Electrify Everything
August 27, 2020 12:45 PM Subscribe
Saul Griffith (previously) has a new organization called Rewiring America, which is promoting a plan to cut carbon emissions in the US by 70-80% by 2035 using existing technologies, while creating 15-20 million jobs over the next decade. Listen of Griffith on The Ezra Klein Show explain his vision for decarbonization and, more recently, about how to put the Rewiring America plan into practice.
The Rewiring America report says that “the total government share of the expense is likely only $250-350 billion per year, with the total public and private spending over 20 years at about 20-25 trillion dollars.”
Assume for simplicity that this expenditure is evenly distributed. The "aggressive WWII–style production ramp–up of 3–5 years" will cost $3 - 5 trillion. At that early stage we'll presumably still be just as carbon intensive as we are now, especially since this expenditure will be focused on industrial processes such as building factories, mining, metal production, and the transportation of all of this new industrial material and its outputs.
Lately the US outputs about 6.6 gigatons per year on a GDP of $20T, so this ramp-up would mean 3-5 years of about a 5% increase in US emissions, roughly equivalent to France or the UK.
I support this plan, and maybe the plan itself addresses this (the Vox article doesn't say), but it would be even better if there were something at the start to offset that temporary emissions increase. Massive tree planting, public transit subsidy, etc.
posted by jedicus at 1:26 PM on August 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
Assume for simplicity that this expenditure is evenly distributed. The "aggressive WWII–style production ramp–up of 3–5 years" will cost $3 - 5 trillion. At that early stage we'll presumably still be just as carbon intensive as we are now, especially since this expenditure will be focused on industrial processes such as building factories, mining, metal production, and the transportation of all of this new industrial material and its outputs.
Lately the US outputs about 6.6 gigatons per year on a GDP of $20T, so this ramp-up would mean 3-5 years of about a 5% increase in US emissions, roughly equivalent to France or the UK.
I support this plan, and maybe the plan itself addresses this (the Vox article doesn't say), but it would be even better if there were something at the start to offset that temporary emissions increase. Massive tree planting, public transit subsidy, etc.
posted by jedicus at 1:26 PM on August 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
Neat; but ever since the Pickens Plan I've always looked for the real plan behind the glitz.
Disrupting local distribution systems? Good luck with that. Most LDCs make a small, regulated profit off those. They're a safety and maintenance nightmare, and that's why private companies avoid them if they can. DX is usually under-specified for two-way flow (and especially two way metering). If you want us all to fly to the future on Tesla-powered unicorns, get the LDCs on-side first. They have long-term investments that they'll guard with all of the laws, and you better understand their ways if you want to have any success.
(I've seen innovators turned away from an LDC meeting because they parked wrongly. That kind of detail matters.)
posted by scruss at 2:12 PM on August 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
Disrupting local distribution systems? Good luck with that. Most LDCs make a small, regulated profit off those. They're a safety and maintenance nightmare, and that's why private companies avoid them if they can. DX is usually under-specified for two-way flow (and especially two way metering). If you want us all to fly to the future on Tesla-powered unicorns, get the LDCs on-side first. They have long-term investments that they'll guard with all of the laws, and you better understand their ways if you want to have any success.
(I've seen innovators turned away from an LDC meeting because they parked wrongly. That kind of detail matters.)
posted by scruss at 2:12 PM on August 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
We're going to need to dig up a lot of copper.
Almost all of the national and local electrical grid is built with aluminum.
posted by JackFlash at 4:02 PM on August 27, 2020
Almost all of the national and local electrical grid is built with aluminum.
posted by JackFlash at 4:02 PM on August 27, 2020
That said, I do feel that North America needs some of the 11,000kV, 1,100A, 3000km long UHVDC lines that China has built in order to properly move that electricity to where it's needed. That's getting on for transatlantic distances with a stop at Reykjavik.
My other thought is that if you're using heat pumps for heating purposes, it makes far more sense to use heat batteries than electric batteries for storing that energy.
But yes, the contrast between the US and Europe in CO₂ intensity of electricity is remarkable. Plus, as scruss mentioned, the fragmentation of the interconnects in the US means that there's going to be a lot of resistance to change.
posted by ambrosen at 5:20 PM on August 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
My other thought is that if you're using heat pumps for heating purposes, it makes far more sense to use heat batteries than electric batteries for storing that energy.
But yes, the contrast between the US and Europe in CO₂ intensity of electricity is remarkable. Plus, as scruss mentioned, the fragmentation of the interconnects in the US means that there's going to be a lot of resistance to change.
posted by ambrosen at 5:20 PM on August 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
Transmission may not need copper, but EV charging, for example, is anticipated to need a lot
posted by Glomar response at 7:05 PM on August 27, 2020
posted by Glomar response at 7:05 PM on August 27, 2020
Recall all the pennies
posted by The otter lady at 10:18 PM on August 27, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by The otter lady at 10:18 PM on August 27, 2020 [8 favorites]
California is about to ban natural gas in all new construction. This is gonna happen.
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:35 PM on August 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:35 PM on August 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
the contrast between the US and Europe in CO₂ intensity of electricity is remarkable.--ambrosen
From your link, I find the contrast within the US and within Europe more remarkable. I assume France is shown green because of the 57 nuclear reactors it has. But those plants are aging and many will be shut down in the next few years. The cost of replacing them is prohibitive, so France is likely to work on increasing wind and solar power. Hopefully they stay 'green' on the map!
posted by eye of newt at 10:42 PM on August 27, 2020
From your link, I find the contrast within the US and within Europe more remarkable. I assume France is shown green because of the 57 nuclear reactors it has. But those plants are aging and many will be shut down in the next few years. The cost of replacing them is prohibitive, so France is likely to work on increasing wind and solar power. Hopefully they stay 'green' on the map!
posted by eye of newt at 10:42 PM on August 27, 2020
Very interesting, thanks.
Also worth looking at is the 2035 report which looks at what it takes to get to 90% renewable electricity by 2035.
They get to a generation mix with much more wind and solar, some batteries, keeping existing nukes as long as their current estimated lives, and using existing gas plants for the rest. Yes that means "over building" gas because it only makes up 10% of the power mix in 2035 but... we've already built them. They last a long time which depends on how many hours they're operated (and the number of times they're started and stopped which means that dispatching them is more complicated than just switching them on whenever power is short but we're getting better at managing that) and most of the existing fleet will still be around in 2035.
Now, a 90% decarbonised grid is not the same as the 90% decarbonised society we need in (realistically, well before) 2050 but it's a good start. Not only that, but decarbonising transport actually makes it easier to manage high variable generation fractions. That's because you're adding load which can be shifted and therefore the % of total electrical energy which can be time shifted increases. Decarbonising domestic heat is a bit more complicated for those places that still use direct combustion of fuels like gas and oil for heat like most of the NE US and Europe. That's because heating loads are highly correlated both between people (everyone in town switches on their heat when its cold) and over time (if it's cold at 3pm, it will have been cold at 1pm and will still be cold at 5pm) which make them difficult to shift around in time. The UK gas distribution system routinely handles a hundredfold difference between its highest and lowest demand periods over the year. Recent work has shown that with *a lot* of additional transmission running North-South, this can be handled because A/C loads closer to the equator dominate summer demand while heating loads further pole-wards dominate winter demand. In fact, if you make a copper-plate grid assumption, electrifying all heating loads actually makes the system easier to handle when you add heat to it, but that is a massive assumption. Places like Western Europe, the coasts of the US + Canada, have dense continous populations and clear terrain that make this relatively easy. Other places like China and India have geographic obstacles in the way of their North South axes.
The summary of this and of other work done in the last few years is this: Guys, we can do this, we can actually do it.
You can look at this problem in several levels:
First, the physical/technical - can it be done at all? To me, a pre-requisite of a realistic plan is one that does not require substantial changes to people's behaviour because we know that they won't make them. It's all well and good to prefer a world where that was different but we have to go to war with the people we have. Can we construct an energy generation, storage, demand response, and transmission system which can do what is needed. The answer is absolutely we can.
The second question is economic.
2a) Are there physically possible configurations which are net positives globally when you price in the cost of inaction? Trivially yes when you consider the cost of climate change.
2b) Since the costs of climate change are distributed and long term, it is also good to know that there are possible configurations which give us our global goals but are economically net positives (or small negatives) even while discounting the effects of climate change? Again, the answer is actually yes. There are benefits from reductions of nitrogen and sulphur oxides, particulates, and other combustion emissions that you have to count as benefits. Some people count jobs as a benefit. I think that's good politics but bad economics.
2c) Are there system configurations that reduce, or at least do not substantially increase, total energy system costs (in NPV of cash terms, not including non-cash benefits) while meeting emissions goals? In most cases, the most recent work has shown that the answer is yes when compared to current costs. There may be moderate increases (<10%) in some places to get to really deep decarbonisation.
3) Financial (not the same as economic). Do current market designs at the wholesale, transmission/distribution, and retail levels adequately distribute those the benefits that we know we have from step 2? Usually not. This is a regulatory issue. If getting to a low system cost requires maintaining a substantial gas fleet for a few hundred hours a year then paying for that fleet on a per MWh basis is probably not going to be efficient, better to introduce a capacity payment element for assets which are providing capacity. UK and European market designs are already being adapted to reflect this reality. (n.b. it is a fact that if the economic benefits are there at a whole system level, there must be a rate/market design which distributes them to all parties.)
posted by atrazine at 1:59 AM on August 28, 2020 [9 favorites]
Also worth looking at is the 2035 report which looks at what it takes to get to 90% renewable electricity by 2035.
They get to a generation mix with much more wind and solar, some batteries, keeping existing nukes as long as their current estimated lives, and using existing gas plants for the rest. Yes that means "over building" gas because it only makes up 10% of the power mix in 2035 but... we've already built them. They last a long time which depends on how many hours they're operated (and the number of times they're started and stopped which means that dispatching them is more complicated than just switching them on whenever power is short but we're getting better at managing that) and most of the existing fleet will still be around in 2035.
Now, a 90% decarbonised grid is not the same as the 90% decarbonised society we need in (realistically, well before) 2050 but it's a good start. Not only that, but decarbonising transport actually makes it easier to manage high variable generation fractions. That's because you're adding load which can be shifted and therefore the % of total electrical energy which can be time shifted increases. Decarbonising domestic heat is a bit more complicated for those places that still use direct combustion of fuels like gas and oil for heat like most of the NE US and Europe. That's because heating loads are highly correlated both between people (everyone in town switches on their heat when its cold) and over time (if it's cold at 3pm, it will have been cold at 1pm and will still be cold at 5pm) which make them difficult to shift around in time. The UK gas distribution system routinely handles a hundredfold difference between its highest and lowest demand periods over the year. Recent work has shown that with *a lot* of additional transmission running North-South, this can be handled because A/C loads closer to the equator dominate summer demand while heating loads further pole-wards dominate winter demand. In fact, if you make a copper-plate grid assumption, electrifying all heating loads actually makes the system easier to handle when you add heat to it, but that is a massive assumption. Places like Western Europe, the coasts of the US + Canada, have dense continous populations and clear terrain that make this relatively easy. Other places like China and India have geographic obstacles in the way of their North South axes.
The summary of this and of other work done in the last few years is this: Guys, we can do this, we can actually do it.
You can look at this problem in several levels:
First, the physical/technical - can it be done at all? To me, a pre-requisite of a realistic plan is one that does not require substantial changes to people's behaviour because we know that they won't make them. It's all well and good to prefer a world where that was different but we have to go to war with the people we have. Can we construct an energy generation, storage, demand response, and transmission system which can do what is needed. The answer is absolutely we can.
The second question is economic.
2a) Are there physically possible configurations which are net positives globally when you price in the cost of inaction? Trivially yes when you consider the cost of climate change.
2b) Since the costs of climate change are distributed and long term, it is also good to know that there are possible configurations which give us our global goals but are economically net positives (or small negatives) even while discounting the effects of climate change? Again, the answer is actually yes. There are benefits from reductions of nitrogen and sulphur oxides, particulates, and other combustion emissions that you have to count as benefits. Some people count jobs as a benefit. I think that's good politics but bad economics.
2c) Are there system configurations that reduce, or at least do not substantially increase, total energy system costs (in NPV of cash terms, not including non-cash benefits) while meeting emissions goals? In most cases, the most recent work has shown that the answer is yes when compared to current costs. There may be moderate increases (<10%) in some places to get to really deep decarbonisation.
3) Financial (not the same as economic). Do current market designs at the wholesale, transmission/distribution, and retail levels adequately distribute those the benefits that we know we have from step 2? Usually not. This is a regulatory issue. If getting to a low system cost requires maintaining a substantial gas fleet for a few hundred hours a year then paying for that fleet on a per MWh basis is probably not going to be efficient, better to introduce a capacity payment element for assets which are providing capacity. UK and European market designs are already being adapted to reflect this reality. (n.b. it is a fact that if the economic benefits are there at a whole system level, there must be a rate/market design which distributes them to all parties.)
posted by atrazine at 1:59 AM on August 28, 2020 [9 favorites]
Some people count jobs as a benefit. I think that's good politics but bad economics.
Why?
posted by biffa at 3:11 AM on August 28, 2020
Why?
posted by biffa at 3:11 AM on August 28, 2020
Perspective from an American living in Amsterdam:
We've been doing some house-hunting because the home office situation in our current apartment is a little constrained for current needs, so I'm getting real familiar with how things are done here. First off -- for new construction no gas is allowed, and there are subsidies for converting your gas heating and cooking to electric. Most of the stuff we've seen that's been built in the last 10 years has in-floor heating and "stadsverwarming" (city heat). Apparently New York also has this in places. It's rare to find a place with AC, although it's becoming more and more necessary each summer, but a lot newer developments have in-floor cooling to go with the in-floor heating. My understanding is they use cold water from the canals.. but I'm not clear on exactly how it works.
The housing market feels a bit inflated at the moment, so we decided instead to do a short-term rental in one of the floating homes that has become available in the SchoonSchip development. It's a project that a group of people worked on for 7 years -- the houses were finally floated into place just last April. They all have solar panels, green roofs, in-floor heating and cooling, vacuum toilets (like in an airplane), and lots of little extras like the water draining from the shower is used to help heat the incoming water. I'm really curious to see how it all works. They have a detailed website on lessons learned so far. (Pro tip: https://www.deepl.com/translator works better than google for translating between Dutch and English.
posted by antinomia at 3:23 AM on August 28, 2020 [4 favorites]
We've been doing some house-hunting because the home office situation in our current apartment is a little constrained for current needs, so I'm getting real familiar with how things are done here. First off -- for new construction no gas is allowed, and there are subsidies for converting your gas heating and cooking to electric. Most of the stuff we've seen that's been built in the last 10 years has in-floor heating and "stadsverwarming" (city heat). Apparently New York also has this in places. It's rare to find a place with AC, although it's becoming more and more necessary each summer, but a lot newer developments have in-floor cooling to go with the in-floor heating. My understanding is they use cold water from the canals.. but I'm not clear on exactly how it works.
The housing market feels a bit inflated at the moment, so we decided instead to do a short-term rental in one of the floating homes that has become available in the SchoonSchip development. It's a project that a group of people worked on for 7 years -- the houses were finally floated into place just last April. They all have solar panels, green roofs, in-floor heating and cooling, vacuum toilets (like in an airplane), and lots of little extras like the water draining from the shower is used to help heat the incoming water. I'm really curious to see how it all works. They have a detailed website on lessons learned so far. (Pro tip: https://www.deepl.com/translator works better than google for translating between Dutch and English.
posted by antinomia at 3:23 AM on August 28, 2020 [4 favorites]
Some people count jobs as a benefit. I think that's good politics but bad economics.
Why?
It's maybe more accurate to characterise my objection as being to claims that its good to produce a lot of jobs relative to the scale of the overall activity. So creating lots of jobs because you're doing something big is good, creating lots of jobs because you're doing something labour intensive is not.
Also, something that creates a lot of expenditure is also inherently something that's expensive. These plans actually are not that expensive.
Something that produces (relative to its scale) a lot of jobs is the same as saying it has low labour productivity aka low capital intensity. That always leads to low pay, even with good legal worker rights and industrial organisation. Both Marxist and neoliberal economic theories predict that.
To be clear, the actual jobs being created here are actually relatively high productivity and therefore have the potential to be highly paid so its the framing of "it creates lots of jobs, therefore it is good" that I think is poor economics not the actual job creation in this particular case.
We wouldn't want a decision rule that said we should do whatever created the most work for people to do because that's subsistence farming, we want the most total benefits transferred to the most people.
posted by atrazine at 4:43 AM on August 28, 2020 [7 favorites]
Why?
It's maybe more accurate to characterise my objection as being to claims that its good to produce a lot of jobs relative to the scale of the overall activity. So creating lots of jobs because you're doing something big is good, creating lots of jobs because you're doing something labour intensive is not.
Also, something that creates a lot of expenditure is also inherently something that's expensive. These plans actually are not that expensive.
Something that produces (relative to its scale) a lot of jobs is the same as saying it has low labour productivity aka low capital intensity. That always leads to low pay, even with good legal worker rights and industrial organisation. Both Marxist and neoliberal economic theories predict that.
To be clear, the actual jobs being created here are actually relatively high productivity and therefore have the potential to be highly paid so its the framing of "it creates lots of jobs, therefore it is good" that I think is poor economics not the actual job creation in this particular case.
We wouldn't want a decision rule that said we should do whatever created the most work for people to do because that's subsistence farming, we want the most total benefits transferred to the most people.
posted by atrazine at 4:43 AM on August 28, 2020 [7 favorites]
I actually see lots of giant holes in this plan. First off, the majority of Americans will have to replace their appliances, car, flooring, and major systems in their house to fix non-problems like " carbon monoxide and that dry mouth in the middle of the night." And for spending all that (close to $100k by my rough math) at government-backed 4% (what a great deal! My private loans are half that) I get to save $2k a year (minus the costs of course, which are way more than $2k a year). Thanks, I'd like another loan to go with my home and car and college (and soon to be private school due to COVID if Republicans win again).
New home building in the US is basically at all-time lows. So yes, we should require solar and heat pumps and all that, but again, all-time lows so the marginal gains of that are going to be-marginal.
This plan strikes me as the ultimate US plan - keep everything the exactly the same but just use electricity. Suburbs, but solar panels and electric cars! Megahighways, but self-driving trucks!
How about a plan to decrease car usage (maybe subsidize additional train tracks for freight) and less parking in downtown areas, instead of cajoling every American with some extra loans and thinking Tesla is going to save us? How about lots of building in the temperate parts of the US so that so many people don't move to the terrible climates in the US?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:01 AM on August 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
New home building in the US is basically at all-time lows. So yes, we should require solar and heat pumps and all that, but again, all-time lows so the marginal gains of that are going to be-marginal.
This plan strikes me as the ultimate US plan - keep everything the exactly the same but just use electricity. Suburbs, but solar panels and electric cars! Megahighways, but self-driving trucks!
How about a plan to decrease car usage (maybe subsidize additional train tracks for freight) and less parking in downtown areas, instead of cajoling every American with some extra loans and thinking Tesla is going to save us? How about lots of building in the temperate parts of the US so that so many people don't move to the terrible climates in the US?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:01 AM on August 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
New home building in the US is basically at all-time lows. So yes, we should require solar and heat pumps and all that, but again, all-time lows so the marginal gains of that are going to be-marginal.
No, it's not at all time lows. New housing is at the highest rate going back to the housing bubble in 2007.
posted by JackFlash at 8:36 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
No, it's not at all time lows. New housing is at the highest rate going back to the housing bubble in 2007.
posted by JackFlash at 8:36 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
People already want to live in temperate parts of the US, which is why California is so frickin' expensive. There are other decent locations, climate-wise, but add considerations for humidity and tropical storms to this map of most pleasant places to live in the US (Kellegous), and you'll probably see why there's also a significant amount of overlap with (dated) maps of more expensive places to live, with another map comparing median income with median home prices (Earlywarn blog).
Another thing to plan: how to recycle dead solar panels (Grist)
And I'll note that while Tesla is the poster child for electric cars, and that may help make EVs seem less like glorified golf carts and more like the sports cars they can be, it also makes them seem like luxury-level purchases. There are a lot of options now (CNet), and significantly more planned for the next few years. And there are a number of efforts and initiatives to increase the prevalence of electric vehicle chargers, though you'll still need an app to find stations for a few years. This is in part because EV chargers have such a small footprint that they can exist in shopping mall parking lots or in front of any business for that matter, as well as being added to existing fueling stations (though some gas station owners see EV chargers as competition with "traditional" fuels, and are not at all interested in expanding their market).
High speed passenger rail would be great to see as an investment in the US, but the costs are so high, and the current support for passenger rail (generally) so low, in part because Amtrak is slow and unreliable. That's not saying it's impossible, but that it's a bigger challenge than getting people to make relatively minor modifications to their lives by buying EVs, which I think is the goal of Saul Griffith's plan. It's easier to sell electrification as set of changes to the status quo on the user end, instead of asking people to change what they do and where they live.
Finally: Saul Griffith's Electrify Everything plan, previously, tucked into Fears about Peak Oil are gone. Now we plan for Peak Demand.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:45 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
Another thing to plan: how to recycle dead solar panels (Grist)
By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen.Bopping over to another related topic: as a transportation planner, I'm very interested to see how COVID-19 responses might stay in place, particularly an increase in work from home as a part-time or full-time option (or preference) for people and businesses. Unfortunately, we need to make people comfortable traveling by public transit again, for those who have an option (compared to those who take transit because it's their only option).
“If we don’t mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill,” said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao, who recently authored a review paper on recycling silicon solar panels, which comprise 95 percent of the solar market.
And I'll note that while Tesla is the poster child for electric cars, and that may help make EVs seem less like glorified golf carts and more like the sports cars they can be, it also makes them seem like luxury-level purchases. There are a lot of options now (CNet), and significantly more planned for the next few years. And there are a number of efforts and initiatives to increase the prevalence of electric vehicle chargers, though you'll still need an app to find stations for a few years. This is in part because EV chargers have such a small footprint that they can exist in shopping mall parking lots or in front of any business for that matter, as well as being added to existing fueling stations (though some gas station owners see EV chargers as competition with "traditional" fuels, and are not at all interested in expanding their market).
High speed passenger rail would be great to see as an investment in the US, but the costs are so high, and the current support for passenger rail (generally) so low, in part because Amtrak is slow and unreliable. That's not saying it's impossible, but that it's a bigger challenge than getting people to make relatively minor modifications to their lives by buying EVs, which I think is the goal of Saul Griffith's plan. It's easier to sell electrification as set of changes to the status quo on the user end, instead of asking people to change what they do and where they live.
Finally: Saul Griffith's Electrify Everything plan, previously, tucked into Fears about Peak Oil are gone. Now we plan for Peak Demand.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:45 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
No, it's not at all time lows. New housing is at the highest rate going back to the housing bubble in 2007.
But that's not a high rate, even looking at your own chart. Index that chart to population, and it's even worse.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:46 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
But that's not a high rate, even looking at your own chart. Index that chart to population, and it's even worse.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:46 AM on August 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
add considerations for humidity and tropical storms to this map of most pleasant places to live in the US (Kellegous), and you'll probably see why there's also a significant amount of overlap with (dated) maps of more expensive places to live, with another map comparing median income with median home prices (Earlywarn blog).
Subsidizing home ownership in the temperate parts of the US would be a better idea IMO than subdizing cars, solar panels, and the electrical grid across the entire US
This site has a chart of home starts in existing popular temperate locations (New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose)instead of the one JackFlash cited, which includes where houses are being built at decent rates - Texas, Arizona, and Florida
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:51 AM on August 28, 2020
Subsidizing home ownership in the temperate parts of the US would be a better idea IMO than subdizing cars, solar panels, and the electrical grid across the entire US
This site has a chart of home starts in existing popular temperate locations (New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose)instead of the one JackFlash cited, which includes where houses are being built at decent rates - Texas, Arizona, and Florida
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:51 AM on August 28, 2020
I'm almost stunned at the realisation that people think this is a choice. That economics, comfort, continuation of lifestyle, money, that these things matter.
It doesn't. Not anymore.
We have reached a point that the following simile is horribly apt:
Imagine you are a jew in 1939 Germany. If you want to survive cost is irrelevant. Standard of living is irrelevant. You need to flee and convert all your wealth into means which allow you to do so. Abandon your house instead of selling it, try to convert your possessions into fungible goods with which you can bribe train conductors, border agents, ship/boat deckhands/captains ... anything to get the fuck out of there, even if it leaves penniless because the alternative is death.
THAT is where we are regarding climate change. Ask ANY climate scientist.
If we want to have a world in which humans can survive (and there are more and more parts right now which cannot support humans naturally, like Qatar, parts of Texas, the middle east [Bagdad was horrible these past months] ... and it is getting worse and worse, not just heat wise but also weather wise [hurricanes/tornadoes/storms/hail/etc]) we have no choice but to metaphorically and literally go for broke. We have to go all in. Reduce pollution. Reduce consumption. Go for carbon neutral energy (which means nuclear power ... but everyone has abandoned that! The stupidity! Wind and solar are great, but the only way to scale at the speed needed is/was nuclear!).
But even that won't cut it: if the human race is to survive (ie have a human habitable planet in the next century) we ALSO have to massively decrease carbon/greenhouse gasses with enormous sequestration works.
It is not a choice! It is scientific fact. Our climate models have proven to be accurate ... but it is the worst case models which have been shown to be what reality is following.
Yet somehow we are discussing it in terms of 'well, it's 1939 and the nazi's are nasty, but let's wait for a better deal on our house'.
We literally have maybe a decade to adjust before it is too late. We know this. Our models show this. And yet cruise ships still exists (which is insane in and of itself as they are incredibly poluting, yet even more insane considering COVID), air travel is so cheap it is extensive, cars are cheap and many countries are organised such that they are deemed necessary. Coal plants are still being built.
And the rational, polite, dignified discussion even here on MF is about how to economically justify maybe changing course.
It's like discussing the cost of coal being too high to drastically change the course of the Titanic when it is heading towards an iceberg: who cares about the cost or discomfort if the alternative is hitting that iceberg?
posted by MacD at 9:25 PM on August 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
It doesn't. Not anymore.
We have reached a point that the following simile is horribly apt:
Imagine you are a jew in 1939 Germany. If you want to survive cost is irrelevant. Standard of living is irrelevant. You need to flee and convert all your wealth into means which allow you to do so. Abandon your house instead of selling it, try to convert your possessions into fungible goods with which you can bribe train conductors, border agents, ship/boat deckhands/captains ... anything to get the fuck out of there, even if it leaves penniless because the alternative is death.
THAT is where we are regarding climate change. Ask ANY climate scientist.
If we want to have a world in which humans can survive (and there are more and more parts right now which cannot support humans naturally, like Qatar, parts of Texas, the middle east [Bagdad was horrible these past months] ... and it is getting worse and worse, not just heat wise but also weather wise [hurricanes/tornadoes/storms/hail/etc]) we have no choice but to metaphorically and literally go for broke. We have to go all in. Reduce pollution. Reduce consumption. Go for carbon neutral energy (which means nuclear power ... but everyone has abandoned that! The stupidity! Wind and solar are great, but the only way to scale at the speed needed is/was nuclear!).
But even that won't cut it: if the human race is to survive (ie have a human habitable planet in the next century) we ALSO have to massively decrease carbon/greenhouse gasses with enormous sequestration works.
It is not a choice! It is scientific fact. Our climate models have proven to be accurate ... but it is the worst case models which have been shown to be what reality is following.
Yet somehow we are discussing it in terms of 'well, it's 1939 and the nazi's are nasty, but let's wait for a better deal on our house'.
We literally have maybe a decade to adjust before it is too late. We know this. Our models show this. And yet cruise ships still exists (which is insane in and of itself as they are incredibly poluting, yet even more insane considering COVID), air travel is so cheap it is extensive, cars are cheap and many countries are organised such that they are deemed necessary. Coal plants are still being built.
And the rational, polite, dignified discussion even here on MF is about how to economically justify maybe changing course.
It's like discussing the cost of coal being too high to drastically change the course of the Titanic when it is heading towards an iceberg: who cares about the cost or discomfort if the alternative is hitting that iceberg?
posted by MacD at 9:25 PM on August 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
And the rational, polite, dignified discussion even here on MF is about how to economically justify maybe changing course.
Where was that? Nobody doubts the requirement to immediately change course.
posted by atrazine at 1:56 AM on August 29, 2020
Where was that? Nobody doubts the requirement to immediately change course.
posted by atrazine at 1:56 AM on August 29, 2020
I've been reading the Rewiring America Field Manual before commenting on this, and it's seeming much more plausible than any other plan I've read (including any of the recent presidential candidates' green energy plans).
There are surely some big holes in it though. One is, as the manual puts it, "We also need financing that works for landlords". But it doesn't have a proposal for that, and 36% of households rent.
posted by joeyh at 5:13 PM on August 29, 2020
There are surely some big holes in it though. One is, as the manual puts it, "We also need financing that works for landlords". But it doesn't have a proposal for that, and 36% of households rent.
posted by joeyh at 5:13 PM on August 29, 2020
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posted by Glomar response at 1:14 PM on August 27, 2020 [2 favorites]