[ZeroGravitas]

> There is a great conflict between two of the most pressing problems of our time: poverty and climate change.

This wasn't true in 2021 and has been getting less true over time.

Not one mention of Solar or Wind in the whole article.

[uniqueuid]

I agree that it's stupid not to take the game-changer of solar and wind (and batteries) into account.

Even though I believe that nuclear no longer has a role in energy (fuel sources, disposal, concentration of risk into few small units), the statement is still correct and it has another dimension:

There is a conflict between poverty, climate change, gravity of climate change harms and the speed at which we can reduce climate change impacts.

The problem is that there is a shrinking window to limit harm, and the harms will disproportionally affect poor nations which at the same time lack resources to mitigate. I'd definitely call that a gordian knot.

[TheRoque]

Is it really a game changer though ? AFAIK countries that made the shift to solar and wind can't still store they energy and have to rely on fossil still to power they country (e.g. Germany). On top of that, if the whole world made the shift to solar, wind and batteries, I assume the scarcity of some materials will become an issue. According to this [1] Lithium for example is expected to have a shortage by 2025. There are also challenges like usable surface, and making all the intermittent, non-controllable energy work together. I mean, I am open to the idea of solar/wind, but "game changer"... Doesn't seem so easy

[1]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

[bryanlarsen]

Watching what China does is always instructive. Despite platitudes to the contrary, climate change is a tertiary concern of theirs. What they care most about is (1) energy independence and (2) cost. So 10-15 years ago they started building a lot of nuclear, solar and coal.

As the cost of solar plummeted and nuclear went up they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. For the last 5 years they've built several TW's of solar capacity and a similar amount of coal peaker plants to run when the sun isn't shining.

Now in 2024 they're starting to scale back coal and they're building massive batteries instead. IOW, batteries are now cheaper than coal to offset the intermittency of solar.

Also, the lithium shortage has come and gone already: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium

[defrost]

> they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions.

Currently (June 2024) they're all the way down to:

    China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.

    China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.

    China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).

    From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.

~ https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-c...

Which is quite the wind down from . . . ?

[bryanlarsen]

If they want 150 online by 2035, most of them would have been started by now and/or you would expect to see capacity accelerating. Instead, capacity additions appear to be slowing down, in contrast to the massive additions in the 2010's.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

[bryanlarsen]

Article with much more info about China's nuclear pull back: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/08/22/china-still-hasnt-learn...

[ZeroGravitas]

They were aiming for 15% by 2035, 25% in 2050 then ramping up to 45%.

Now they're aiming for 18% by 2060, by which time they will also be net zero carbon.

[TheRoque]

What's IOW... ?

[floam]

in other words

[wcrossbow]

A guardian or a gordian knot [0]?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

[bborud]

The story of the gordian knot wasn't really about the problem. It was about the solution. So alluding to it when you talk about nuclear is apt, but not for the reasons people seem to think.

[uniqueuid]

Haha thanks fixed.

[Festro]

? Those are very much two of the world's most pressing problems, both accelerating currently. Though I'd phrase the 'poverty' one as 'wealth inequality' instead as whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line. That may not remain true for much longer though.

And the article is about nuclear energy and the premise of it being a flop and why that might be, based on a book about the topic. I don't think it has to mention solar and wind. Though I can see, as competing energy sources, why it would be useful to look at their impact on political momentum for nuclear, or how they reduce economic demand for the extra energy nuclear can supply.

[wyager]

> whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line

Defining poverty as "wealth relative to the richest person on earth" or whatever you're doing here is unproductive crab-bucket envy, not a useful definition. If you're talking about wealth, all that matters is if the baseline is going up. If you're talking about status, be honest and say that explicitly instead of dressing it up as a wealth issue.

[anonymous_sorry]

Wealth distribution is important, because very rich people disproportionately buy up limited-supply assets in order to earn passive income on them. In densely populated places, that includes assets like homes, which pushes up housing costs.

Housing costs often aren't included in popular measures of inflation. If you do use an inflation measure that includes housing and all other everyday expenditure, then I think it's a reasonable to argue the baseline going up is good enough.

[robertlagrant]

Unless someone buys up so many properties they can start unilaterally increasing prices, the problem with housing going up isn't rich people buying them and renting them at a market rate. It's the amount of demand vs supply that does it.

And you're right - this is possibly the single biggest issue that's a downgrade for people vs their parents/grandparents, and it's a huge one. But the problem needs to be attributed correctly.

[anonymous_sorry]

More very rich people looking for somewhere to park their money and earn returns means more competition when you want to buy a home.

I agree it doesn't necessarily mean rents rises. You might actually expect higher price to earnings ratio with more wealthy people competing to buy assets (see also stocks).

But it will lead to the shrinking of the home-owning middle class.

That's not to say there isn't also a problem with lack of supply.

[Hikikomori]

Well you have hedge fund money buying homes and stuff like this: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

Seems to be mostly an American problem, like many others.

[Festro]

I think you missed my definition by a wide mile.

On a world-scale we've been reducing the overall number of people below the poverty line each decade, however there is a discussion to be had around inflation and whether the poverty line itself needs to move (there a re lots of poverty lines used in analysis, I'm not referring to any single definition).

And I'm not talking specifically about wealth. Wealth is fine in a vacuum. Looking at excessive wealth and means to recirculating it can be helpful when addressing the issues the poorest people in society are facing.

And I'm not talking about status, no idea how you got that impression. I'm re-reading my comment and trying to figure out where you got that fantasy from.

[Earw0rm]

Isn't the most useful definition of rich/poor how much access to resources you can buy?

As in, how can someone be both getting poorer but also enjoying increasing access to resources? Buying power is a pretty good measure here unless I've missed something?

(I'm talking about this in a global context where we can assume asset wealth is pretty much negligible, i.e. it's not a case of people burning through savings to access resources)

[Festro]

I agree, but in practise this has been difficult to measure, thus the existence of 'poverty lines' which have been defined as $1/day, $2/day etc, and been fairly static for a long time.

For a poverty line definition then, as I mentioned, we can observe fewer people being below the poverty line as time goes on, but we're ignoring inflation and buying power. Fewer people being under the $1/day poverty line is great, unless essential purchases have doubled in price.

What we've seen in recent decades has been a mix of inflation and basic resources becoming more assessible/cheaper. So when I say people are getting poorer, I'm saying poverty lines ignore this the access angle unless they adjust for inflation, but then also counter to that some essentials have become more accessible, like access to medicine, education and energy. So whilst buying power may get worse for some, they're 'wealthier' in terms of things that they have increased cost-free/low-cost access to.

There have been attempts to use definitions that do adjust for access but they're a lot more difficult to normalise across countries. Something like the Big Mac Index is a quick and dirty tool but obviously it focusses on a single item in a single category (food) so it can't provide a very detailed picture of access to resources, buying power, and poverty on the whole.

[Earw0rm]

Ok,that makes sense. My country (UK) uses a definition of poverty that's based on a % of median household income, which doesn't tell you anything about buying power.

If your income is below 60% of median, you're in poverty per the government's definition.