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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • Some changes people (in the US or elsewhere) might want to check into:

    • See if your local electric utility has Green Power programs where you can elect to have your power come from renewables (via credits) for 2-5% of your bill/month extra
    • If you own a home, consider making switches to more electrified stuff like: induction cookstoves v. natural gas, heat pumps v. AC units, power tools that have batteries and/or cables v. gasoline or diesel, adding solar panels to your roof or property (only costs ~$20k these days), etc.
    • Start moving your pensions or stocks into greener index funds, or even consider adopting banks and credit unions that publicly disclose which projects and companies they invest your dollar in
    • Consider buying your groceries from local farmer’s markets or farms that have mail-to-your-door programs (aka CSAs or Community Supported Agriculture programs); this is a good resource to learn more about the farms near you
    • Switch to non-red meat diets, and then after that switch to a vegetarian diet, and then after that switch to a vegan diet (all while consulting health professionals); this is a good resource on vegan diets if anyone is curious
    • Consider choosing a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV; 100% electric) or a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV; 50/50 electric/gas) as your new car; this resource can steer you in the right direction
    • Vote in primary elections where candidates prioritize climate action, then vote for them again in general elections when the time comes; this is a good resource to stay up on current civic events
    • Buy clothing/shoes used, or if you need to buy new, look for the GOTS and OEKO-TEX labels to make sure what you’re buying is organic, is ethical, and doesn’t pollute local environments of where your clothes/shoes are made



  • Great point. You need concrete for wind, solar, and li-ion battery storage too (including pumped hydro), but out of those I’d say pumped hydro is the only one that remotely compares in the amount of concrete needed for construction.

    So purely looking at the emissions from materials needed to build these power sources, renewables have the edge due to less concrete. These emissions might show up elsewhere in raw material extraction like with silicon for solar, and then the rare earth metals needed for generators in wind, all the lithium/nickel/cobalt needed for batteries, etc., but I want to say that the Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) from places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US or the International Energy Agency (IEA) worldwide have taken that into account and still show that renewables + storage are cheaper on a carbon basis compared to fossil fuels and nuclear.


  • Yeah, the argument of nuclear crumbles when you start to peak behind the curtain of operation. Still, renewables have the same problem.

    Wind turbines break shafts, studs, bolts, lifts, generator step-up (GSU) units, etc. Then you still need oil for all the mechanical systems in a turbine too, which can degrade. Operations can keep up with this though, and in my experience wind can be up and running a lot more frequently with reference to failures that cause downtime compared with maintenance of nuclear with reference to downtime for it.

    Same with solar, or even better with solar because the only moving parts with solar are the axis trackers that move panels such that they always point at the sun. Lots more uptime that doesn’t involve radiation exposure, although that concern for operations has probably been designed out as reactor technology has grown up.

    Or at least I’d hope…


  • I think you have a point. Look at how the Oil & Gas industry pivoted to fracking and tar sands after conventional oil started drying up around 2005.

    There are deposits out there, probably, and the only time mining companies will consider changing ehat and how they currently mine is if they have a reason to do so,: aka an economic (or governmental) reason.

    Still, discovery, technology r&d, and supply chain establishment might take more time than what we have. It’s good that we should keep nuclear and all of this on the table, but it shouldn’t be a priority.


  • Did you read the quote? 15-20 years, as in decades before 1 nuke plant is built. I agree in that politicians of the past should have led us to a more sustainable and resilient energy future, but we’re here now.

    Advanced nuclear should still be 100% pursued to try to get those lead times down and to incorporate things like waste recycling, modularity, etc., but the lead time in decades absolutely means nuclear power might not be something worth doing.

    The IPCC puts the next 10-20 years as the most important and perilous for getting a hold on climate change. If we wait for that long by not rolling out emission-free power sources, transit modes, or even carbon-free concrete, etc., then we might cross planetary boundaries that we can’t come back from.

    Nuclear is a safe bet and bet worth pursuing. I would argue that, along with that source from the IAEA, old nuclear is note worth it.


  • Nuclear power is the ONLY form of clean energy that can be scaled up in time to save us from the worst of climate change.

    Mmmm I agreed with you until reading this. The 6th IPCC Assessment Report showed us that Wind + Solar + Battery Storage are still a safer bet for rolling out non-fossil fuel energy sources at the fastest rate we can launch them. Nuclear sadly still takes too long to build.

    I think there is a space for advanced nuclear, though. Small Modular Reactors, Fast Breeders, and such should be encouraged going forward. The US (and I think UK) each have funds specifically designated to the development of advanced nuclear too.

    But old nuclear will take too long to get a hold on emissions. I still think nuclear fits in a well-balanced energy portfolio, but not of the specific technology of the 1950s-1990s.

    We’ve had the cure for climate change all along, but fear that we’d do another Chernobyl has scared us away from it.

    I mean, Chernobyl is kind of an outdated example. Fukushima would be the more recent one to point at, or even Three Mile Island. Not particularly useful for your argument. Still, I think if people got educated about all 3 of those examples from history, they’ll come out convinced that nuclear is still a safe bet.

    Problem is, like I said above, that conventional nuclear takes too damn long to build.



  • Just because something is non-renewable does not mean it is non-sustainable, just like how something being renewable does not mean it is sustainable.

    Hydro (or tidal barrage) power is an example of a renewable energy source, but it restricts river flow such that life can’t exist as it naturally has for eons, like fish swimming up/down river, etc., or restricts the flow of minerals and nutrients that feed various niches of river or inlet biodiversity. Those effects on a local ecosystem can lead to other species collapsing elsewhere, which can impact other species, including humans.

    Coal power is an example of a non-renewable resource as it depends on minerals that form at much slower rates than on the sorts of time scales humans use those minerals. Coal also leads to deaths of many humans and other species not only in the mining of resources (mine collapses, tailing pond ruptures, lung diseases, etc.), but also in the burning of the minerals via the release of radiation and other particulates that can impact local communities.

    Nuclear is, imo, the best non-renewable source we can exercise for human purposes, so we should still pursue it.



  • It all depends on the cost of living relative to the wages accrued. Often wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, so people feel more and more that the deal with their employers gets worse and worse. Someone earning 200k/year might be living the same as someone working 60k/year depending on where those people live

    Now, there is something to be said about why cost of living should vary from place to place. Part of it is scarcity of habitation: if there aren’t very many available flats or lots, there might be fierce competition for people to fill what flats or lots do become available. Supply and demand.

    Other aspects might be debt accrued by businesses that they pass on to their customers, externalities like wars or laws, etc.

    I also want to point out that a lot of people associate more wealth with more consumption, so you might see people rise to spend all of the new resources they accumulate rather than securitizing and saving that wealth for unforeseen events. Lots of people consume at terribly non-sustainable rates, and there should be conversations about what effects behaviors can have on the world, outside of the economy.


  • There was a phenomenon in the US labor market during 2022/2023 called “quiet quitting” where laborers across the market realized that companies weren’t paying wages adequately or to a level that reflected the kind of work laborers would perform.

    It was thought that companies paid their workers short of what the workers are owed, and in response to that, a large number of people, many trending young, started behaving according to those wages.

    This often meant reducing work speed or efficiency, reducing communication, etc. Laborers would claim that they were doing the bare minimum to match their wage compensation.

    The other side of this is that the US labor market at that time favored laborers over companies. Workers had more leverage about getting job offers and negotiating terms than companies had, partly due to a rebound from COVID.

    This meant that there wasn’t as much of an anxiety of workers being fired from their position since they would find it easy to get another job. So people did look for other jobs, often while working, to see if they might improve their circumstances and land a job that pays better.

    The “quiet” part was about sliding back on performance or even job tasks themselves, and the “quitting” part was about workers possibly leaving companies for other offers.

    I might have conflated The Great Resignation with this, but both phenomena affect the other.