Not OP but the general complaint is that we shouldn't switch from a cheap energy source (coal) to expensive renewables which are relatively untested at scale if the human impact of climate change is minimal or already past the point of no return. I don't personally believe this but this is a not unreasonable argument I have heard.
Contribution to climate change shouldn't be the only criteria for evaluation of an energy source. Shouldn't we also keep in mind pollution? Coal burns, it releases fine particulates into the air that cause cancer in people's lungs. Pollution sucks. We should stop talking about climate change and go back to the 70s when people were talking about pollution.
Yeah, I agree with you - there a many many reasons why we should get off fossil fuels and reduce our energy consumption beyond climate change. I was just giving an example of about the most reasonable sounding excuse for inaction in this area. Regardless of one's political views there are plenty of solutions that appeal to the full breadth of the political system but the primary thing that they can't address is oil and gas company's desire to protect quarterly growth, people's misplaced political reasoning (I'm against action because the left is for it type arguments) and the fact that some people just don't like change that may indicate the way they have previously been doing something is wrong.
I completely agree... I mainly mean that some resources are less of an impact or more cost effective than others. I'm all for working to reduce pollution for the sake of, and if that means less carbon in the air, awesome. However, if your goal is really reducing some footprints then what materials are used/needed for construction and distribution have a huge impact. Not to mention the infrastructure security of potentially key infrastructure (power grid) relying on parts from an adversarial foreign state.
I'm not against trying to replace high polluting resources like coal... I am saying, that perhaps the investment in public solar grids make a lot less sense in many areas, and there is a relatively big impact in mining the materials and shipping the panels, many of which come from China, which is bad about clean build, not to mention shipping itself.
Likewise, trying to push for electric cars doesn't make a lot of sense in that the environmental impact of an electric car takes 5+ years to outweigh that of a gas car, not counting how the electricity is generated. Also, not accounting for the overall impact of replacing said batteries, or other maintenance.
And yes, cost is another issue... depending on what is the replacing technology, there are other cost-benefit analysis that should be done on a case by case bases against the larger impact. I also feel that if we take the premise at reducing pollution, vs. "omg the world is going to die" kind of reactionism it's a bit easier to sell more broadly to conservatives.
Fighting/reducing pollution should be enough of a goal by itself, a large enough portion of the population lives in large enough cities to understand smog and feel it when breathing, some cities far worse than others. The broader (saving the world) mentality doesn't do much on its' own, is much harder to sell, and too big.
