Your Questions About Green Living

The Expert answers:

Governments of the world should do both. You first need a revenue stream to invest in renewable energy. A great way to create that revenue stream is through a price on carbon emissions. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states in the northeastern US invested 11% of the revenue stream from their carbon cap and trade system in renewable energy, for example (and 52% in energy efficiency to decrease energy demand to begin with).
Http://www.skepticalscience.com/real-world-example-carbon-pricing-benefits-outweigh-costs.html

As for a free market, I agree. We should stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Coal is immensely subsidized, both directly and indirectly. When you take the full life cycle costs of coal into account, including damage to environmental and public health, and contribution to climate change, it becomes more expensive than virtually every source of renewable energy. The link below probably isn’t working yet, but it will work tonight once I publish this article on Skeptical Science about the full cost of coal.
Http://www.skepticalscience.com/true-cost-of-coal-power.html

Bottom line is that it’s not an either-or scenario. We need to do both, and in fact doing one (reducing CO2) helps with the other (investing in renewable energy).

The Expert answers:

F*CK the rich…they already have the technology that they are sitting on doing nothing with.

Depend on yourselves if you want something done.

The Expert answers:

Spain has really been pushing solar energy with huge incentives.

The Expert answers:

Because their respective economies would completely tank without fossil fuels! We absolutely need them to function.

Renewable energy is nothing but a warm and fuzzy fantasy as of now. They are all inefficient sources of energy, with the exception of the highly controversial nuclear energy, a completely clean source, but with baggage (i.e. Nuclear waste and the fear of a meltdown).

If they were viable solutions, we’d be using them right now. Don’t believe the garbage that the oil companies have politicians in the bag. If there were alternatives that were better, they would compete on the open market and beat out fossil fuels. Oil companies would have to buy off EVERYONE that invested in, produced, consumed, and advocated for clean renewable sources. Not even realistic.

Besides, the government is heavily subsidizing renewable energy already. So much for the oil companies buying off the politicians to subdue green energy. And there are dozens of huge corporations that are receiving government subsidies (e.g. GE) for and are promoting renewables.

The short answer is that fossil fuels are much more efficient and can deliver more energy than what renewables can (barring nuclear). Green energy sources are impractical and inefficient.

To get a meager amount of our energy needs from wind energy, we’d need wind farms with a landmass the size of MN and TX combined, all for a small percentage of our needs. Plus they can only operate in ideal conditions, 15-45 mph winds. Anything below 15 and they don’t spin, anything over 45 and they will break. And if the wind doesn’t blow, they are either idle or have a gas powered turbine that spins them.

Ethanol is another wasteful product. Ethanol deprives us of a food source, since farmers dedicate more of their crops for ethanol or only grow ethanol type crops (usually corn), which in turn leads to starvation in other poorer countries due to less supply, but it also drives up the cost of what is on the market. On top of that, more land is converted to cropland, which leads to deforestation and loss of habitat, erodes the topsoil and leeches nutrients, and lowers the water table, due to the high requirement for water during the ethanol processing. Beside all that, ethanol releases about as much energy as it takes to produce it, thus it is almost a zero sum gain.

The rest are even more inefficient than the two above (i.e. Solar and geo-thermal). And as for hydro, we don’t have enough river currents or dams to produce even close to what our energy requirements are.

All in all, renewable are nice in theory and for environmentalism, but in the real world they are impractical and inefficient. Unless we are talking nuclear energy, the most clean and renewable source there is. Problem is the stigma attached to it because of 2 meltdowns, and the problem of what to do with the waste.

The Expert answers:

We’re not all gonna die or anything like that.

But if we don’t plan a transition away from fossil fuels, life will be very unpleasant.

Mostly we’ll be poor, paying a whole lot for energy, dealing with flooded coastal areas, and trying desperately to feed ourselves as agriculture gets blasted by global warming.

Life will go on, but it will be very hard. We can do a whole lot better if we’re smart.