Capitalism, premised on ever increasing profits, is fundamentally incapable of solving the climate crisis. As the tweet translates the MIT Tech Review, “the problem with solar is we can’t monopolize the sun or make it scarcer than it is”. - ThreadSky

leafwarbler.bsky.social • 223 days ago

Capitalism, premised on ever increasing profits, is fundamentally incapable of solving the climate crisis.

As the tweet translates the MIT Tech Review, “the problem with solar is we can’t monopolize the sun or make it scarcer than it is”.

Comments

drcrlsnpe.bsky.social•222 days ago

nmackenzie.bsky.social•222 days ago

Electrical utilities are heavily regulated “capitalism.” At 1PM yesterday about renewables made up almost all the extremity supply in California. 20% of the renewable capacity was used to charge batteries which then supplied significant quantity of power in the evening.

pumpkinpal.bsky.social•222 days ago

Capitalists when oil: "drill baby drill! Why do you hate cheap energy? Is it because you hate the orphans who need cheap energy to live??"

Capitalists when solar: "cheap energy will bankrupt the world, we have to destroy it while there's still time"

penguingalaxy.bsky.social•223 days ago

It would be so much fun if we could just lock all the people who think like that into a lecture theatre and have them hear terrifying solar and plasma physics lectures day after day while the rest of us get on with fixing the practical problems ...

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•222 days ago

This is silly. The original article is correct and nuanced but there isn't even a link to read it.

The point, that solar power generates most power at a different time than most people want to use power, remains true and would be true in a fully planned economy

pjeffe.bsky.social•222 days ago

The problem is that this assumes that the only tool we have is a market, so every problem looks like a price/quantity curve.

If we must work through the market then governments have to include the externality of destroying the planet in the price of fossil fuels. Not efficient, but it would work.

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•222 days ago

I don't disagree that we need more and better policies to fight carbon emissions, but in matching supply and demand temporally (which is a fundamental physical problem, not a market problem) I don't think markets are a terrible way to look at it

pjeffe.bsky.social•222 days ago

I think this is a perfect example of how bad markets can be at distributing resources. If you factor in all the costs of fossil fuels--the wars fought to access them, the environmental destruction from their extraction, the costs of transport, the climate effects--then they'd be cost-prohibitive.

pjeffe.bsky.social•222 days ago

It's just a fundamentally wrong tool to use to determine social priorities. It can work when that favorite phrase of economists, "ceteris paribus" (all other things being equal), holds true, but that's rarely the case.

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•222 days ago

I really don't know what point you're making here. No, markets aren't the right tool every or even most contexts. But the problem being described here isn't fundamentally about markets, and it's not even an example of where markets are failing.

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•222 days ago

And indeed, in the years since this piece was written batteries have plummeted in price and are being deployed at a huge scale to solve this problem....mostly mediated by markets

phizle.bsky.social•222 days ago

In this case the market is representing something that would also be a problem under a planned system. Carbon free resources are favored with the things like tax credits, but that is already baked in with solar plants being willing to sell electricity at negative prices rather than shutting off

pjeffe.bsky.social•222 days ago

The article asserts that the lower wholesale prices that utilities pay for solar during peak generation times is a disincentive to build more solar plants. Is that incorrect, or no longer the case?

phizle.bsky.social•222 days ago

That's true but that is often outweighed by tax incentives, and isn't true in many places in the country/other locations

What is also becoming more common is pairing a solar plant with a large battery installation

pjeffe.bsky.social•222 days ago

Yes, and tax incentives are one way for governments to put their thumb on the scale to work against the market forces. If they also took incentives away from fossil fuels and internalized their externalities then we'd really be somewhere. This seems obvious to me, but I'm open to being educated.

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•222 days ago

This is reflected by negative prices in a competitive electricity market but would be a major problem in a completely planned economy. And the solution, which we're already deploying, would be expensive in either case!