Why do we need more of it? Since 1950 the USA has increased electricity usage 14x with slightly over 2x the population. With full electrification, our electricity demands are expected to increase by 90% in 2050 with only a ~10% population bump.

Surely we’ve gone beyond necessary consumption and hit diminishing quality-of-life returns. And all of this is considering just production, excluding the complications of replacing infrastructure, transportation fleets and upgrading the grid.

Those projections also don’t include gen-AI datacenters, which will consume ~12% of total usage by 2028. Electric trains are between 2-10x more efficient per passenger/kWh than BEVs. With a focus on more efficient transportation you could turn off those datacenters, skip the complex and expensive BEV infrastructure and come out with a much lower 2050 consumption.

This sounds like quite a rube goldberg machine to avoid simply supplying a predictable baseline with nuclear. If you try to out-surplus increasingly common climate catastrophes, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.

Any surplus or pricing plan will be gamed by power hungry datacenters or other wasteful capitalist scam-de-jour. Like you said, demand is elastic so any spare watt will eventually be sucked up as the price curve is optimized. The combined fluctuations on supply+demand is not what you want for a stable grid.

I predict a scenario where storage has to shore up that instability; much more storage than people think. The potential for a zero-supply floor (independent of demand growth) with massive surplus peaks requires building out an equally massive buffer. What will that ecological damage will look like? Will our current projections and efficiencies hold true at that scale?

The cheap energy -> increased demand -> increased storage -> more surplus cycle will cement our reliance on cheap energy, which requires more stability which means more storage, etc…

Let me clarify here that renewables are important for planning a responsible energy future, but only chasing cheap energy isn’t the solution. It’s not possible for us to out-produce the over-consumption that got us here.

Can anyone explain to me why cost matters in these conversations? Do shrinking populations need more energy for any sane reason? If so, do we need it scaled that rapidly?

Do we need electricity to be dirt cheap for any reason other than we want to consume it? Is it just capitalism-brain insisting that tricking the market with profit incentives will save our planet?

Fair point, but it’s still a flat tax regardless of miles driven. Current Gen EVs see a lot less miles/yr in the US vs combustion.

So at 1.25x weight with that mileage you should only expect 1.5x the cost.

I’m not a huge fan of any cars but this is a pretty regressive scheme.

Then tax by weight and not engine type. Freight trucks already don’t pay their fair share in infrastructure costs.

Edit: EVs are about 18-24% heavier than their Ice equivalent. Still doesn’t add up to the proposed costs.

If you want anyone on the GOP to see it you have to put a misleading picture of a fetus on that trifold. Their vision is based on bullshit

Did you do the math on environmental impact of, say 2-3 ceramic sets vs the impact of one stainless steel?

I’m completely ignorant on the energy/material costs of both, but I know the impact of steel/iron can be pretty big.

Yeah its tough… At least you can block ads when browsing and pirate digital media pretty easily 🤷‍♀️

Oh huh, interesting… 📃✍️

Wouldn’t composting just release more greenhouse gasses? We need a more effective means of carbon capture, or maybe directly repurpose them as some sort of nutritional paste

This one yes I suppose, I guess its more symbolic. But I do see this comment on every protest so thought I’d clarify

Your city hall/capital building is empty on the weekend

Personal consumption accounted for 68.8% of US GDP in at the end of 2024, an all time high. Granted, ~45% of that is very hard to cut back on (healthcare, insurance, housing).

But even still, a drop of 10-15% would be devastating. If you could organize it, you could even skip payments on the big ticket services. Everyone skipping a month of bills at the same time would do serious, recession-level damage.

It’s not a direct fix for our problems, but you can play serious economic chicken when most of the economy flows through your wallets.

It’s literally illegal for these publicly traded companies to do anything that would be detrimental to their shareholders. The guy in oval office is telling them there will be consequences for not following his EOs (ie: lowering shareholder value). There’s not any decision to be made here (not that they aren’t laughing to the bank either way)

You proved it’s impossible to be a completely ethical consumer, but did you prove that it’s necessary to be a consumer at all? Or that all volumes of consumption are equally culpable?

People view boycotting as if enough homework will find them the fabled Free Market Unicorn©️, with sparkling udders they can ethically consume from to their hearts content.

Guess what: your coffee and chocolate are slave labor all the way down. Nestle owns all your water and 6 media conglomerates get your entertainment money no matter where you swipe your credit card.

But do you actually need to make those purchases in the first place? There’s nothing other than habit, comfort, and convenience keeping you from cutting most of it out of your life. It makes the ethical calculus so much easier.

Of course, how much austerity you can stomach in your modern life is a personal threshold. But every dollar you don’t spend is a dollar less to our corporate overlords. You could even donate it to a worthy cause for double the satisfaction (if you care to do that homework…)

Why not go out doing something exciting at least?

It’s easy to make statements like that before desperation sets in. Starving is an awful way to die, death after nuclear fallout is excruciating and slow, you won’t enjoy any sunsets when the smoke from burning cities fills up the sky.

50 years from now when you’re freezing in a cold muddy ditch, you’ll be wishing you died a martyr taking the 1/1e10000 chance to fix it.

Edit: I’m legally required to clarify that martyrdom can result from non-violent acts 🙂

Going off the assumption there aren’t any bad actors at play, these seem like a good approach and I’d gladly participate.

Only thing I’d question is a 24 hour economic blackout. The striking part is impactful, but putting off buying a TV for one day is negligible. Hell, you probably already paid for a full month of Netflix already.

I’d prefer a stronger commitment to progressively tightening the noose. Ramp up the economic pressure indefinitely until demands are met, you won’t die from not spending money.