"Environmental Activism as Carbon Imperialism: Nightmare for the Poor"

Looking up the people this guy works for made me laugh.

As noted by OP he is "Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation."

Their stated position is:

Assuming that set of preconditions the authors position is totally sensible.

Also,

Personally, I'm not really comfortable using theological tests to vet scientific results, but to each his own.

 

I got to admit that is a genius way to prey on religious beliefs.

 

You don't say.

 

I believe natural gas kills multiple birds with one stone and yet the O&G industry is tripping over their dicks trying to be the most hated industry in the world....

Geopolitically, a lot of effort has been put into securing energy for ourselves and our allies throughout the last 100 years. A big part of the Cold War was securing energy against the backdrop of the vast Soviet energy reserves we didn't want ourselves or allies to rely on. Hence our reliance/the creation of OPEC and all the resources spent going down that rabbit hole. Now technology has flipped energy scarcity and we've gone from Operation Iraqi Freedom/Peak Oil to largest producer/peak demand. Obama was a center left moderate who had a production renaissance occur under his administration; his administration really needed those high paying jobs too. Trump was a wild card whose "America First" policy hurt global demand and the very industries he wanted to help.

To make a short story shorter, we have an opportunity to supply the world with a reliable, relatively inexpensive, and cleaner fuel source than coal. It's not just that gas emits less GHG than coal, it produces no SOX, NOX, or particulate matter that leads to smog and lung disease. You can build natural gas plants near population centers without the air quality issues.

I worry Biden is going to be less pragmatic on climate change instead of focusing on the vast low hanging renewable fruits we have.

 

I hear this often. It's God's design, so of course, Earth's climate will be fine. Since God designed the human body to be vulnerable to viruses, cancer, easily becoming imbalanced in chemical and suffer greatly, dying every 1.78 sec on Earth, why do these people somehow think such intelligence design for the Earth means it will just be fine?

 

To paraphrase George Carlin the planet will be fine it's the humans that are f^(&ed...

 

Environmentalism has to stress that msg over and over again. It's inherently humanist. "Environmentalists" only care about the environment and cute animals because they enjoy their existence.

So the messaging of "Save the Earth" is off.

More like "Save Ourselves".

Even species damaging radioactive waste fizzles away in an Earth moment.

Hell it's even possible we weren't the first self aware race on earth.

 

We also aren't the first species to cause a mass extinction either and if not for other mass extinctions we wouldn't be here.

Anyway humans and human civilization developed under a very narrow climatic range. Any shift is going to have major effects and most of those aren't good.

 

Natural gas is certainly a stepping stone technology but it's not a long term solution. Many developing countries don't have easily accessible natural gas resources and the cost of importing natural gas especially as LNG can also be burdensome. If we're talking about places like India and SE Asia that also would put them more at the mercy of the PRC and Russia which have natural gas reserves.

Besides long term, health, climactic and economic benefits generating your own power from ubiquitous sources is also good for national security. It will be very difficult for another country to control your access to the Sun and Wind.

 

3 part series by Julia Pyper.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/india-solar-energy-transition-pandemic-2020

Part 1:
How India’s Renewable Energy Sector Survived and Thrived in a Turbulent 2020
Record-low solar tariffs and flexible clean power auctions pushed India’s renewable energy growth in the midst of pandemic impacts. Now, it’s a question of pace.


Part 2:

A Vibrant Cleantech Startup Ecosystem Takes Root in India
India’s enormous talent pool is being tapped to tackle some of the country’s greatest challenges, including how to provide reliable clean power.




Part 3:

How Long Will Coal Remain King in India?
India isn’t ditching coal. But its use could plateau and even decline with the right blend of policies and technologies.

 

Sure. Even renewable energy will struggle to be a base load energy source for the near term against gas and nuclear. We had a LNG boom up until the trade war ramped up. We have a supply glut in North America and are back to just burning off excess gas instead of bringing it to market (also lack of new infrastructure). Considering that most of the world lives along the coast, that's a lot of potential customers. The PRC is reliant on imports in spite of its large reserves because the reserves are so far away from the population centers.

US LNG exporters keep utilization near capacity as Asian prices test new heights



I will just say the Climate Accord would be a prudent time for the Biden administration to kill coal and replace it with gas and renewables.

It will also be difficult to generate enough energy from wind and solar where it isn't very windy or sunny. The US is pretty lucky to have such a geographic advantage to have large swaths of sunny regions and windy regions.

Right now we are still working on getting all the "low hanging renewable fruit" and it gets increasingly harder from there.

 

Obviously no country in the World is going to suddenly switch to all renewables but the longer the delay is the harder it will be to switch. In some ways developing countries have one advantage that they don't have a lot of legacy infrastructure and as such can build new infrastructure without being saddled with older infrastructure. Take for example how cell phones are pretty much ubiquitous now in the World and in many parts of the world they have gone straight from not having much phone service to cell service. Technology has made it easier to set up a cellular network than it ever was to try to string up wires for physical phone lines. We have the technology to do the same thing with electricity.

To generate power you need one of four things: combustables, motion, heat, or light. Our current infrastructure has been built off of the first but anywhere in the world there is at least two of those. Anyone living along a coast has access to motion both through wind and tides. Even in Northern Europe they have access to the Sun and that's one of the reasons why Germany is one of the leaders in solar technology. Storage is still an issue but it's not as much of an issue as people think given great increases in battery technology and efficiency. Also building a modern power infrastructure wouldn't just rely upon one source but multiple and decentralized sources. When the Sun isn't shining the wind might still be blowing when neither are available you could still use a natural gas as a back up or even better use methane harvested from biological sources.

This isn't a problem of technology as the technology exists already. It's a problem of infrastructure and vision.

 

The same with natural gas.... look at Texas. We are replacing coal with natural gas and renewables. We built dozens of new gas plants to take advantage of cheap gas, we connected our wind potential to our population centers with transmission lines, and are starting to build solar in earnest in the sunniest parts.

Gas is going to be around for decades to come because it's just that effective.

Arizona and California solar energy is more efficient than German clearly. Geography still very much matters.

I am for renewable future, but just want to do so pragmatically and realistically. In the real world Tesla is building their factory in Texas while the Rust Belt has diesel engine factories. Any practical solutions will have to have both initially.

 

Fair enough, “slowly put the nail in the coffin”.

The climate accords would be a great time to promote American gas over coal. US energy as a geopolitical strategy is prudent.

 

Interesting... real or hype

Australian green hydrogen innovator set to flip the Philippines’ coal-fired fleet – pv magazine Australia (pv-magazine-australia.com)

Australian green hydrogen innovator set to flip the Philippines’ coal-fired fleet
Australian technology company Star Scientific has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Philippines’ Department of Energy in order to trace out the use of its game-changing HERO technology. The partnership could see Star Scientific transform every coal-fired power plant in the nation to green hydrogen while also utilising the technology to, among other things, provide clean, quick, desalinated water.

JANUARY 29, 2021 BLAKE MATICH

 

Sometimes we need to take a step back and realize why other countries cannot catch up or they struggle with solutions.....

Coal is cheap, Coal is abundant, Coal is technology every country can master

All (well not all, the great ones) other clean source energy requires the following
1. Knowledge/skills to maintain
2. Paying patents, license fee, etc to other countries who own this technology. Sometimes the these fee's are outrageously high to a poor country
3. Attaining the equipment for a feasible cost
4. Capital to build it (anybody giving free loans with 0% interest)

Some of these countries struggle to attain the above because their economy just doesn't generate enough money to support this or they lack a cohesive educated group that can accomplish the tasks.

Clean energy and all it's technology should be free and taught to all countries to help them escalate this movement but....we know that ain't happening. Hence my reasoning why topics like this gets discussed for years with no real change. Should we give up? Nope but i always believe each and everyone one of us should do our part (recycle, turn off lights not used, etc etc etc).

Going Green to "Tree Huggers" means saving planet
Going Green to "Money hungry" means let's make as much money possible, even if we have to cut corners.