And no policy is gonna willingly reduce energy consumption which is directly co-related with QOL when other countries have much higher per-capita consumption. Politically humans need fairness.
We know. There are many reasons why countries choose more polluting sources of energy. Part of which is costs. The world runs on incentives. Maybe rich countries like the US can subsidize clean energy for poorer countries like India. Because consumption is definitely not going to come down.
You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.
The United States already supports clean energy in India. India is not “poor”. It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom. 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
> You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.
It's not a contradiction. Increasing consumption today will mean increase of greenhouse emissions. Any increase of consumption today still involves some increase in fossil fuels for many reasons like grid stability.
> The United States already supports clean energy in India.
They work together on projects. AFAIK the US doesn't subsidise anything for India or other countries.
> India is not “poor”.
It is. Its per capita GDP is $2,878. The US is $85,809. Thats a 30x difference. It is an incredibly poor country.
> It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom.
Philippines and Norway have the same total GDP too. It's silly to consider them equally rich.
> 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
Hell yeah! Hopefully it keeps growing. It's kinda hilarious that India is one of the few countries who will meet the Paris accord commitments. The US is still stuck at 23% and isn't even close to meeting its commitments.
People in India are poor but that doesn’t mean the country is poor. The Indian government has resources to build out renewables as evidenced by them doing exactly that. The United States does not provide much direct funding but you are the only one suggesting that is necessary.
No voter would. Humans would rather die from climate change than try and work together. Our innate tribalism is what makes solutions to this problem hard.
That seems to be a very American perspective. Several European countries have or had Green Parties being part of the government. A German Land (state in US terminology) has a had Green prime minister for 10 years. One could debate whether they have made sufficient impact, but it's certainly very far from "no voter".
Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas. You know the conspiracy theories about how the oil companies are keeping perpetual motion machines hidden? Solar panels are literally that. With the caveat that they only work in sunlight. So they're not great when you need energy at night. But even if you triple your costs to account for only working 8 hours a day, they're cheaper than anything else.
For a lot of industrial processes, being limited to running during sunny periods would cause costs to go up by a lot more than a factor of three. The grid scale storage necessary to make solar power work for heavy industry remains extremely expensive and capacity limited. Costs are starting to come down but it will take decades.
Solar + battery is now the cheapest. Except in the USA, where natural gas is heavily subsidized. Happily, deploying new gas plants is constrained by supply of turbines. So solar + battery wins by default.
Solar is also the most democratic, as long as you can tolerate it not working at night. I encourage you to experiment with a small portable system. I did - a 30W panel, 9Ax12V SLA battery, off-the-shelf car inverter, packet of crimp connectors, spool of wire, crimp tool, the cheapest over-voltage shutoff controller I could find (just search for solar charge controller - although lead-acid chemistries are moderately tolerant to charging out of bounds, unlike lithium, which is why I suggest lead-acid).