To be fair. The government tried in my country, and it completely backfired. Because the power grid cannot handle the current load anymore. We've had more frequent blackouts because of it.

Because of this issue, starting next year I will be paying my power company money for surplus solar energy that I give back. Unfortunately, batteries are expensive and impractical to install in our houses.

So now, it's not that popular to buy solar panels unless you can also immediately finance the batteries.

Solar in Sweden produce at this hour 2.26 MW out of a capacity of 5000 MW, and it is 4 pm. The highest peak today was around 400 MW.

Prices are also around 100 times higher than what prices are during optimal sunny summer days (right now it sits at around €0.6 per kw/h).

I very much think nobody can be bothered, not just the people in charge. We're all the same people and if there was an actual want by the regular person, the ones in charge in most of the world would be influenced enough to either want it too or have to do something

> the people in charge couldn't be bothered.

Watching the last decade of American politics has led me to absolutely despise the culture of learned helplessness and attitude of "everything is someone else's fault."

You're absolutely right about the first part. Radical change is much more straightforward. At the individual level there are absolutely things that can be done that are pretty easy Consuming less and recycling more is a huge one. But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture. The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people. The people just don't want this badly enough.

it's not that the people in charge can't be bothered. the people really in charge see the status quo as a profitable situation. it'a "good" for them and bad for everyone else.

It's extremely inefficient to put solar on buildings, especially compared to utility-scale installations in a field

Wasn't the complete worldwide failure to anything about COVID exactly a high speed analogue io how we've also failed to do anything about climate change?

People are in charge, especially in democracies. Not to mention that they are the end consumers, everything produced is eventually for something that people buy, use, eat, burn, throw into the garbage fast. People need to act, not some dedicated father figure (actually servant) making things good for them by a swish of a wand [1], compensating for the consumption and emissions.

[1] As of the wishful thinking that huge capacity solar panels bring joy, one aspect of the several directly related is this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-026-02144-0. An other one of the further ones: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-government-appro.... So big dreams and delegating responsibility are not enough for the people.

So we need to paralyze 30% of the economy, that would have gone to bankruptcy within months if not for massive money creation, just to get a -10% in CO2 emissions. Easy. Then, where do you get the next -10%? And the next one? And...

Back when companies were talking about carbon capture seriously, it would have cost $1-2 / gallon of gasoline equivalent to put atmospheric CO2 back in the ground.

That's much less than the Iran war is costing us.

The radical change during COVID was consuming less on a global scale. Simple!

It was only for the better if you were in an industry like ours, which even benefited and also allows remote work.

For a huge number of people it ruined their lives. Which is why it’s sensitive to this day. Like the financial bailouts there was a sense that some people benefited while others got ruined.

Bad example to invoke for “beneficial change.” If that’s the answer then it can’t be done in a democracy.

Yes. If I can make that choice everyday so can everyone else. But we have to change peoples hearts, not their minds.

The event after which dozens of governments were destabilized and incumbents were ousted from power all over the world… convinced you that radical change is easy…?

The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.

[dead]

> There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar.

is it intentional hyperbole and you mean something else, or are you making exactly this kind of claim?

because there are many many caveats to add here (even if we go with plan that specifically governments should be doing it)

For start: land with legitimate environmental protection, land where connecting power would be ruinously expensive, area likely to be destroyed by floods and landslides or scheduled to be overbuilt and so on...