dying quickly, drastic sea level rise is pretty much guaranteed, rain and boreal forests are burning up, farming is getting more precarious. Just thinking about all the different fall outs from each individual catastrophe is scary but when you put them all together it's quite apparent were heading for a world of hurt. Mass death and environmental collapse seem to be our future.
For whatever reason, episodes like this really fail to capture the seriousness of our current moment. Aliya gives the impression that we have all the time in the world to come up with solutions. Sorry this is just wrong and chastising the realist seems a bit much.
This was a very enlightening conversation that provided an insightful tour of the last 50+ years of the environmental and climate movements. I wish there had been a deeper critique of the IRA--that portion of the conversation felt a little too congratulatory. Any piece of legislation that ignores potential challenges to its implementation can fairly be judged as having a failed policy design. Many of the various elements of the IRA, for all their merits, took forever to gain any traction, and ultimately left no discernable impression on US voters. Although a portion of that failure can be placed on a president who was losing his mojo and failed to engage the nation about how important this was, an element of the failure lies in the design of the legislation. If we don't learn from that we are likely to repeat the same mistakes.
And I have to weigh in on the fusion conversation. There is ample reason to be skeptical. But people I trust have been involved in assessing the potential of the recent fusion startups and see reasons for optimism. So I'm somewhat hopeful that we could see a breakthrough....in my lifetime.
Are you reading my comment accurately Alastair? Or, are you implying that Fusion technology is modular and simple? I'll own the condescending description, but I am not biased. The statement I made is in complete conformity with your assertion and supported by all objective data. I am condescending because the Breakthrough Energy approach has yielded little actual breakthrough in terms of solving the climate crises; and worse, has been exploited by fossil fuel interests to delay the deployment of proven effective solutions.
Fusion will be the last technology to come down a learning curve. Aliya obviously has little understanding how technology progresses, but more importantly, how we do not have time for all technologies to be developed and we have several technologies that are developed and fit for purpose. Her philosophy seems to be "lets make the perfect the enemy of the good enough."
learning curves have been shown to be most ‘disruptive’ where technologies are modular and simple (as opposed to complex) and where high units volumes are seen. Fusion is the opposite of those three things. Fusion power has been 30-50 years away for 70 years. your remarks are obviously biased and read as incredibly condescending to me.
I have been involved in the "environmental movement" since 1970, when I went to work at the Environmental Law Institute. This conversation was still very enlightening.
David:
Thank you for pushing back on Aliya's total B.S. both-siderism. Aliya seems to equate being disappointed with people who are good intentioned but somewhat inept at implementing them as equivalent to being disappointed with people who have nefarious motivations and skilled at implementing them. Same regarding Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy ghost. Gates was wrong on far more of those initiatives. Ignoring the demand side and distributed energy solutions is wrong because they are far more rapid and effective than the "big" projects Aliya is promoting. Not that those projects are not important, they are just not going to happen as fast.
I had high hopes at the start of this. It was instructive to hear her break down the two essential stages of "environmentalism," essentially (1) conserving land, and (2) reducing pollution/toxins. I thought maybe she would get into how these desires are being turned on solar, wind & batteries (& transmission, which almost everyone has hated forever) and how to reverse this. But no, their answer is to promise "innovation" which will produce some invisible, non-toxic, cheap, compact generation which will avoid those complications of wind and solar and batteries.
I just visited the sites of two 120ish MW proposed solar farms that had county p&z permits denied. They were sitting under giant transmission lines. Actually under-utilized power lines. This was in Colorado, and talking to young progressive-seeming types in the local ski town, the level of disinformation was astounding. Much related to those two basic enviro themes, IMHO much exaggerated. "Solar only lasts 15 years." "The projects will stop the plants/soil from absorbing carbon, more than the advantages of generation." And always, "Important habitat" for something. "We need to preserve all ag land." "The lead will leach out of the panels." "Mining lithium is more destructive than fossil fuels." "Toxic battery fires..." "We can do geothermal/nuclear."
So yeah, I guess we need to wait for nuclear and geo, built w/union labor and local "benefits," etc. and all the waffling purplish folks and districts will get on board.
This line really stuck out to me: "Climate world is not for the faint of heart. You have to have some pretty thick skin and you have to really be willing to go through a lot and try to see the light at the end of the tunnel."
There's nothing that has grown me as a person like climate activism. It's hard with lots of setbacks and is deeply, fundamentally human - including both human brilliance and human foibles.
There's some great back and forth here between two key sides of the movement! While easy to view it as a debate that one side wins or loses, I genuinely think these are the tough conversations we have to have to find our way out of the wilderness.
Well done, David.
Random observations:
-Making the economy work for everyone is probably key to both keeping democracy and slowing climate disaster.
-Big, shiny new "innovation" is distracting from commonsense deployment.
-Climate communications going forward will need to abandon empathy as a motivator and focus on self-interest and tech literacy for people and politicians.
-Great illustrations of how lefties like to shoot each other in the foot.
The novel "Ministry for the Future" also has some good learnings if anyone is looking for a fun holiday read.
great interview and awesome pressuring questions on her centrism. but on the other hand I sort of respect her position in terms of bridge building to the non insane republicans/free market types. super smart people, you and her. thanks
Joe Manchin's conspicuous role in negotiating the IRA sausage formula is just one demonstration of how fraught the democratic process really is. Every lobbyist had to be guaranteed their "fair share" of the outcome, including all the fossil fuel producers and big utility monopolies. They all got what they wanted, but it was never going to be enough to make them turn their backs on MAGA promises to gut regulations, shrink government & corporate taxes under Trump. Musk was a poster-boy beneficiary of Biden's policies, but he hates taxes, labor unions & public health bureaucrats too much to support democratic governance. To the public, the IRA was a complex, slow-acting behemoth, much like the ACA that republicans are still trying to dismantle.
Contrast that kind of publicly stupifying complexity with the fast-acting, highly visible & tangible, proletarian policy recently adopted by both France & South Korea, mandating solar canopy powered microgrids at ALL large parking lots (>80 spaces), nationwide, within 5 years! With financial penalties for non-compliance! Public utility monopolies forced to rapidly adapt to widely distributed energy resources! I know, mandates for relatively wealthy commercial property owners & utility investors & bureaucrats just sound so authoritarian don't they? Don't you hate paying for government to tell people what to do, like Elon Musk?
I love Volts but episodes like this one really hit a button for me. What's the end goal? It often seems like some sort of sci-fi electro-steampunk world is the goal but the realities of nature and our dependence on it are forgotten. Coral reefs are dying quickly, drastic sea level rise is pretty much guaranteed, rain and boreal forests are burning up, farming is getting more precarious. Just thinking about all the different fall outs from each individual catastrophe is scary but when you put them all together it's quite apparent were heading for a world of hurt. Mass death and environmental collapse seem to be our future.
For whatever reason, episodes like this really fail to capture the seriousness of our current moment. Aliya gives the impression that we have all the time in the world to come up with solutions. Sorry this is just wrong and chastising the realist seems a bit much.
This was a very enlightening conversation that provided an insightful tour of the last 50+ years of the environmental and climate movements. I wish there had been a deeper critique of the IRA--that portion of the conversation felt a little too congratulatory. Any piece of legislation that ignores potential challenges to its implementation can fairly be judged as having a failed policy design. Many of the various elements of the IRA, for all their merits, took forever to gain any traction, and ultimately left no discernable impression on US voters. Although a portion of that failure can be placed on a president who was losing his mojo and failed to engage the nation about how important this was, an element of the failure lies in the design of the legislation. If we don't learn from that we are likely to repeat the same mistakes.
And I have to weigh in on the fusion conversation. There is ample reason to be skeptical. But people I trust have been involved in assessing the potential of the recent fusion startups and see reasons for optimism. So I'm somewhat hopeful that we could see a breakthrough....in my lifetime.
Are you reading my comment accurately Alastair? Or, are you implying that Fusion technology is modular and simple? I'll own the condescending description, but I am not biased. The statement I made is in complete conformity with your assertion and supported by all objective data. I am condescending because the Breakthrough Energy approach has yielded little actual breakthrough in terms of solving the climate crises; and worse, has been exploited by fossil fuel interests to delay the deployment of proven effective solutions.
Fusion will be the last technology to come down a learning curve. Aliya obviously has little understanding how technology progresses, but more importantly, how we do not have time for all technologies to be developed and we have several technologies that are developed and fit for purpose. Her philosophy seems to be "lets make the perfect the enemy of the good enough."
learning curves have been shown to be most ‘disruptive’ where technologies are modular and simple (as opposed to complex) and where high units volumes are seen. Fusion is the opposite of those three things. Fusion power has been 30-50 years away for 70 years. your remarks are obviously biased and read as incredibly condescending to me.
I have been involved in the "environmental movement" since 1970, when I went to work at the Environmental Law Institute. This conversation was still very enlightening.