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Way to throw your personal beliefs on everyone you don't agree with I'm very much into sustainability and being environmentally-friendly. However, I'm not advocating for a Venezuelan-style government. I'm advocating for a Canadian or European-style government where the citizens' well-being is a priority of the government, rather the well-being of corporate profits.
How do you know? I'm originally from Europe and the citizens' well-being is definitely NOT a priority. The European society is mostly build around keeping the elite ('swamp') in power. Taxation is massive, and individual initiate is not encouraged. Hint: look how the European Union economy is doing vs the United States.
As far as my personal beliefs: I am a big, BIG fan of a clean planet and to investigate into better solutions for everyone. However, I do not believe that the government is the solution. Everything they touch, end up in a near-disaster. The key is a market driven approach with limited regulations.
A big problem with renewables is reliability. Raw cost per KwH has come down, but they don't produce all the time. Solar has it's obvious issues (night, clouds, etc.) and the wind doesn't always blow. This means you need excess capacity and storage (raising the total cost for renewable power tremendously), or other sources of power that can be brought on like to fill (most likely fossil fuel powered.)
As far as vehicle pollution, other than CO2 (which may or may not actually be considered a pollutant), modern cars essentially produce no pollution. They've been brought to heel by pollution control engineering. Diesel trucks, OTOH are an issue. But the economy essentially runs on them.
Even if we need to deal with CO2, a better way to deal with that would be carbon neutral biofuels. Electric motors are great, batteries are terrible, and will never really get good enough to replace liquid fuels.
Renewable energy plants commonly come with storage whose costs have also come down dramatically, so it's not just raw cost per kWh that has come down. We're also not anywhere near the point of saturation for renewable energy anyhow, so opening more renewable energy power plants can simply mean that fossil fuel plants can burn at lower levels of energy production--gas plants are often used as peaker plants after all.
I think you mean to say that modern cars produce far less pollution than that of cars of yesteryear. While that part's true, it is not the same thing as modern cars not producing air pollution (and who knows if the feds will try to roll back emissions or strike down state ability to enforce emissions regulations that are tighter than the federal government's). AOC's district, for various reasons including the huge density of combustion engine traffic going through the borough, has among the highest asthma rates in the city. Is the air quality there much better than it was in the 70s and 80s? Yea, absolutely, but that's not no pollution from modern vehicles.
Sure, carbon neutral biofuels can be great, and yea, there are total cost issues with batteries as there are with biofuels. There's money being put into research for both, and right now batteries and electric motors are looking quite a bit better. Batteries should be and are getting better with energy density and doing so rapidly, but they also don't need to have the same energy density as liquid fuels, because electric motors are so much more efficient than combustion engines. One thing that's interesting about arguments versus electric vehicles is that it often involves a really good overall view of the costs and drawbacks of mining and distribution, potential transmission losses, and source / locality of materials. I think that's fantastic, but it's also important in a comparison to use that rubric with fossil fuels and biofuels.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-04-2019 at 06:13 AM..
The key is to find mechanisms (machines) to reduce CO2, which are already being worked on. Put a tax on energy companies (let's say 5% of their profits) with a CO2 reduction goal that they'll have to re-invest in technology to reduce CO2. Everyone happy (except of course the greenies who pretend to care about the environment but in reality really want a socialistic government controlled society).
I think you're talking about creating mass-produced technologies for removing CO2 directly, is that right? I think that's fine and a carbon tax of sorts is an alright way to go about it. There's some promising research on ways to efficiently remove CO2 directly, but nothing quite proven out on a production scale aside from the obvious like plant trees. Right now, the US is having a difficult time with the dialogue of even reducing CO2 emissions (and for those machines to work, you need to remove faster or as fast as you emit, so you're likely going to need to reduce CO2 emissions to a large extent as well) or agreement that it's a goal at all.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-04-2019 at 06:36 AM..
I think you're talking about creating mass-produced technologies for removing CO2 directly, is that right? I think that's fine and a carbon tax of sorts is an alright way to go about it. There's some promising research on ways to efficiently remove CO2 directly, but nothing quite proven out on a production scale aside from the obvious like plant trees. Right now, the US is having a difficult time with the dialogue of even reducing CO2 emissions (and for those machines to work, you need to remove faster or as fast as you emit, so you're likely going to need to reduce CO2 emissions to a large extent as well) or agreement that it's a goal at all.
Only works if every nation follows suit. Those that do will subsidize those countries at a cost to the subsidizers
Only works if every nation follows suit. Those that do will subsidize those countries at a cost to the subsidizers
Well, it definitely works a lot better if every nation follows suit which is why there have been so many attempts to create international treaties to do so. It’s also neither completely worthless if not every single nation meets their set goals nor is it necessarily unprofitable to do so since many of the technologies and policies involved can have ancillary benefits, be sold to other markets who are trying to meet such goals, and a reduction in emissions and pollutants sometimes has a more pronounced local and regional effect than global one.
For the US, there are also additional benefits as it’s not entirely coincidental that some of the more antagonistic nations, including some allies, have outsized influence due to global including US dependence on fossil fuels especially petroleum.
I'm actually trying to. I'm researching some ways I can without just being an English teacher. If Trump wins in 2020, there's an immigration lawyer in Toronto I'll be contacting.
I'm actually trying to. I'm researching some ways I can without just being an English teacher. If Trump wins in 2020, there's an immigration lawyer in Toronto I'll be contacting.
I'm sure a lot of us would kick in a few bucks for your plane ticket. Try to bring some friends with you. We got them covered too.
How come people always threaten to go to Canada, and not Mexico?
Yea, and it's odd that there are a lot more US citizens that live in Mexico than in Canada. Mexico City had / has a massive US expat population that's the largest US population of any city in the world and I'd almost certainly choose Mexico City over any city in Canada for relocation, though I do love Montreal.
My guess is that people are usually thinking of Anglo-Canada and there's a lot less exotic-ness to it since the common language outside of Quebec is very much English which we also speak here and speaking the day-to-day language is important especially for employment purposes. I do know a couple who moved up to Montreal several years ago, because I think in their heads they thought it was going to be more of a French flourish and that English was easy enough to get by especially as the job did not have a French language requirement. Well, it is easy enough to get by--in tourist locations as a tourist. Apparently, living there is a different story so they radically shifted on how important learning French is though I think one of them is pretty ready to just move to Anglo-Canada instead.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-05-2019 at 08:40 AM..
How come people always threaten to go to Canada, and not Mexico?
It's also a consideration for me. I've never been to Mexico City and that's where I'd likely go. But I'm visiting next month. If I like it, I'd add it to my list of places to consider moving to.
But for me, it's possible to move to Mexico because I speak Spanish. It's a very simple concept that people who still must work and earn a living would rather live in a place where they speak the language so they can have more and better job opportunities. Retirees are fine in Mexico since they don't have to converse in Spanish in order to make a living. My friends who don't speak Spanish would be stuck with basic English teaching jobs in Mexico, but in Canada they could work basically any job their visas allowed them to without the language limitations.
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I'm very much into sustainability and being environmentally-friendly. However, I'm not advocating for a Venezuelan-style government. I'm advocating for a Canadian or European-style government where the citizens' well-being is a priority of the government, rather the well-being of corporate profits.
