Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded, now they want to silence him

"Creating value for shareholders" has done more for sustainability than eco-activists could ever hope to.

Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels. Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.

It's pretty telling that oil lobbyists resort to non-market methods like bribing politicians to stall renewables. They know the time is running out - with all the new power generation and storage tech that's in the pipeline, fossil fuels just aren't going to be economically viable forever. Renewables are rising, and there is no moat - all the existing oil assets those companies hold are going to be increasingly useless as more and more of the world's power comes from non-fossil sources.

"Stall" is about the extent of it though. You can't fight economic forces off forever.

> Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.

Seems like a myopic strawman to me. The main eco-activism that I remember for the last couple of decades has been for reduced fossil-fuel use. This is now being translated into policy in Europe especially, which has massively increased the market for renewables that the "industrial capitalists" can take advantage of.

The damage is done.

Today, the best alternative to fossil fuels is renewables - but 40 years ago, it was nuclear. If eco-activists made sensible decisions, fossil fuel power could have been curbed back then.

Instead, we got what we got. Eco-activists, being what they are, made vibe-based policy decisions, and the vibe of nuclear power was Very Bad and Glowing Acid Green and Way Too Industrial. So nuclear power was strangled with activism and overregulation in many countries, if not banned outright.

So we had to sit on fossil fuel power for those 40 years - until the economics of renewables finally became more favorable. Which, again, happened not because eco-activists willed it into existence - but because industrial capitalists developed the relevant technologies and pushed them into mass production.

What would have happened in an alternate world where renewables just weren't economical? Would the world sit on fossil fuels for another 40 years, until fusion power actually materialized?

Industrial capitalists irrevocably destroy large tracts of public and private land. Eco-activists lobby to at least have them cover the clean-up bill, if not incurr punitive fines. This goes back to 1969 when the EPA was set up when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire due to pollution from industrial waste. Some other highlights of "Creating value for shareholders"

Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. BP paid over $20 billion in fines and compensation.

Love Canal: Occidental Petroleum dumped toxic waste into the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, resulting in pollution causing birth defects. $130 million in settlements.

Exxon Valdez oil spill: Alaska’s Prince William Sound contaminated with 11 million gallons of crude oil. Exxon paid over $1 billion in cleanup and compensation.

DuPont Chemical leak: DuPont contaminated the drinking water of over 300,000 people. $670 million in settlements.

Hinkley Groundwater Contamination: PG&E contaminated groundwater with chromium-6 in California. $333 million in settlements.

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests. $25 billion in settlements.

Kingston Fossil Plant Coal Ash Spill: A retention pond breached, releasing over 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the surrounding area. Cleanup cost over $1 billion.

The only reason the economics of renewables became favorable is because of German subsidies. They created the market conditions to incentivize the Chinese ramp up of solar manufacturing and the blooming of the European wind turbine industry. It wasn't a case of happenstance. Humanity owes a debt to the German taxpayer.

>Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels.

Wow, those cheap solar panels were done entirely by the private sector? Without decades of government-backed research on how to make solar panels viable to mass-produce?

Without eco-activists lobbying for government-funded research on solar panels, there would be no mass production, because nobody is paying $100k/kW.

And making cheap LEDs doesn't necessarily reduce energy use, thanks to the rebound effect - we've known this since Lord Jevon noted that James Watt's new ultra-efficient steam engine increased demand for coal instead of reducing it, because it made steam engines cheaper to run. If you look at car headlights, you'll find that instead of using LEDs to reduce power use, car-makers instead used them to crank up the lumens as far as humanly possible. They only save power on paper, when underwritten by implicit environmental optimism.

Note that I'm not opposed to "creating value for shareholders"; they made cheap solar panels possible. I'm saying that powerful economic forces require far more precise alignment than you'd think for them to be useful, and they are almost never conveniently placed in the right spot by chance.

No. The economics of renewables were trending that way before Germany took notice. That was why renewables were considered a promising technology in the first place.

At best, you can make a claim that because of Germany's push, renewables got to today's price point a few years sooner. Which is quite valuable, but not a make-it-or-break-it difference.

If you look at car headlights or flashlights, then yes, because more brightness is very desirable there. If you look at the average lightbulb though?

It's pretty clear that people didn't replace their 100W incandescent bulbs with 200W worth of LEDs. Modern LED lights sit in a range of 6W to 20W - which is a factor of 5 reduction in power draw no matter how you cut it.

> If eco-activists made sensible decisions, fossil fuel power could have been curbed back then.

It's about the money. "Eco-activists" can't achieve shit if there's no money in it. Think about all the other things they've been trying to kill - meat, fossil fuels, jet travel - and are nowhere near succeeding. Why do you think that is?

Fossil fuel interests killed nuclear. "Eco-activists" took the rap. And everyone else fell for it.

I haven't come across any "eco activists" who solely push for straw bans etc and nothing else. It's pretty obvious that the way forward is to not use so much stuff. LEDs and solar panels are nice but don't encourage using less stuff. "Creating value for shareholders" encourages using more stuff. But you're probably right, "economic forces" look like they win, now and forever.

> Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels. Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.

Cheap solar panels were subsidized by governments to get the costs down. I know eco-activists that are pro-nuclear.

More generally: a lot of these things were done to reduce costs and due to price pressures. There is currently no mechanism to put a price on climate change that is directly noticeable by the general consumer. (Only 'indirect' costs due to climate inaction, like higher insurance premiums due to more extreme weather events.)

Perhaps if the O&G folks and others would stop trying "create value for shareholders" of the fossil fuel companies we could use The Market™ to properly price in climate change instead of subsidizing climate-damaging actions and subsidizing the operations of these companies.

I reject the notion. If your solution relies on people "using less stuff", then you have no solution at all.

People like using stuff, and if someone tries to take away their QoL, they'll oppose it strongly - and rightfully so. Which is a very basic thing that, somehow, almost no environmentalist seems to grasp.

I an currently forced to use stuff. I would walk to the shop if one was close enough, but everything around me is built around cars so it’s not practical. Thus I am forced to use a car though I would rather not. Now, you’re entirely correct that it seems a majority of people either like it this way or aren’t capable of imagining anything different. I still hold on to hope that it might change, as irrational as that might be. And in the meantime I’m not opposed to renewable energy etc

What if people didn't like using stuff as much as they do? A large part of that is the result of advertising. What if we banned advertising?

Solar panels have massively fallen in price, but I'm not aware of any changes in wind, hydro, and so on. Can you elaborate on those?