> As opposed to the people starving, freezing, and overheating because they don't have reliable and affordable access to energy?
> The oil majors are not wrong in that we need (relatively) cheap energy. And will for some time. Any climate policy that isn't honest about that isn't solving anything.
There are carbon neutral power sources that would have been cheap to deploy. Nuclear was one of those sources but faced years of anti-nuclear lobbying primarily from the oil industry. [1]
Funnily, some of the initial support for solar power came from the fossil fuel industry. Primarily as an anti-nuclear campaign and primarily because they knew solar wasn't feasible early on.
It's only now that solar is far more feasible that the talking points have shifted away from cost and towards reliability.
To be clear, solar is now one of the cheapest forms of power generation. [2] Further, coupling that power generation with nat gas peaker plants has a highly reduced carbon footprint. Eventually replacing those nat gas sources with grid batteries is something that we are now not limited by cost, but rather battery production capacity.
The somewhat new attack I'm seeing now revolves around how dirty mining is. In other words, they appear to be playing the game of "making 'perfect' the enemy of 'good'".
Also funnily, it looks like oil lobbyists are now taking the approach of advocating for nuclear. [3] Why? My speculation is because they know that regulations in the US are now such that it will take years and billions to turn on new nuclear, they are banking on the fact that those regulations won't change and the nuclear projects end up DOA. (prolonging the reliance on fossil fuels).
> The oil majors are not wrong in that we need (relatively) cheap energy. And will for some time. Any climate policy that isn't honest about that isn't solving anything.
There are carbon neutral power sources that would have been cheap to deploy. Nuclear was one of those sources but faced years of anti-nuclear lobbying primarily from the oil industry. [1]
Funnily, some of the initial support for solar power came from the fossil fuel industry. Primarily as an anti-nuclear campaign and primarily because they knew solar wasn't feasible early on.
It's only now that solar is far more feasible that the talking points have shifted away from cost and towards reliability.
To be clear, solar is now one of the cheapest forms of power generation. [2] Further, coupling that power generation with nat gas peaker plants has a highly reduced carbon footprint. Eventually replacing those nat gas sources with grid batteries is something that we are now not limited by cost, but rather battery production capacity.
The somewhat new attack I'm seeing now revolves around how dirty mining is. In other words, they appear to be playing the game of "making 'perfect' the enemy of 'good'".
Also funnily, it looks like oil lobbyists are now taking the approach of advocating for nuclear. [3] Why? My speculation is because they know that regulations in the US are now such that it will take years and billions to turn on new nuclear, they are banking on the fact that those regulations won't change and the nuclear projects end up DOA. (prolonging the reliance on fossil fuels).
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
[2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/19/sunny-places-could-se...
[3] https://www.heritage.org/nuclear-energy/commentary/nuclear-c...