this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 days ago (18 children)

Perfect. Now that renewable technology is finally cheap and quick to build, the oil and gas lobby is trying to redirect attention to nuclear, which takes decades to build in most places.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (16 children)

We can do both. There’s nothing preventing us from doing both, and the most effective way for the oil and gas lobby to get what they want is to divide us.

If pro-renewable people say “we must only have renewables, nothing else!” It makes us seem like ideologues. If we seem like ideologues, moderates get confused because they think “well I do like to hedge my bets and try all things out.” And pro-nuclear advocates (who are all over the spectrum) get louder, complain more, and swing more moderates and politicians back toward nuclear and away from renewables. Then you can repeat the cycle in reverse.

The conservative trick is not to substitute something that doesn’t work for something that does. It’s to keep us divided, blaming each other, and going back and forth between different solutions so often that we never get anything done. Chaos is a ladder.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (6 children)

We can do both.

If you have a set amount of money and resources to invest renewables are almost exclusively the better choice. Investing in nuclear instead means it will take even longer for us to wean off fossiles. That's why it's so useful for the oil lobby to support nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

We don’t have a set amount of money and resources, fundamentally.

We have an abundance of food, water, and shelter.

We have a lot of smart people who are currently spending their lives making money on made up markets and apps.

We have plenty of steel, concrete, and any other resources that would be in contention.

When it comes to money, if we raised taxes just a little, we’d be fine. I’m kind of an MMT person, but point is, we could get money, print it, tax it, etc. as it’s an abstraction on top of the other things above.

The mindset of “it’s gotta be one or the other” is a false choice presented by the fossil fuel industry and conservative politicians. They say we can’t raise taxes and we can’t increase deficit spending so they can get us to fight. And I guarantee you, if we all agreed to do nuclear, they would flip the script and start investing in renewables, because what they want is to kill momentum. After all, who do you think was behind all the scare mongering after three mile island?

I don’t want to kill momentum for renewables, but I want to start building it for nuclear at the same time.

We can do both.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

If we were actually going full speed with “all of the above”, I’d agree. We need to and it’ll give the best results. However nuclear is very expensive and takes too many years to build. All too often it’s there only because the current fossil fuel companies would find it more profitable.

We can’t afford to lose momentum on the fastest and cheapest energy choices to wait for something more profitable for fossil fuel companies

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The mindset of “it’s gotta be one or the other” is a false choice presented by the fossil fuel industry and conservative politicians.

What fossil lobby or conservative politician is currently saying "okay guys you can have renewables, but then we will have to cut back on nuclear"? That's the opposite of what conservatives are saying.

You are repeating a talking point that's being spread around to distract from the fact that it is financially rewarding for the fossil lobby to postpone the transition away from them to sustainable energy sources as far as possible, which is exactly what will happen if we drain resources from renewables towards nuclear. And acting like our resources aren't in some way limited is nothing but wishful thinking.

While you wait for the next nuclear power plant, the fossil fuel lobby is raking in record profits for decades to come.

Invest the money into renewables instead. And every bit of money you think you can get from "just raising the taxes a little" or "printing it" - invest that too. Everything else is a waste of time and resources.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I don’t care what bad-faith conservatives are saying, yes they’re full of it. Here are the facts:

  • We are pushing forward full-tilt on renewables in general. Factories are going up, the IRA was 80% focused on renewables, and as long as the incoming admin doesn't actively roll things back, we’re heading in the right direction.
  • Headlines like this one are coming up because private companies are starting to invest in nuclear for their own purposes. This is spare money and effort that we could be leaving on the table.
  • If we start seeing politicians actively shutting down green energy in favor of nuclear, we should absolutely say “fuck no”.
  • As of yet, I have not been seeing this in policy or in reality, and every year the renewable industry becomes more self-sustaining and grows without active pushes from the government (though we can and should continue to subsidize).

From where I’m standing, we should be encouraging the private sector and investing some percentage of our portfolio in restarting and building nukes with all of that context.

This is the same logic behind building an investment portfolio. You could go all in on Bitcoin, or you could spread out your portfolio in the market. 80% into the solid, tried and true stocks, 15% into up and comers, 5% into moonshots like crypto or gamestop or whatever. Same deal here.

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