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Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the US. That's because it's also the cheapest source of energy. So markets are working. https://abcnews

by YZF 23d ago

Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the US. That's because it's also the cheapest source of energy. So markets are working. https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-time-report/story?id=133783328 https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... "Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this? Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given the world consumes fossil fuel I prefer they use American fossil fuel vs. Russian or Saudi fossil fuels. I don't understand why we are dwelling on the wrong metric here. Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there? Similarly data centers are going to get built somewhere. If they're already built I'd rather they are built in places like the US. Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Where I would be critical about US policy is that I think they are introducing more tariffs on imported solar panels. This might fit into governments make things worse and hopefully everyone regardless of their political affiliation can push back on this specific item. The world all going to act together stronger than the markets is not going to happen. You can argue that is unfortunate but it's also where we are.

pennomi 23d ago
What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have. Just because the markets are working and the US bungled its way into another war over oil doesn’t mean we should ignore the absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization.
- strictnein 23d ago
  > What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have Someone pointing out that the US is adding large amounts of solar with minimal government effort isn't "rose-tinted", it's just factual. > absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization The good thing is that in the US some people having strong political feelings about something doesn't really stop us from doing things. So not only have we added lots of new solar, we did so with a "braindead" government. That means there's a lot of people in the US who understand the changing needs we face and that having a moron in the White House doesn't really affect that.
- YZF 23d ago
  I'm weird. Just to be fair I'll acknowledge that certain political actors in the US deny there's any man made climate change and fight renewable energy because it conflicts with some narrow business or political interests. I'm not denying that. But... The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here. Not overseas. It's true some element of the "right" are ideologically driven here in the wrong direction but many in the "right" are also pragmatic. Instead of fighting we need to get to common ground and the way to get there is by market forces. Most would prefer the get solar energy if it's cheaper vs. more expensive fossil fuels. And certainly if all else was equal (panels made in the US, American jobs, whatnot). So you can take the adversarial route or you can take the pragmatic route and make real progress. The other stupid political battle here is boycotting Tesla. How does that make sense? We "punish" Elon by using more fossil fuels.
  - kalenx 23d ago
    I don't understand. Are you making the argument that extracting fossil fuel here is better than extracting it elsewhere? Or, perhaps more to the point, you do see that the issue is the use of fossil fuels and that extracting _more_ is just contributing to it? About the (unrelated) boycott question, I would invite you to consider the reasons motivating people to boycott Tesla. If think everyone do that to "hurt" or "punish" Musk, perhaps that's why it doesn't make sense to you.
    - YZF 23d ago
      Yes. I am making the argument that if we extract a barrel of oil in Canada that is all in all better than in Russia or Saudi. We have more environmental standards and we put that money towards better things. Canada was able to give me a rebate on my EV purchase. Where do you think that money comes from? I drive a Tesla because at the time it was (and maybe still is) the best EV. I benefit from the network of superchargers. It is one, if not the, of the most efficient EVs in terms of energy/km. Batteries last a very long time due to battery management. It has been very reliable for me. My decision (way back) was really strictly on what is the best EV with no political considerations (and that was before a lot of the more recent political issues).
- Hikikomori 23d ago
  [flagged]
Gander5739 23d ago
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/3226/ https://xkcd.com/3226/
well_ackshually 23d ago
Markets are fundamentally unable to take into account externalities, but yes, let's "focus on markets and let them take care of the problem". Conveniently ignore the fact that the only reason solar is the cheapest power is because a country put in their political will and power into making it so. Your sacred market has been killing us all and will continue to keep killing us all if it makes a few pennies.
- runarberg 23d ago
  We have seen 20 years of complete inaction precisely because of this “let the market handle it” nonsense. In 2012 Europe was all in on some cap-and-trade scheme that everybody knew was never going to work, everybody told them it was never gonna work, and it turns out it didn’t work. The markets are still not responding to this catastrophe even today, as we should be at absolute zero and we are not even at net zero. The markets have failed everybody, and politicians who believed in the markets were wrong, and should be in jail now for criminal negligence.
asdfman123 23d ago
[flagged]
- derriz 23d ago
  Foreign state actors? We have government agents frequenting this website to sew anti-US sentiment? Really? Could you identify some of them? Or at least one or two of the obvious ones?
  - asdfman123 23d ago
    Yes, I could. But to be serious, there's endless evidence that it's going on, and if you don't believe it I'm not the one with my head in the sand. (That's a common English idiom meaning "not paying attention," for the foreign state actors out there.)
    - derriz 23d ago
      Names or evidence. Either will do.
      - deleted 23d ago
        [deleted]
      - asdfman123 23d ago
        I don't want to
        tomhow 23d ago
        Don't make insinuations you aren't willing to back with evidence. We've had guidelines against this for years, precisely because these claims make for such repetitive and empty discussion, and this subthread is a perfect specimen of that. Any time anyone provides us with evidence of manipulation of the site, we investigate it and take action. We – of course – care about manipulation on HN; the only reason this is a site people come to for discussing so many different important topics is that so much effort has gone into ensuring integrity in the content that can be read here. It's just not that easy to engage in astroturfing, shilling, brigading, etc without setting off alarms either in the software or in the many HN users who have finely honed bullshit detectors, because organized, manipulative participation looks and feels so clearly different from earnest participation.
lovich 23d ago
I would have agreed with you on giving credit but we did an about face in the last 2 years and now are spending billions of dollars to pay off companies that were already building renewables because we failed when trying to just illegally cancel them[1] We’re not letting the market handle it and we’re going in a backwards direction. Can’t really crow about our accomplishments given that. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/rwe-deal-wind-leases https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/rwe-deal-win...
- 0xy 23d ago
  Completely false and epic revisionism. 96.6% of all new energy sources in the US from 2024 to 2026 were green. Nuclear, batteries, solar, wind, hydro. You know people can just look this stuff up right?
  - lovich 23d ago
    But the government is still paying billions of dollars to end renewable projects because they dont like said contracts, right?
    - 0xy 22d ago
      Cool, I prefer hard energy data rather than anecdotes.
      - lovich 22d ago
        Did I not link data showing the government is currently spending billions of dollars to ensure that renewable energy projects are cancelled?
- socalgal2 23d ago
  Cancelling those contracts *IS* letting the market decide The RWE paid 1.26 billion to acquire the lease on offshore wind. Payment is a refund. Further, offshore wind is expensive in terms of maintenance. Stopping the project now is protecting billions in expenses in the future.
HumblyTossed 23d ago
I'm in the US and _I_ don't want us to get credit. Even the worst of people do something good every now and then. But if you reward that, they won't change.
- api 23d ago
  > Even the worst of people do something good every now and then. But if you reward that, they won't change. Scratching my head on that one. I mean... is something not better than nothing? Or do you only get rewarded if it's 100% perfect? If so then by that metric nobody should be rewarded here. There's nobody in the world who has done enough, certainly none of the major economic powers.
  - whatisthiseven 23d ago
    Yes, none of the major economies get rewarded because fossil fuel usage needs to be zero now, already, to avoid catastrophic warming by the end of the century. Do you reward a bull after wrecking a China shop because it decided to at least leave the employees in alive with near fatal wounds?
    - socalgal2 23d ago
      So what have you done to avoid using fossil fuel in your own life? fossil fuel, like almost all things sold, is a demand driven market. You want it to stop, stop doing things that use it.
      - Black616Angel 23d ago
        You call it a demand-driven market like they don't lobby for the usage of coal or gas power plants and sabotage electric mobility and public transit.
  - xelxebar 23d ago
    Goodhart's Law. We want to incentivize right intent in addition to right action. This has nothing to do with degree of perfection and plays a part in why mental state factors significantly into culpability assessment in the law. We want to avoid inadvertently incentivizing reward hacking behavior, especially when the individual rewards are high, overall transparency is low, and the consequences far-reaching.
thrance 23d ago
> So markets are working. > Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. Blind faith in the markets is what got us in this mess. > Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Yes, and usage is not decreasing. As solar is growing, it's only adding capacity, not replacing fossil fuels. 2025 was the record year for global emissions and fossil fuel consumption. But sure, let's let "the markets" dictate our ecological policy. Maybe they'll mercifully let us stop burning oil sometimes in the 2150s. > Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there? Huh? Americans very consistently rank among the biggest emitters, basically only surpassed by citizens of petrostates. I'll just put this here: as long as burning fossil fuel is profitable, "the markets" won't help at all, quite the contrary. And oil being unprofitable isn't happening anytime soon. Our societies are already suffering from Climate Change immensely, and it will only get worse as the years go by. We should have stopped emissions yesterday, we can't let "the markets" take away our agency on the matter and decide our fate.
- api 23d ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita Still a ways to go but trending down for some time now. India and China are trending up and might cross us by 2030-2035 unless they reverse direction.
  - thrance 23d ago
    That's per capita. Total keeps increasing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... Per capita decreasing is not nothing, but unfortunately the climate doesn't care about that particular metric.
  - anonymars 23d ago
    > Americans very consistently show the most emissions per Capita. Even beyond that, it is simply a false statement. Among the most, yes but consistently "the most", no https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=discrete-bar&time=latest&country=QAT~AUS~OMN~KAZ~CAN~SXM~NCL~ARE~SAU~TTO~BHR~BRN~KWT~USA~LUX~TKM~GRL~KOR~TWN~RUS~CUW~PLW~MNG~FRO https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
Devasta 23d ago
> How about we give the US credit for this? If it weren't for the huge efforts put into it by china to make solar and batteries so cheap and capable we wouldn't be nearly as far along in the solar transition as we are. Solar is growing in spite of US policy, not because of it.
- YZF 23d ago
  I was poking people a little with that statement. Can't help myself. But really, there is growth under the policies, so saying "despite" doesn't work. You could try to argue that the policy makers tried to kill solar but achieved the opposite result. But at the end of the day the current policy environment led to a positive result. Correlation isn't causation but if I was writing a policy and I wanted to guarantee the opposite outcome I'll bet ya I could. I happen to know some Americans who have worked really hard to advance renewable energies and have made an impact. To just view the US with one lens is not right is maybe the point I am making, without poking. China makes cheap solar panels because there's a market for them. Panels aren't the only component in a solar system either. A lot of the technology comes from the US and American companies as well. Germany apparently gets some credit as does Australia. The Chinese did what they do best- low cost manufacturing. We got there together.
  - estearum 23d ago
    A car on which you slam on the accelerator and the brakes, and which comes to a stop, is in fact stopping despite your pressing on the accelerator.
markdown 23d ago
> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. The problem is politics and banana republic levels of corruption (aka lobbying) preventing chinese evs to enter the market. If you opened the automotive market to competition ie: > focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. then the need for fossil fuels would decline.
- worik 23d ago
  "banana republic levels of corruption" That is such an understatement
croes 23d ago
> Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. Do you mean the war with Iran that released in the initial weeks over 5 million metric tons of CO₂?
kraf 23d ago
You can just as easily argue that markets caused all this. They don't incentivize the preservation of the planet or even life at all. There is no reason to believe that anything that comes out of markets organically is good, they don't converge towards worlds that have sound values. If they do in some instance then it's just by happenstance as in the solar example. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/#externalities https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta... Also this seems to contradict your fossil fuel paragraph completely, the US is amongst the world's highest fossil fuel consumers per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=total&metric=consumption&per_capita=per_capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=total&m...
goda90 23d ago
> Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. It is a problem though. Extraction and transportation of fossil fuels is a major source of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
- loeg 22d ago
  Methane breaks down over a relatively short timescale (10 years).
  - goda90 22d ago
    Climate change is now a short-term problem. In the next 10 years, numerous ecosystems will be pushed to the point of collapse, and feedback loops will increase as natural carbon sinks start to release their carbon in the face of rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns. Also it breaks down into CO2, so the problem isn't totally gone after 10 years. And we're still accelerating the amount we're releasing anyway.
    - loeg 22d ago
      > Climate change is now a short-term problem. No, it isn't. There are no short-term solutions.
internet_points 23d ago
hah https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-time-report/story?id=133783328 https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... ends with > Trump has touted coal as clean in the past, but experts say coal emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and several other pollutants. Wow, experts say coal emits carbon dioxide. What a world we live in where that's considered expert knowledge.
deleted 22d ago
[deleted]
dgellow 22d ago
> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Markets do not care about externalities. That’s the whole issue. Markets by themselves cannot work for the benefit of humans, you need to regulate them, otherwise we would have child labor and slaves to trade. You need to force the participants to have to deal with their externalities and consider more than the next 2 quarters. Markets are a tool you have to use correctly, it’s not a magical thing that solves all humanity problems by itself
Garora 22d ago
Markets arent going to fix this problem. Solar panels didnt get cheap by magic, they got cheap by investments backed by politics. No modern market is truly free, government loans, subsidies, taxes ect all impact the direction of the market and every single one of them has been used at one point or another to push the market in a certain direction

by YZF 23d ago

pennomi 23d ago

What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have. Just because the markets are working and the US bungled its way into another war over oil doesn’t mean we should ignore the absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization.

strictnein 23d ago
> What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have Someone pointing out that the US is adding large amounts of solar with minimal government effort isn't "rose-tinted", it's just factual. > absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization The good thing is that in the US some people having strong political feelings about something doesn't really stop us from doing things. So not only have we added lots of new solar, we did so with a "braindead" government. That means there's a lot of people in the US who understand the changing needs we face and that having a moron in the White House doesn't really affect that.
YZF 23d ago
I'm weird. Just to be fair I'll acknowledge that certain political actors in the US deny there's any man made climate change and fight renewable energy because it conflicts with some narrow business or political interests. I'm not denying that. But... The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here. Not overseas. It's true some element of the "right" are ideologically driven here in the wrong direction but many in the "right" are also pragmatic. Instead of fighting we need to get to common ground and the way to get there is by market forces. Most would prefer the get solar energy if it's cheaper vs. more expensive fossil fuels. And certainly if all else was equal (panels made in the US, American jobs, whatnot). So you can take the adversarial route or you can take the pragmatic route and make real progress. The other stupid political battle here is boycotting Tesla. How does that make sense? We "punish" Elon by using more fossil fuels.
- kalenx 23d ago
  I don't understand. Are you making the argument that extracting fossil fuel here is better than extracting it elsewhere? Or, perhaps more to the point, you do see that the issue is the use of fossil fuels and that extracting _more_ is just contributing to it? About the (unrelated) boycott question, I would invite you to consider the reasons motivating people to boycott Tesla. If think everyone do that to "hurt" or "punish" Musk, perhaps that's why it doesn't make sense to you.
  - YZF 23d ago
    Yes. I am making the argument that if we extract a barrel of oil in Canada that is all in all better than in Russia or Saudi. We have more environmental standards and we put that money towards better things. Canada was able to give me a rebate on my EV purchase. Where do you think that money comes from? I drive a Tesla because at the time it was (and maybe still is) the best EV. I benefit from the network of superchargers. It is one, if not the, of the most efficient EVs in terms of energy/km. Batteries last a very long time due to battery management. It has been very reliable for me. My decision (way back) was really strictly on what is the best EV with no political considerations (and that was before a lot of the more recent political issues).
Hikikomori 23d ago
[flagged]

Gander5739 23d ago

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/3226/ https://xkcd.com/3226/

well_ackshually 23d ago

Markets are fundamentally unable to take into account externalities, but yes, let's "focus on markets and let them take care of the problem". Conveniently ignore the fact that the only reason solar is the cheapest power is because a country put in their political will and power into making it so. Your sacred market has been killing us all and will continue to keep killing us all if it makes a few pennies.

runarberg 23d ago
We have seen 20 years of complete inaction precisely because of this “let the market handle it” nonsense. In 2012 Europe was all in on some cap-and-trade scheme that everybody knew was never going to work, everybody told them it was never gonna work, and it turns out it didn’t work. The markets are still not responding to this catastrophe even today, as we should be at absolute zero and we are not even at net zero. The markets have failed everybody, and politicians who believed in the markets were wrong, and should be in jail now for criminal negligence.

asdfman123 23d ago

[flagged]

derriz 23d ago
Foreign state actors? We have government agents frequenting this website to sew anti-US sentiment? Really? Could you identify some of them? Or at least one or two of the obvious ones?
- asdfman123 23d ago
  Yes, I could. But to be serious, there's endless evidence that it's going on, and if you don't believe it I'm not the one with my head in the sand. (That's a common English idiom meaning "not paying attention," for the foreign state actors out there.)
  - derriz 23d ago
    Names or evidence. Either will do.
    - deleted 23d ago
      [deleted]
    - asdfman123 23d ago
      I don't want to
      - tomhow 23d ago
        Don't make insinuations you aren't willing to back with evidence. We've had guidelines against this for years, precisely because these claims make for such repetitive and empty discussion, and this subthread is a perfect specimen of that. Any time anyone provides us with evidence of manipulation of the site, we investigate it and take action. We – of course – care about manipulation on HN; the only reason this is a site people come to for discussing so many different important topics is that so much effort has gone into ensuring integrity in the content that can be read here. It's just not that easy to engage in astroturfing, shilling, brigading, etc without setting off alarms either in the software or in the many HN users who have finely honed bullshit detectors, because organized, manipulative participation looks and feels so clearly different from earnest participation.

lovich 23d ago

I would have agreed with you on giving credit but we did an about face in the last 2 years and now are spending billions of dollars to pay off companies that were already building renewables because we failed when trying to just illegally cancel them[1] We’re not letting the market handle it and we’re going in a backwards direction. Can’t really crow about our accomplishments given that. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/rwe-deal-wind-leases https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/rwe-deal-win...

0xy 23d ago
Completely false and epic revisionism. 96.6% of all new energy sources in the US from 2024 to 2026 were green. Nuclear, batteries, solar, wind, hydro. You know people can just look this stuff up right?
- lovich 23d ago
  But the government is still paying billions of dollars to end renewable projects because they dont like said contracts, right?
  - 0xy 22d ago
    Cool, I prefer hard energy data rather than anecdotes.
    - lovich 22d ago
      Did I not link data showing the government is currently spending billions of dollars to ensure that renewable energy projects are cancelled?
socalgal2 23d ago
Cancelling those contracts *IS* letting the market decide The RWE paid 1.26 billion to acquire the lease on offshore wind. Payment is a refund. Further, offshore wind is expensive in terms of maintenance. Stopping the project now is protecting billions in expenses in the future.

HumblyTossed 23d ago

I'm in the US and _I_ don't want us to get credit. Even the worst of people do something good every now and then. But if you reward that, they won't change.

api 23d ago
> Even the worst of people do something good every now and then. But if you reward that, they won't change. Scratching my head on that one. I mean... is something not better than nothing? Or do you only get rewarded if it's 100% perfect? If so then by that metric nobody should be rewarded here. There's nobody in the world who has done enough, certainly none of the major economic powers.
- whatisthiseven 23d ago
  Yes, none of the major economies get rewarded because fossil fuel usage needs to be zero now, already, to avoid catastrophic warming by the end of the century. Do you reward a bull after wrecking a China shop because it decided to at least leave the employees in alive with near fatal wounds?
  - socalgal2 23d ago
    So what have you done to avoid using fossil fuel in your own life? fossil fuel, like almost all things sold, is a demand driven market. You want it to stop, stop doing things that use it.
    - Black616Angel 23d ago
      You call it a demand-driven market like they don't lobby for the usage of coal or gas power plants and sabotage electric mobility and public transit.
- xelxebar 23d ago
  Goodhart's Law. We want to incentivize right intent in addition to right action. This has nothing to do with degree of perfection and plays a part in why mental state factors significantly into culpability assessment in the law. We want to avoid inadvertently incentivizing reward hacking behavior, especially when the individual rewards are high, overall transparency is low, and the consequences far-reaching.

thrance 23d ago

> So markets are working. > Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. Blind faith in the markets is what got us in this mess. > Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Yes, and usage is not decreasing. As solar is growing, it's only adding capacity, not replacing fossil fuels. 2025 was the record year for global emissions and fossil fuel consumption. But sure, let's let "the markets" dictate our ecological policy. Maybe they'll mercifully let us stop burning oil sometimes in the 2150s. > Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there? Huh? Americans very consistently rank among the biggest emitters, basically only surpassed by citizens of petrostates. I'll just put this here: as long as burning fossil fuel is profitable, "the markets" won't help at all, quite the contrary. And oil being unprofitable isn't happening anytime soon. Our societies are already suffering from Climate Change immensely, and it will only get worse as the years go by. We should have stopped emissions yesterday, we can't let "the markets" take away our agency on the matter and decide our fate.

api 23d ago
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita Still a ways to go but trending down for some time now. India and China are trending up and might cross us by 2030-2035 unless they reverse direction.
- thrance 23d ago
  That's per capita. Total keeps increasing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... Per capita decreasing is not nothing, but unfortunately the climate doesn't care about that particular metric.
- anonymars 23d ago
  > Americans very consistently show the most emissions per Capita. Even beyond that, it is simply a false statement. Among the most, yes but consistently "the most", no https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=discrete-bar&time=latest&country=QAT~AUS~OMN~KAZ~CAN~SXM~NCL~ARE~SAU~TTO~BHR~BRN~KWT~USA~LUX~TKM~GRL~KOR~TWN~RUS~CUW~PLW~MNG~FRO https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

Devasta 23d ago

> How about we give the US credit for this? If it weren't for the huge efforts put into it by china to make solar and batteries so cheap and capable we wouldn't be nearly as far along in the solar transition as we are. Solar is growing in spite of US policy, not because of it.

YZF 23d ago
I was poking people a little with that statement. Can't help myself. But really, there is growth under the policies, so saying "despite" doesn't work. You could try to argue that the policy makers tried to kill solar but achieved the opposite result. But at the end of the day the current policy environment led to a positive result. Correlation isn't causation but if I was writing a policy and I wanted to guarantee the opposite outcome I'll bet ya I could. I happen to know some Americans who have worked really hard to advance renewable energies and have made an impact. To just view the US with one lens is not right is maybe the point I am making, without poking. China makes cheap solar panels because there's a market for them. Panels aren't the only component in a solar system either. A lot of the technology comes from the US and American companies as well. Germany apparently gets some credit as does Australia. The Chinese did what they do best- low cost manufacturing. We got there together.
- estearum 23d ago
  A car on which you slam on the accelerator and the brakes, and which comes to a stop, is in fact stopping despite your pressing on the accelerator.

markdown 23d ago

> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. The problem is politics and banana republic levels of corruption (aka lobbying) preventing chinese evs to enter the market. If you opened the automotive market to competition ie: > focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. then the need for fossil fuels would decline.

worik 23d ago
"banana republic levels of corruption" That is such an understatement

croes 23d ago

> Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. Do you mean the war with Iran that released in the initial weeks over 5 million metric tons of CO₂?

kraf 23d ago

You can just as easily argue that markets caused all this. They don't incentivize the preservation of the planet or even life at all. There is no reason to believe that anything that comes out of markets organically is good, they don't converge towards worlds that have sound values. If they do in some instance then it's just by happenstance as in the solar example. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/#externalities https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta... Also this seems to contradict your fossil fuel paragraph completely, the US is amongst the world's highest fossil fuel consumers per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=total&metric=consumption&per_capita=per_capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=total&m...

goda90 23d ago

> Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. It is a problem though. Extraction and transportation of fossil fuels is a major source of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

loeg 22d ago
Methane breaks down over a relatively short timescale (10 years).
- goda90 22d ago
  Climate change is now a short-term problem. In the next 10 years, numerous ecosystems will be pushed to the point of collapse, and feedback loops will increase as natural carbon sinks start to release their carbon in the face of rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns. Also it breaks down into CO2, so the problem isn't totally gone after 10 years. And we're still accelerating the amount we're releasing anyway.
  - loeg 22d ago
    > Climate change is now a short-term problem. No, it isn't. There are no short-term solutions.

internet_points 23d ago

hah https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-time-report/story?id=133783328 https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... ends with > Trump has touted coal as clean in the past, but experts say coal emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and several other pollutants. Wow, experts say coal emits carbon dioxide. What a world we live in where that's considered expert knowledge.

deleted 22d ago

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dgellow 22d ago

> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Markets do not care about externalities. That’s the whole issue. Markets by themselves cannot work for the benefit of humans, you need to regulate them, otherwise we would have child labor and slaves to trade. You need to force the participants to have to deal with their externalities and consider more than the next 2 quarters. Markets are a tool you have to use correctly, it’s not a magical thing that solves all humanity problems by itself

Garora 22d ago

Markets arent going to fix this problem. Solar panels didnt get cheap by magic, they got cheap by investments backed by politics. No modern market is truly free, government loans, subsidies, taxes ect all impact the direction of the market and every single one of them has been used at one point or another to push the market in a certain direction