| > To summon the vast proposed changes, PV cells' improvements need to be coincided with many other changes: grid development, battery tech, industrial re-tooling, climate policies/institutions, mining/extraction, agricultural methods, production methods... and that's without even discussing culture, which will have to evolve substantially. What a ridiculous take. PV's are plug and play, you don't have to change anything. The only dependency is storage, so battery tech needs to keep up. However, advancements in battery tech are already progressing at a rate that exceeds the pace of innovation in PV cells. |
| Let's use our imagination to overcome some naivety. Imagine for a moment that you just instantly 10x'ed the presence of PVs and tell me what will change. Do you truly believe that you will never encounter a bottleneck? Go on 10x'ing the presence of PVs until you find emerging constraints. I'm sure that 10x the solar electricity output would substantially incentivize battery development and changes in industrial production, eventually producing major cultural implications. Long before utopia, however, we will encounter other bottlenecks: electrolysis, carbon policy, resource distribution (and other problems/opportunities worthy of attention). No one here is claiming that PV cells play an insignificant role, or that emergent peripheral challenges will not be met with skill. The claim I am making is that the simple model (more PVs!) is insufficient to address the complex problems human society faces, and that it is naive to believe otherwise. You would never just put your foot on the pedal to drive to your destination; you'll also grasp the steering wheel, reckon with obstacles and roadway laws, etc; but if you have never driven a car before, you might sincerely believe that all it takes is stepping on that pedal. |
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| ▲ | jasonsb 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > but if you have never driven a car before, you might sincerely believe that all it takes is stepping on that pedal. This is not a fair comparison. Installing a PV system with battery storage on my residential or commercial property has minimal societal impact, especially when compared to something like owning a car. I generate and consume my own electricity in a largely self-contained system. The primary benefit to society is indirect but meaningful: I reduce my reliance on fossil fuels and draw less power from the grid. This eases demand on shared infrastructure and contributes (modestly) to lower emissions. Importantly, I continue to pay all applicable taxes and fees, so public services and infrastructure investments (like grid upgrades or transmission lines) remain unaffected. My pursuit of energy self-sufficiency doesn’t impose new burdens on society; if anything, it lightens the collective load. | | |
| ▲ | arthurofbabylon 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think you understand my argument. The point is not whether or not solar electricity generation is good or bad (it is obviously very favorable). The point I am making is that it is unhelpful to collapse complexity into a simplistic model. Your discussion on owning battery + PV is illustrative. You are not in a vacuum and certainly are in relationship with the broader world: you paid for the system, you maintain it, you stopped buying something, you inspired your neighbors, you lowered the costs for your neighbors to implement a similar system, you reduced your and your countrymen's geopolitical dependencies, you may have saved some money you can spend elsewhere, you probably developed a working understanding of electricity in homes, your neighbors probably developed a better working understanding of electricity in homes, you are now less liable to extortion/persuasion from fossil fuel companies, you're now more likely to own an EV and reduce urban pollution. The entire point is that you exist in relationship; that is what makes it powerful. Had you simply implemented the PV system + battery without these second order effects (and only gained access to more/cheaper energy) you would have considerably less positive impact. The complex model is the correct working model that describes far more of the dynamics than the simplistic model. My original point: belief in a single fulcrum when describing societal evolution is flatly misleading. The metaphor of driving a car is not in opposition to solar; you misunderstood it. The point is, again, that the simple model is insufficient for effectively operating in the world. | | |
| ▲ | childintime 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Now, why would you have to make this point, as it's close to a tautology? It's likely because we have a lever and don't use it. In that framing your point gets lost, because it doesn't address any issue. So there is a superfluousness at play that suggests this is disinformation, intended to derail the impetus for change. So I guess you need to elaborate and present a synthesis, perhaps mention alternate levers, instead of downplaying the one that's obvious? I don't see any other significant levers, RethinkX says PV + battery are sufficient for virtually anywhere in the world. Grid demands should lessen over time as local generation comes online. The grid becomes a overnight backup charging method. | | |
| ▲ | arthurofbabylon 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Let’s upgrade our intellectual rigor here. Do you sincerely believe that “PV + battery are sufficient for virtually anywhere in the world” even when it comes to viral disease, dictatorships and warfare, chemical pollution, deforestation, social epidemics (eg, drugs, social media), housing crises, food deserts, famine, etc? You might be only considering the energy transition, but it is not as if the original author was strictly speaking of that topic, or as if that is all that matters for humanity on earth. “I don’t see any other significant levers,” you say? Read from history: how about the great liberalizing effect of the Christian marriage and family policy that broke down filial kin networks and paved the way for markets, universities, and democracies by way of fostering impersonal trust? How about the smallpox vaccine? How about the incredible rise in population and economic activity upon the introduction of potatoes to Europe? How about the invention of ammonium-based fertilizers? This one will rankle some feathers: how about the incredible geopolitical twist and – yes – reduction in atmospheric carbon introduced by the development of fracking (enabling the transition away from coal)? How about the civil rights movement in the United States? The invention of nuclear weapons? Metallurgy? Chemistry? The shipping container? Large language models? Look around and you will see fulcrums everywhere. Literally look around you, wherever you sit right now, and just consider the vast number of twists and turns that led to the current circumstance. Then imagine someone 500 years ago in Beijing saying something as foolish as, “we just need more movable-type printing, yeah, that will protect us from the Northern invaders, that will completely solve deforestation, that will protect us from famine… Hey you farmer over there, stop farming! We have movable-type printing! We’re good, we just need more of it!” The simplistic model is very appealing; it is easy to wrap your mind around it, it is easy to communicate via viral essay, it is easy to develop optimism upon it. But it is not a working model. It is just too simple and incomplete. The various fulcrums I pulled out of my imagination above all worked because the world was complex. The people who invented and developed those fulcrums were effective because they embraced a complex model. They made the intellectually rigorous choice to reject naive simplicity when others tried to thrust it upon them. |
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| ▲ | ben_w 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Go on 10x'ing the presence of PVs until you find emerging constraints. While true, I think it's fair to make certain guesses about other tech also being developed (such as, as you mentioned, batteries). Even if they did not exist, constraints lead to conflicts, and conflicts can lead to exchanges of power. (Different topic but same idea, constraint and conflict: when it comes to the never-ending battle of encryption, I do not see how to square the unstoppable force of "unbreakable encryption is very easy to make and vitally important to the use of the internet" with the immovable object that is "no state can survive when conspiracies are opaque to investigations and prosecutions"). |
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