Thread: OK, so why isn't the public screaming for alternative energy NOW?

I never meant to imply that. America needs a revolution simply because we won't ever change direction with our current politics

We can't escape the narrative of history, sometimes things just slowly become the way they are, and once you've gone down that path it's not a simple thing to go back, there was never a single moment of conscious choice, the system just built up to what it is today. Whether or not before oil became the primary energy source we could have gone any other direction or not is a moot point, at the time oil was the obvious choice. If we had the opportunity to build all nuclear or solar back then, perhaps the world would be very different. Who knows, it's irrelevant, only future marginal costs are relevant in decision making.

There's a barrier to entry, a hump to push over.

Once you get over the hump it could well be the new model is more cost efficient than the old one.

http://www.managingwholes.com/merve.htm

cliffs: guy has trees on property, sawmill offers him $x for the trees
instead he sells off a bit (the growth) every yr for 70yrs
cut down moar than he had to begin with and has moar standing than
he started with, and its all tall wide $$$$$ trees.

nuclear power>other pansy gay types of power

Yes, we need energy to power our homes from other sources... I wish we would get more nuclear stuff out here...

but we will not be able to get rid of oil for a while. It is hard to just generate bio-polymers with the absence of some kind of carbon.