alt Hacker NewsIt genuinely makes me so sad to see the US not doing the same. Having grown up to the constant beat of “energy independence” as the core goal of a party it seemed obvious that the nearly limitless energy that rains down from the sky would be the answer. But instead we’ve kept choosing the option which requires devastating our, and other’s around the world, community. That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns. But it’s difficult to compare localized damage to war and globalized damage.
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I recently read, and recommend a book titled "Here Comes the Sun" by Bill McKibben. There's a passage where a calculation is made of the amount of minerals that have to be mined in order to build renewable energy to cover all current energy needs. This quantity is huge. However it is equivalent in mass to the amount of fossil fuels that are extracted every year. The major difference is that the equipment for renewable energy will last decades whereas the fossil fuels are burned and need to be dug up constantly, for ever.
> That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns.
This is Big Oil propaganda. The impact from this is massively less than the horrific damage caused by every part of the fossil fuel industry.
Those are nice pictures but I can take the same pictures in the USA.
Note: I'm not suggesting China is not doing better here. Rather, I'm going off the title "Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout" and I'm not seeing anything in those photos I haven't seen in the USA.
Driving down the 580 from SF to Tracy you pass several hundred windmills. Driving through Mojave the same. Also solar. Driving toward Vegas as well. And those are just the ones I've seen with my own eyes. There's many others.
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=altamont+pass+windmill...
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=mojave+windmills&sa=X&...
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=palmdale+solar+farm&sa...
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=desert+stateline+solar...
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=barstow+solar+plant&sa...
The us president held a fundraiser for petroleum execs late in 2024. He promised to kill as many renewable energy projects as possible. They donated a billion dollars to his campaign. And he followed through.
In 2025, > 90% of new energy capacity built in the US is from renewable [0]. So the US isn't building that much solar not because they're not building solar, but that the US has been generating and consuming so much energy per capita that there isn't that much incentive to increase energy capacity dramatically.
[0]: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/us-new-win...
It shouldn't be one thing, or 'only eco thing'.
It should be _every_ thing that isn't a bad idea.
Solar
Wind
Geothermal
Tidal power?
Got a way of using that tasty oil cleanly? Maybe we want to reserve those complex hydrocarbons for some other use like growing crops, making solid rocket fuel, or some other national priority.
Nuclear - Yes, craft regulations that make sense and squeeze all the damned energy possible out of that 'waste'. No, I don't mean burn the fuel the easy way only - I mean send it back to military run reprocessing centers to concentrate the power and make the (effective) half life of the waste decades rather than civilizations of time (yes, concentrating it, there will also be some super mild things that decay slowly enough to be useful in other applications rather than waste).
We want to maximize energy in the long, medium and short term. Try Everything.
Well I have good news for you, we are.
Over 90% of new power generation being built (both domestically and globally) is renewables. We do it for the same reason China and everyone else is: it’s just cheaper now.
That’s the best reason because it’s the one that gets the job done. Renewable energy prices will keep falling while fossil fuel prices rise, widening the gap.
In 25 years there will be little fossil fuel generation left.
The rhetoric around "energy independence" always sounded like it was pointing exactly toward renewables, and it's hard not to see the missed opportunity in hindsight
Its crazy that in 1999 "home solar" was a fancy, new millennium idea, and now we're still barely any closer.
Honestly, I think building regulations should mandate solar energy for homes.
it seems us is fighting yesterday's war
wars / empires etc are built on mastering an energy source
the Brits on Coal
the US rose on Oil
China is rising on renewables
my worry is can renewables be quickly brought online to power industry / power hungry Data Centers etc at a reasonable cost
Meanwhile in Italy, the whole renewables discussion is gaslighted by "we should actually consider nuclear" and "wind turbines ruin the panorama".
I'm not against nuclear per se, but it's like this part of italians don't realize that:
1. if you decide to make a power plant today, it won't be online before the 2050s, in the best case scenario. It's very difficult to bring nuclear plants online, especially in the west. Even the countries with the capital and know-how (US and France) see more projects cancelled than brought online. I think US has put online a single nuclear plant in 20 years, France not a single one.
2. Nuclear needs tons of water, we have less and less of it as it rains less and global warming doesn't accumulate enough snow in the alps (which generally melts in the summer), our rivers are literally dry stone most of the year.
3. Renewables can be attached to the grid (or close to where they are needed) in the span of few months and with very little know-how required.
4. Money isn't limitless, building a 20B+ nuclear plant (realistically 50 knowing these projects + Italy) means this budget won't be available for the next decade on projects that could bring benefits immediately.
I'm sure that Italy and Germany, which are manufacturing heavy countries that need lots of energy cannot rely renewables alone, of course nuclear should be considered, but hell, in my region (around Rome), 95% of our energy comes from imported natural gas, I'm sure we could invest some more in that.
And it would have been possible if not for the support on this platform and similar ones for people like Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, like the youth says these days: FAFO
The USA keeps pushing for corporatism, so that's what we get: corporatism. Not a good environment or safe energy, but corporatism.
But what surprises me most in this entire debate is how little we talk about the biological cost of CO₂ itself. We focus so much on the globalized damage to the climate that we’ve overlooked the direct, physiological tax that combustion is levying on our bodies. For some reason conservative governments want us to continue to trade our atmospheric oxygen for carbon dioxide through the burning fossil fuels. I wrote more about this topic on substack:
https://minimallysustained.substack.com/p/beyond-the-greenho...
If it is not in the interest of people over the age of 60, it will not happen in the US.
It's particularly sad, we've known about the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 since 19th century, and now its branded as radical pseudoscience
Have you driven around anywhere rural lately? The US is doing a ton of renewables development.
China is also building unfathomable amount of coal plants as well.
It’s about incentives. We are “energy independent” compared to China and the EU. With China, if its relations with Russia sour and if they get cut off in Djiboutis by any number of powers, they will be a world of hurt.
The US invented fracking.
Arguably the US is energy independent. It has Texas, Canada and Venezuela.
They never did discover any large oilfields in China despite decades of frantically searching for it.
We chose this path because the U.S. dollar is underpinned by fossil fuel markets. Also, batteries do not have the energy density to mobilize a mechanized military.
Our elites refuse to concede dominance of the affairs of the world, so they will never allow the fossil fuel infrastructure to decline unless forced.
By contrast, China has every incentive to do the right thing.
Up to the 2008 election the Republican party platform called for reducing fossil fuel use, establishing a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change, a long term tax credit for renewable energy (with specific mentions of solar and wind), more recycling, and making consumer products more energy efficient.
They wanted to aggressively support technological advances to reduce the dependence of transportation on petroleum, giving examples of making cars more efficient (they mention doubling gas mileage) and developing more flex-fuel and electric vehicles. They talked about honoraria of many millions of dollars for technological developments that could eliminate the need for gas powered cars.
They also mentioned promoting wireless communication to increase telecommuting options and reduce business travel.
All that was gone by 2012. I'm not sure what caused the change.