[mcherm]

Or -- hear me out on this one -- we could ban wind energy, raise costs for electric vehicles, and use government resources to promote increased use of coal and oil.

That would have a bunch of advantages such as sounding familiar to leaders whose heyday was in the 1970s, of not making us feel bad about the state of the world, and occasionally giving financial kickbacks to government leaders.

Or... if you don't like this approach, maybe making changes in political leadership is the single most important thing to do.

[strictnein]

Texas, with their evil leadership, generates significantly more solar and wind energy than California, and has significantly more energy storage.

So maybe just blaming this on a political viewpoint you don't like doesn't actually help anything?

https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1t5ud20/texas_vs_ca...

[LordDragonfang]

I feel like you're not actually engaging with GP's point, Jonathan Swift.

Their point is that unpopular climate policies are exactly what is pushing the general populace towards this sort of regressive climate policy you're describing. "Maybe we should make a change in political leadership" is not a productive contribution when the current leadership is the result of bad policy messaging. GP isn't opposing leadership change, they're explaining how to move towards it.

(As much as I'd like to believe that people will just gain an educated understanding of the issues and choose correctly, the unfortunate fact is that real-world politics doesn't work like that, and has to contend with the fact that populism is what wins elections)

[mmooss]

> That would have a bunch of advantages such as sounding familiar to leaders whose heyday was in the 1970s, of not making us feel bad about the state of the world, and occasionally giving financial kickbacks to government leaders.

Besides 'kickbacks' I don't think those reasons have much to do with it. The policy benefits the fossil fuel industries' investors / owners, and follows the rent-seeking, anti-free market theory and practice of many current capitalists (specifically, that's not about capitalism but a current powerful group of capitalists). Those capitalists strongly influence government.

The other effects you mention persuade the public.

EDIT: We might ask, if the above theory is true, why the same rent-seeking capitalists do use that strategy for renewable energy? Maybe those industries, dominated by many non-American companies, are hard to monopolize? But I'm wandering far into speculation.