53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout (theconversation.com)
- Reference: 0181884666
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/23/0432254/53-nations-gather-to-plan-a-fossil-fuel-phaseout
- Source link: https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-oil-as-fuel-shocks-cascade-53-nations-gather-to-plan-a-fossil-fuel-phaseout-280263
> For the first time ever, [2]more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The [3]history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But [4]this year's energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. [...] Around 80% of the trapped oil was destined for the Asia-Pacific. Faced with dwindling supply, the region's governments are implementing emergency measures such as sending workers home, banning government travel, rationing fuel and cutting school hours. The problem is especially bad in the Pacific. Many island nations use diesel for power generation. In response, leaders [5]declared a regional emergency .
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> [...] But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has [6]fallen 99.9% , while the cost of wind has [7]fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have [8]fallen 99% since 1991. [...] This year's oil shock shows signs of creating an unplanned social tipping point -- a threshold for self-propelling change beyond which systems shift from one state to another. Climate scientists warn of climate tipping points which amplify feedback and accelerate warming. But social scientists also point to positive tipping points -- collective action that rapidly accelerates climate action.
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> [...] The routine burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary driver of the climate crisis. The world's highest court last year made clear nations have obligations to stop burning fossil fuels. But fossil fuels have barely been mentioned in 30 years of global climate negotiations, due in part to blocking efforts by big fossil fuel exporters and lobbyists. Frustrated by slow progress, a coalition of nations has bypassed global climate talks to discuss how to actually phase out fossil fuels. The first of these summits will take place next week. More than 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss a [9]potential standalone treaty to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~hwstar
[2] https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-oil-as-fuel-shocks-cascade-53-nations-gather-to-plan-a-fossil-fuel-phaseout-280263
[3] https://transitionawayconference.com/
[4] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/04/16/1916239/europe-has-maybe-6-weeks-of-jet-fuel-left
[5] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/03/12/0710204/strait-of-hormuz-closure-triggers-work-from-home-4-day-weeks-in-asia
[6] https://knowledge.energyinst.org/new-energy-world/
[7] https://www.sustainability-management.wiki/docs/organization/onshore-wind-energy/
[8] https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
[9] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/02/every-company-wants-to-produce-the-last-barrel-sold-the-plan-to-create-a-fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty
Hash out (Score:2)
What an obnoxious, empty, corporate word...
Re: (Score:2)
Colombia is still by far the largest producer in the Americas, more than Peru & Bolivia combined and had a LOT more acreage cultivating coca in the mid 2000s than at any time while Pablo Escobar was alive
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Some good coffee growers too.
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Possibly by flying. How so? As an IT nerd, you are probably aware of the process of "bootstrapping" - using the current environment with it's limitations to try getting something better running.
Now on the other hand, flying for leisure, without your activities at the destination even trying to help resolving important global issues, is a bit harder to justify. Even harder to justify is action (or inaction) that outright blocks people from living more sustainable - for example blocking construction of bike l
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> using the current environment with it's limitations to try getting something better running.
The process of bootstrapping never eliminates lower level system. Kernel does not delete BIOS and if it happen to corrupt it, it is serious issue that requires urgent fixing.
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> The process of bootstrapping never eliminates lower level system.
The goal isn't to eliminate it.
> Kernel does not delete BIOS and if it happen to corrupt it, it is serious issue that requires urgent fixing.
Classic BIOS didn't do things after boot once the OS loaded. It just sat there in case anyone wanted to use it.
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There's a limitation to the bootstrapping analogy here, if you think of it in the sense of a computer boot(strap). Yes; when a complex system is totally disabled (ie, the computer is shut off), then there is a reliance on the lower-level system(s) to bootstrap back into an operating mode. In this case, roughly, BIOS->Bootloader->Operating System.
Similarlty, turbine aircraft (jets, etc) require a small power unit to start up first, which then enables the full engine systems to start and run. A "boot
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conferences like these have been going on for decades; one of the 1st large international ones was in Geneva in 1979 also attended by 50+ countries.
telecom & videoconf have some a LONG way since then & these conferences should have moved to online-only at least 20 years ago
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No, stupid question.
"Ha! People flew! Checkmate, libs!" is just a dumb argument, frankly. You're demanding absolute perfection in order to improve anything. If you burn 1000 tons of fuel to figure out how to save burning a further million then you have saved 999,000 tons of fuel from being burned. The fact that 1000 was spent on flying does not detract from that.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
And the reason that this horseshit could not have been a Zoom call is..?
Re:simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
> And the reason that this horseshit could not have been a Zoom call is..?
Because 90% of the actual discussion ad business is done outside of the meeting in informal settings, often in a chance meeting. That's hard to do in Zoom, especially with the possibility of such discussions being recorded. Plus, it's a pain to have to start a new meeting every time your free tier limit was reached...
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Yes it is very important to meet in a place with hookers and blow.
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> Because 90% of the actual discussion ad business is done outside of the meeting in informal settings, often in a chance meeting.
It's all about the visuals. In a Zoom meeting, you can't be seen to be 'actively concerned' about climate change, so you're not going to get the publicity that having reporters photograph you displaying your deep concern about the climate and working to hammer out an agreement to phase out fossil fuels that will wind up honored more in its abrogation than its compliance. From the article: "But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time." -- as Spain
Re:simple question (Score:5, Insightful)
And the reason that this horseshit could not have been a Zoom call is..?
Humans are for the majority social animals and work better with in person interactions, especially when it comes to working out things with people they don't know.
The one thing we learned in COVID is that zoom calls are not a substitute for the real thing.
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Maybe people should learn how to suck it up and not endanger the species because they cannot communicate any other way. That is a sign eight there that you lack intelligence and maybe shouldn't have an important role.
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Maybe people should learn how to suck it up
Blah de blah. If they actually succeed, the incremental extra fuel burned will be less than a rounding error compared to that not burned as a result. The planet is being destroyed by driving cars all over the place (that's like 35% of all oil extracted). Even if they make a few percent of difference that will outweigh the fuel used on flights.
TL;DR stop worrying about perfection and start fixing the problem.
That is a sign eight there that you lack intelligence
I lov
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Presumably today using today's technology with no alternative available. It's almost like this conference is precisely what that restriction is about. Weird huh!
Which nations? (Score:2)
There's no list in TFA.
Will all of them combined even make a dent?
Re:Which nations? (Score:5, Informative)
See here: [1]https://transitionawayconferen... [transition...erence.com]
"To date, we have the participation of over 53 nations:
Angola, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, European Union, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Kiribati, Luxembourg, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Portugal, Senegal, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, Tuvalu, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vietnam."
So not the USA, Russia, India, or China.
[1] https://transitionawayconference.com/participants
Re:Which nations? (Score:4, Interesting)
> ...So not the USA, Russia, India, or China.
Yow. So, not including the nine highest CO2 emitting nations. Not sure exactly what the can do.
[1]https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
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They can sit around and waste time pretending to do things so they can tell their voters how much they've accomplished.
Re:Which nations? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see Japan or S.Korea on that list. Or NZ for that matter.
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Also not Vatican City - Pope wants to keep his options open.
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> Also not Vatican City - Pope wants to keep his options open.
Vatican emissions are pretty low, except when they've chosen a new chief pedo protector, that process produces significant visible soot.
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How are they counting both the EU and most of the EU member states separately?
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Thanks for the list - and doing the originally linked article's job for them.
What is interesting to me is that there are also countries here that produce oil (e.g. Nigeria, Angola, Norway, Canada), and for some of which at least, their oil industry is presumably a major part of their national GDP (I'm too lazy to look up the numbers right now.)
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> So not the USA, Russia, India, or China.
Or any other country with a standard of living the requires a per capita energy usage beyond what can practically be supplies with alternatives at this time.
Energy poverty = poverty poverty.
That would be 55 nations (Score:2)
To be fair with the conference organizers, in their website they claim "To date, we have the participation of over 53 nations". I'm counting 54 from the list, and we should add the host country, Colombia.
Re:Which nations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly at this point what the countries achieve for themselves is likely more meaningful. Gaining energy independence is an optimal long term strategy.
Ideas on phasing out agriculture and plastics (Score:1, Flamebait)
I am curious to hear their ideas on how to phase out use of fertilizer and plastics. Sustenance farming living in log cabins wearing animal skins is one way to do it.
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Interesting. How about the Roman Empire? Ancient Egypt? Incas? Mayans? Those civilizations are destroyed and only ruins are left, yet we are all still here. Civilization evolves, old civilizations die out and new ones take their place. Maybe that is what needs to happen.
It doesn't happen over night, it takes time. Centuries even. So think about how you want to shape the next civilization. Now narrow that focus to just fossil fuel sub-set. That is what they are doing. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not
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I am curious to hear their ideas on how to phase out use of fertilizer and plastics.
No you aren't. You're just JAQing off.
Industry and chemicals use about 28% of oil. Stopping burning it for transport is by far the biggest change that can be made.
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How did you infer any of that based on the discussion of fossil fuels?
agriculture and plastics are not fossil fuels (Score:2)
> I am curious to hear their ideas on how to phase out use of fertilizer and plastics.
If they are burning fertilizer and plastics to make energy, they are doing it wrong.
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At this point in human history, if you need some plastic, don't drill an oil well: just ask your area sewage treatment plant. I heard they're even helpfully piping it back in via the residential water pipes in some jurisdictions.
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> I am curious to hear their ideas on how to phase out use of fertilizer and plastics. Sustenance farming living in log cabins wearing animal skins is one way to do it.
Pointless sentiment. Of course countries will still use oil products. The whole point is to not be putting those oil products into the atmosphere. For instance, by using it for fertilizer and plastics.
Got to delay progress as much as possible (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how many fossil fuel lobbyists will be present at this conference.
How many more MtCO2e cumulatively do we add? (Score:3)
That's the key question. How do we keep that number as low as possible.
Turns out it's not really a question of how quickly to build out storage etc to deal with dunkelflautes. It's really about four things:
1. How quickly do we electrify ground transport? For example, using scrappage schemes to go faster, not just waiting for market forces
2. How much will we incentivise electrification of domestic heating? Heat pumps are a pain in the ass to install at national scale, but it's the largest remaining chunk for us to electrify this decade
3. How quickly do we push industry electrification. The easy stuff is a no brainer (low temp heat, some manufacturing); then there's the scaling-based stuff, eg H2 processes, electrified high temp heat; and then there's the really hard stuff, eg cement
4. How fast do we go on power. Do we build renewables ahead of demand and curtail and temporary low returns, for example?
This is the difference between the UK emitting a further 4300 MtCO2e before we get to zero or getting that down to 3000. It can be done, but it is really hard and needs a shit ton of political will.
Thank fuck for Hormuz and Trump's idiocy, in that sense. 65GW of solar exports from China in March, way more than any previous month.
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[1]Here's a chart of energy use by fossil fuels [oilandenergyonline.com].
The big chunks are transportation and electricity generation. Residential heating is a relatively small issue. As heat pump technology improves, people will naturally pick them up.
[1] https://oilandenergyonline.com/files/9916/2428/4499/sector1.png
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Heat pump technology is fairly mature since it's just a patch on air conditioners. They aren't likely to improve much. People will pick them up as their economic situation improves.
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Exactly. I'm due to replace my HVAC system in the next year or so. I would go with a heat pump system, but electricity rates are very high in my area. Natural gas is much cheaper. As almost half the year requires my home to be heated or risk being under 30F I'll go with the economic solution over the ecological one. If we can lower electricity rates by then I'll gladly dive in.
Now if I had the ability to install a ground/air and not air/air heat pump for the same price as my natural gas replacement (or near
You can't (Score:2, Flamebait)
> to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.
You can't protect workers if you persist in thinking of them as "workers", where the idea is they deserve protection because they're working. There's going to be market disruption, and jobs will be destroyed. Even if/when new jobs are created there will be further delay for training if you hope to have those same workers do those new jobs. If not, things are even worse.
There's obviously going to be intense disruption to financial systems as well, because there's a lot of money in fossil fuels. Whole banks m
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You've made some reasonable points. You really can't both protect jobs and change the energy economy upon which so many of those jobs depend. And it would disrupt the financial systems, upon which so many more jobs depend. Though I think you've missed just how serious the harm would be to the poor if the financial system collapsed. Yeah, a lot of stockbrokers might jump out of windows, but millions of workers would see their livelihoods evaporate, and most of them won't have windows high up enough to le
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> Though I think you've missed just how serious the harm would be to the poor if the financial system collapsed.
If only you and the other simplistic people like you would think about how serious the harm would be to all when the ecological system collapses, which is a significantly more serious consideration.
Re:Allow ME.... (Score:4, Informative)
Your use of the word "equal" is inaccurate.
Yes, alternate technologies use resources, but by no means "equal". Fossil fuels are burned by the tens of billions of tons per year. Building cars and solar panels won't even need one percent of this volume, nor five thousand oil tanker ships constantly traversing the seas.
Also, in passing, please don't link grok. AI models tend to make up information (they " [1]hallucinate [grokmag.com]"), so you can't trust what they say. (And Grok, in particular, also tends to treat conspiracy theories with equal weight as actual data.) If you have to get your info from AI, use the AI to tell you sources, and then use the sources.
[1] https://grokmag.com/groks-first-flaw-a-hallucination-horror-story/
Don't believe the chatbots [Re:Allow ME....] (Score:2)
> Everything there is sourced and verified reality.
Nope. The chatbot is giving you mostly vacuous scare-hype, and leaves out real comparisons. Billions of tons of mining will indeed be done... every year... because that's how much fossil fuels we burn now . Saying "gosh, but making cars takes minerals too!" leaves out the "...but we don't burn the cars when we drive them, and constantly have to mine new ones to replace the ones we burned to make energy."
Short answer, don't believe chatbots. They are crafted to please you, and will tell you what they think
It's a 20% drop (Score:4, Interesting)
Closing the Strait of Hormuz drops oil supply by about 20% worldwide. That's the amount that has to either be replaced with production elsewhere (likely Russia) or replaced with alternatives (wind, solar, nuclear, etc.). Nobody is suggesting that we're going to replace 100% of fossil fuels with renewables. For a small island nation that already has diesel generators, this means a large up-front capital investment to build a large amount of solar and/or wind and a large battery bank, but the ongoing costs will be lower than purchasing diesel fuel. Unfortunately capital (the thing you use to build stuff) is expensive right now and looks like it will stay high for a long time, so that makes the initial construction a lot more expensive. Which means less spending on other stuff for those nations, like building industrial plant, schools, roads, etc.
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> Nobody is suggesting that we're going to replace 100% of fossil fuels with renewables.
From the article (and the summary):
". . . to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas."
Did you reply to the wrong post? Or just not read it?
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Did you know solar panels don't work at night? Gotcha libs!
Re: Numbers? (Score:2)
And if you have a nice bank of batteries you can charge them up every day and they will last all night long, and the next day charge them up again.
I been doing it that way for six years now and only had a blackout for a single night two or three times in all those six years
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And if a person goes to a dealership to purchase an electric car for the sake of whatever, then they were not serious about whatever if they got there using a vehicle powered by a gasoline engine.
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I went by [cough, choke, wheeze] diesel bus.
Check the dipstick on the PetroDollar (Score:3)
It is looking low and really really dirty, time for a change
This is a major political shift (Score:4, Insightful)
The countries participating in this aren't all traditional allies/partners; this isn't like a meeting of NATO (now 77 years old). This loose coalition of disparate countries was put together in weeks , which is amazingly fast and not now how things normally happen in international politics. That's a reflection of how urgently they all view the situation, and how much they're willing to try to work with each other despite their many differences.
It's also a big deal that they're (apparently) determined to do this whether or not the traditional superpowers are on board -- notably, the US, which simply cannot be trusted to behave in a responsible manner or even a consistent manner by anyone. I would write "US national policy is erratic" but that understates things badly: the US does not have a national policy because it's been replaced by the day-to-day, hour-to-hour whims and temper tantrums of a pants-shitting mobster.
I don't know if they'll succeed in building a viable coalition. But they need to succeed because this is an existential crisis for some of them today and it will be for more of them tomorrow. And countries that have their backs to wall have repeatedly demonstrated that they can and will do what it takes: for a recent example, consider Ukraine, which -- out of necessity -- invented a whole new kind of warfare in a matter of months.
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Yes, but...
1) The major polluters are not attending.
2) Most of these conferences don't yield visible positive results.
3) When goals are announced, they tend to be ignored in actions.
I hope they are able to come up with solutions that they can use, but I have doubts that even if they do it will have measurable effects except locally. (Yeah, even local effects are desirable, but don't expect global effects.)
Donald Trump the Environmentalist (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! Causing a fuel crisis is doing more to convert the world to clean energy sources than any accord ever could.
Yes: the oil crisis stimulates action (Score:3)
> Wow! Causing a fuel crisis is doing more to convert the world to clean energy sources than any accord ever could.
True. Today's low-cost solar panels are direct results of the research programs initiated by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA, later folded into the Department of Energy); programs which were started due to the 1970s oil crisis.
Let's be blunt (Score:2)
You don't need a damn meeting to roll out Thorium reactors, you need big oil to fuck off.
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IIUC, the Thorium reactors are still a "work in progress". And I thought they required a bit of enriched uranium as a starter.
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> You don't need a damn meeting to roll out Thorium reactors, you need big oil to fuck off.
Big oil is running an aggressive campaign against alternate fuels... but they don't care about nuclear power that much, because their big profits come from oil, and building a nuclear power plant doesn't really impact oil usage.
What oil companies really wants to stamp out is electric vehicles. Every electric vehicle supplants a vehicle that's burning oil. Keeping in mind that the oil industries are a trillion dollar per year business, so even a one percent decrease in number of gasoline cars represents a lo
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> they are also working to stop fuel efficiency standards in ICE cars
Our state (Washington) is doing more by imposing high sales taxes and license fees on newer (like electric) vehicles.
Re: Let's be blunt (Score:2)
The cost of building and maintaining a nuclear reactor is beyond many nations ability, solar and/or hydroelectric is their only feasable alternative, even a stationary bike modified with a generator would be interesting to look into as not only would people get exercise they can charge up batteries
Technology (Score:2)
These 50 nations should put their energy towards a technology that replaces fossil fuels. I don't believe there will ever be high speed chargers everywhere there are gas stations today. In Canada, there is no cellphone tower where there is no population. So where we need communication the most, capitalism will not allow it. The same will happen for electric charging. You will be able to travel up north but even if there is a 7 minute to charge technology you won't get it there.
Good to reduce dependence on fossil fuel (Score:2)
It's good to reduce energy dependence on fossil fuel. However, this will serve to make China more powerful since it's the source of the vast majority of the world's solar panels and large batteries.
I think other countries need to ramp up production of solar panels and batteries so as not to give China even more geopolitical leverage.
Nuclear is needed. (Score:2)
If we really want to phase out fossil fuels we need nuclear energy. Building only solar and wind guarantees a place on the grid for fossil fuels.
Re: Nuclear is needed. (Score:2)
Most nations are incapable of building & maintaining a nuclear reactor, it would just make them dependant on big banker's money and foreigners with the skills to maintain and run them until they catch up with the skills, and once they are in debt by billions of dollars to a bank with fiat currency that is a hole they will never get out of but that's what the banker class likes because that means they can enslave the government and the people like the USA is now
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Most nations aren't responsible for the majority of fossil fuel pollutions.
And the banker class is what is fucking over new nuclear in the rest of the world as well. 2/3 of the cost of recent builds is interest. That's a solvable problem.
Island nations (Score:2)
It is absolutely true -- and completely insane -- that basically all island nations are diesel-powered. Most of these countries have sun like 300 days of the year, and while they don't have a lot of available land, they can and definitely should be covering their rooftops with solar panels. That would not only make them less reliant on fossil fuels, it would also make their electricity dramatically cheaper. They'll still need the diesel generators at night, but power consumption is lower at night and dies
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I haven't seen an advertisement on the internet in probably 20 years.
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I will say their meeting is worth it when 50 governments realize they can meet on Zoom rather than fly 50 planes to Columbia.