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Comment: Re:That's nice, however: (Score 1) 688

No, by starting something good, you can still lead the way.

For example, yes, build a Thorium reactor. If it happens to be cheaper than coal, and you don't put silly export controls on it, India and China might just go with that instead of coal. China, meanwhile, is also deploying massive amounts of solar as we speak, because Europe and the US lead the way, did the research and then outsourced production to... China.

Comment: Re:This is more than a little bit naive. (Score 1) 688


Or maybe not. The german EEG, which is so successful that it has been copied by over 65 countries has brought so much alternative energy online that the nuclear and fossile fuel lobbyists have succeeded in convincing the current government to break its promises and cut it short ahead of time, because they were afraid the they would be driven out of business by renewable energy.

Those 37% would be replaced, and chances are the replacement would be as or even cheaper. Of course, consumer prices for electricity would still rise, after a media campaign blaming the environmentalists, but that's got nothing to do with real energy prices. If you want to know what energy costs, never look to the consumer price. That price is "what we can take and get away with" and not "what it costs". If you want to know what energy costs, look to the exchanges where the industry prices are set.

You'll be surprised. Those prices have been dropping, sometimes at the same time as consumer prices have been increased.



Who says they'll go.

If I were tasked to implement this plan, buying the coal mines would be the first thing to do. But I wouldn't shut them down, I'd keep mining. At... say... five kilograms per year. You'd have to check if the permits specify a minimum amount to be mined, of course. Somehow I doubt the do, because the coal industry has a lobby that's 2nd only to Hollywood and they've largely succeeded in abolishing any and all regulation.



Only on paper. Same thing with nuclear energy - a modern reactor is excellent and very safe - but thanks to nuclear power hysteria, no new reactors have been built in, for example, my country, for 25 years. So the most modern nuclear reactor we have is using late 1980s technology. If people were just a little more rational, they'd do demonstrations to replace all the reactors with modern ones, because quite honestly keeping these old pieces of crap running is 100 times more dangerous than running twice as many modern ones.

Comment: Re:What about buying out the Chinese polluters? (Score 1) 688

Actually, if you take into account the population size (China having more than four times as many people as the USA) then it isn't really that much of a difference. In fact, carbon emission per capita is considerably higher in the USA:


Comment: Re:Sowhere will the electricity come from? (Score 2) 688



This is the realty of coal:

Some of these are so large, they are clearly visible on satellite images:

The worst part is that their land use in general directly compete with forests, which means their CO2 impact is even higher, because forests are great in storing CO2.

Sorry, anyone who in 2014 seriously contemplates burning coal is a freaking lunatic who should be locked up and receive therapy.

Comment: Re:Retraining Won't Be Enough for Unemployed Miner (Score 2) 688


