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by dkarl
1295 days ago
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Many people who are optimistic about what technology can achieve are eco-globalists, because they believe that the technology will only be developed in response to carefully targeted state-enforced incentives. I think the purest form of "climate tech" is people who believe that the technology will appear regardless of policy. There's even a hard core of libertarian technologists who believe that fossil fuel technology would have naturally been superseded by a superior futuristic technology by now if not for government meddling on behalf of oil companies, though I would guess that is a very small and extreme minority of the "climate tech" tribe. |
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I just wonder if there wasn't heavy subsidies for fossil fuel, direct or otherwise (and I mean things like the military budget which exists, above all for oil resource control and securing oil shipping) what battery, solar, and of course wind could be at if they started in the 1950s with aggressive research.
Wind blades are just fiberglass (invented 1932), silicon based solar panels might not be economical without the CPU fab industry, but perovskites and all the other kinds? Could the salt water battery coming online next year been done in 1950s or 1960s tech? Who knows.
Of course some of that is "perfect hindsight". But the notion that oil companies haven't gotten substantial subsidies and meddled in energy policy is not an extreme idea.