"High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few percent of the Earth’s surface." ...
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& "The ethical and pragmatic path toward a just and sustainable global energy economy requires that human beings transition as rapidly as possible to energy sources that are cheap, clean, dense, and abundant."
sep 2, 2025, 1:35 am • 1 0 • view
That paragraph is immediately after one talking about how the only solution capable of doing that is nuclear fission.
sep 2, 2025, 1:39 am • 0 0 • view
Is fission a big part of the Klein & Thompson argument?
sep 2, 2025, 1:41 am • 0 0 • view
Not as big as it was in this 10 years ago, but again, my point is that there is a legacy to their ideas and arguments. That ideas evolve with time is normal, but the framing and positioning matters.
sep 2, 2025, 1:45 am • 1 0 • view
Oh sure, it wasn't going to be /sui generis/. I guess the hyperlocal context to my very original comment is that some friends on here and I have been having a discussion about how useful the 'abundance' framing is to left-wing/progressive causes and I've been on the skeptical side.
sep 2, 2025, 1:47 am • 1 0 • view
And tl;dr I guess I was more right to be skeptical than I knew.
sep 2, 2025, 1:48 am • 2 0 • view
Although having said that, even the eco-modernists seem like they would likely be frustrated by the Tesla statement, given how much it seems to be giving lip-service to their words while slow-walking any promise of implementation (not usually a Tesla hallmark!)
sep 2, 2025, 1:50 am • 2 0 • view
Quite possibly, yes. Though as that last Nordhaus link shows, they also seem preoccupied with identifying their opponents over pursuing their stated goals, sometimes. (That's the text of a conference keynote, mind you.)
sep 2, 2025, 1:54 am • 1 0 • view
The ecomodernists look clearly part of the same intellectual milieu as Klein & Thompson, but, well, there's a lot of people who are part of that milieu, myself as a very junior member but nevertheless included.
sep 2, 2025, 1:37 am • 1 0 • view
They have a lot of reasonable ideas but the way they talk about them - and about those who disagree with them (not a problem unique to them, granted!) - gives space for cooptation and extremism.
sep 2, 2025, 1:41 am • 3 0 • view