[ars]

> Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.

That's targeting the wrong side of the supply/demand equation. Which is also why this initiative of California's will not work.

Just keep building better power sources!! You will never reduce demand, you can only make a better supply.

Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.

If California actually cared about the environment that's what they would do, instead it's only lip service.

[bobthepanda]

This is not true.

Even today, where we haven't done all that much with electric efficiency, US power generation has been virtually flat for over a decade since the last recession: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38572

Considering how much low-hanging efficiency fruit there is still lying around, reducing demand is a perfectly valid strategy for reducing carbon emissions.

[ars]

Scroll down a bit on that page you link.

The entire difference is due to heavy industry moving to other countries.

[bobthepanda]

No, it's not.

In the second graph, industrial sales flatline then decline after 2000, which doesn't match up with the peak electricity generation in 2007. Both residential and commercial slow or stop growing after 2007.

[cure]

> Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.

Maybe in theory, but not in practice. How much new nuclear generation has been brought online in the last decade in the US? How much solar/wind?

Clearly, the only carbon-free power generation that is actually actively being brought online is solar/wind. With batteries, we'll actually get somewhere with the decarbonization of our power generation.

It still won't be fast enough at the current pace, though...

[ars]

> It still won't be fast enough at the current pace, though...

Isn't that exactly the point? Nuclear could be fast enough, solar wind can't.

Of course we'll need to bring down nuclear costs, not a lot, but at least some.