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by earthtolazlo 2353 days ago
Having your cake and eating it too sounds like a great option. It just doesn’t have any basis in reality.
2 comments

Parent as I read it isn't suggesting that having your cake and eating it too is possible, instead they're attempting to establish a dual-scale demarcation of viewpoints with one scale being "Prohibition or allowance of fossil fuels" and the other scale being "Fixes or does not fix climate change".

This is useful because polling has discovered many US Republicans will actually vote for climate solutions _if_ they employ new technologies that would result in new industries.

I suspect that unfortunately there is a mismatch between hypothetical polling and reality given the current outright hostility to solar and wind in spite of them contribuiting jobs and income in their regions. Farmers are renting land for turbines using fallow fields for solar panels and are facing bizzare objections when there are fewer externalities than the existing options.
The people voting against environmental reforms are doing it because they don't want to reduce their quality of life.

And since nothing comes close to the cost to energy density ratio of fossil fuels, there is no solution other than reducing energy usage and reducing quality of life. And so without convincing people they should reduce their quality of life for the benefit of future generations, nothing is going to happen.

Will they vote for the LFTR? They haven't so far.
> It just doesn’t have any basis in reality.

So you're effectively denying the possibility? I'd say that's a pretty gargantuan assumption to make.

It’s very, very, very unlikely that we’ll find a magic bullet solution at this stage. Removing co2 from the atmosphere requires some external energy source, for one thing.