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> the geopolitics of the post-oil age Goddard called the West Germans "the generation of blue jeans and coca cola," wearing tricolor and driving manual transmi
by hamonrye 11mo ago
> the geopolitics of the post-oil age
Goddard called the West Germans "the generation of blue jeans and coca cola," wearing tricolor and driving manual transmission cars.
The photovoltaic effect is whale oil for the modern age.
- pavel_lishin 11mo ago> The photovoltaic effect is whale oil for the modern age. What?
- clintonc 11mo agoWhale oil and solar panels both being signs of high status.
- lynguist 11mo agoI still don’t understand. In actual history whale oil made airplane engines go (as lubricants) until the 1970s when they switched to synthetic. Most whales were killed in the 20th century to make planes go, not in the 19th to make city lights burn.
- lifeisstillgood 11mo agoTIL - yeah the 20C saw millions killed vs 19C and hundreds of thousands. I mean obviously that was industrialisation. Seems to be mostly meat, fats for cooking and a fair amount of TNT production - as well as lubricants for planes … But in 1986 the whaling moratorium came in, and numbers killed have been hundreds or few thousand since. Yay Star Trek
- Barrin92 11mo agoI assume that perspective applies only to West Germans (which btw I happen to be and it's nonsense here too), but Pakistan[1] didn't replace one third of their energy supply in the last few years because they're such yuppies, photovoltaic literally saved them from their energy grid breaking down. Solar energy isn't a fashion statement, it's rapidly and cheaply getting energy to billions of people who need it the most. [1]https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/01/climate/pakistan-solar-boom https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/01/climate/pakistan-solar-bo...
- yannyu 11mo agoIt's so bizarre to think that harvesting free energy from the sun could be considered a political or status position. Is it not logically obvious that harvesting as much free energy as possible is the strategically stronger position? Why would you not want to do that?
- rsynnott 11mo agoIt's nonsense, of course, but that is the current right-wing propaganda on the matter.
- zrail 11mo agoIt's effectively spelled out in the article. The wealth of the last century has been fueled in large part by fossil fuels and it takes an embarrassingly small fraction of that wealth to convince the populace that the competition (I.e. renewables) is a status symbol.
- shantara 11mo agoIt’s not only economically advantageous, but also increases the grid resilience. In times of war and conflict large power plants and their accompanying high voltage transmission lines and banks of transformers become an easy target. Adding more local decentralized power production solves the problem.