[awestroke]

> I get that "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms

That's a huge understatement. They have actively sabotaged green initiatives all along. They have stopped green policies, and green policies is and has always been the ONLY way forward, you can't put shit like this on individuals.

[blacklion]

Sometimes I think, that green policies are not stopped by Big Oil but undermined. You see, in many countries green policies are tied with rejection of nuclear power plants, which is much more effective and sustainable than all solar & wind sources.

When I've lived in Russia, I've donated to Green Peace and WWF, because they helps a lot to save Nature Reserves, oppose predatory laws which allows to exploit Protected Areas without any ecological control, they sued factories which dump industrial waste into soil and water without any treatment, etc.

Now I'm living in Europe and I don't want to give money to Green Peace, because their agenda is not about nature reserves and industrial waste treatment, but, first, anti-nuclear-plant and then anti-travel, antu-car-ownership, etc.

[klabb3]

> because their agenda is not about nature reserves and factory waste treatment, but, first, anti-nuclear-plant and then anti-travel, antu-car-ownership, etc.

All of these things are indeed stupid imo, typical EU green party style navel gazing. The one I kind of agree with is anti-car-ownership, but it’s an extremely poor treatment of the symptom, where the decease is poor (and in many cases irreversible) city planning and public services. Excessive car ownership in urban areas is a solved problem in many parts of the world (where a car is less convenient than alternatives for personal travel for small families/households). It’s not rocket science.

[blacklion]

And one more: I don't know about which parts of the world you are speaking of.

I've relocated to the Netherlands half a year ago, and I'm living in Amstelveen, it is Amsterdam's satellite town.

It is "well known" that the Netherlands is very car-less-friendly country.

But no, it is not in reality. Especially if you could not ride bicycle, as my wife. There is 2 shops with limited selection of basic food in walking distance from our apartments (and it is apartments in multi-store building, not some cottage in the middle of the fields), and it's it. You need something other? You need to take tram, which costs at leas 1.8 euro one way (2.9 euro to the Amsterdam itself) and maybe shop you need will be near the one of the stops of this tram (if you are lucky). You need IKEA, really big supermarket, something like this? Good luck to get there without taxi.

It is very frustrating. I didn't own car previously, but I'm thinking about it now.

[blacklion]

Problem is, there is no good way for long way travel but airplane or car. Flights become ridiculous expensive (thanks to green movent too), and if you don't own car...

It becomes middle ages again: you live all you life in one city, you eat only local food ("we don't need oranges all year around" from other comment in this thread), you wash with cold water (to conserve energy), you wear thick, warm clothes even indoor at winter (same). Yes, you have antibiotics and, may be, good dentist, if you could afford it. Thank you.

I'm joking about middle ages, but as they say every joke contains some part of joke...

[maccard]

> It’s not rocket science.

But it's unpopular and expensive. Here in the UK, we have the minister for transport [0] jumping on the bandwagon of "walkable cities are a ploy for the government to control which shops you go to". In France, there were literal riots when fuel taxes were set to be raised.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mark-harper-government...

[DandyDev]

How is nuclear power much more sustainable than solar and wind energy?

[blacklion]

It takes much less space (including storage for waste of current generation power plants, and we could close fuel cycle if we spent a tiny fraction of money used to whitewash oil companies to this research) that all fields of wind generators and solar panels. Also, modern nuclear station has resource much larger than modern wind generators, which is made of glass and resin. Nuclear power plant don't take space needed to graze cattle and seed crops, don't kill soil with vibration as wind turbines, don't change local micro climate as solar panels deployed on square kilometers. "Only" problem with nuclear plant is possible terrorist attack (modern control systems should exclude manual control and Chernobyl scenario).

Yes, uranium is theoretically finite, but only now known reserves is enough for something like 100'000 years on current level of power production of whole planet (not current power production of existing nuclear power plants, but total power production as-if it is made only by nuclear plants). And it is not all reserves for sure, and in 100'000 years, I hope, fusion power plants will be reality

[DandyDev]

As I understood it, we only have access to a few decades worth of high-grade uranium. After that we’re left with low-grade uranium which is hard to mine and refine - which incidentally you need fossil fuels to do (the mining part)

With regard to space needed: imagine if every existing building had roof top solar panels. We’d get quite far. I think we have the space for a few wind turbines to get us the final few kWh.

What do you think we should do with nuclear waste?

And how do you feel about giving every country in the world access to technology that also lets them develop nuclear weapons? Or should a select group of countries be environmentally conscious and the rest use fossil fuels? Renewables can be given to every country without risk.

This article has some interesting insights with regards to nuclear vs renewable energy: https://energypost.eu/renewable-energy-versus-nuclear-dispel...