Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AlphaEsponjosus 580 days ago
What are you talking about? If you take 2.5% to spend it on better infrastructure and existing technologies (that are more environmentally friendly) and develop new technologies, you are not reducing GDP. GDP just measures the ammount of money a country spends.

Of course you need to spend money and energy (specially energy, everything in the universe is energy), but the solution is not to stop moving. We need to use energy and resources in order to switch to better technologies.
1 comments
yobbo 580 days ago
A new energy source is not like a new technology that can be developed. It needs to be discovered - as in a scientific break-through. A plan can not assume that break-throughs occur.

GDP measures the total production of an economy. That is mostly equivalent to energy_consumption * p_efficiency.

Investing in new technologies that increase efficiency has always been a good decision. Maybe you can improve solar panels by a further 5% and batteries by 10%?

Realistically, energy_consumption will need to decrease, but that isn't actually that terrible.

link
AlphaEsponjosus 580 days ago
No. The energy consumption does not need to decrease, the source must be more eficient. We have nuclear energy, despite the propaganda, nuclear energy (specially the Thorium reactors) produce very little waste and pollute less than fosil fuels or even solar panels. You do not need to discover a new source of energy to stop climate change. The problem is that people keep thinking in how much it will cost.

Again, GDP measures how much money is spent within a country, if there are several intermediaries in a supply chain, the cost of products and services increases and the GDP tends to rise.

If a country change direction and leans towards nuclear energy, the GDP (that is in fact a terrible measure) will increase cause the new expenditures.

link