What an absolutely fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for sharing. I was curious about the absence of discussion around nuclear power . . . Is that because nuclear is such a small fraction of the global total, and/or given high barriers to entry and large potential downsides compared with other green technologies seems less likely to be widely adopted/stood up around the world?
On a more general note . . . This discussion reminded me, somehow, of something one of my favorite undergraduate Economics professors said . . . He was teaching a course (this was back in the day) about the transition of post-Soviet economies to market capitalism, and remarked at one point that it is possible to make fish soup out of an aquarium, but no one has yet figured out how to go the other way around . . . I've never forgotten it . . . I understand this now as a comment on path-dependence, but it also suggests that some paths foreclose others . . . And I wonder how that might relate to the geo-political realities gestured toward at several points in this conversation . . . Are there points where political realities make it impossible to achieve something like the astonishing hairpin turn that China is aiming for? This may or may not relate to my internal debate about how likely my home country, the US, is likely to ever put some its current genies back in their bottles and accomplish an about face, politically, energetically, and/or economically.
What an absolutely fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for sharing. I was curious about the absence of discussion around nuclear power . . . Is that because nuclear is such a small fraction of the global total, and/or given high barriers to entry and large potential downsides compared with other green technologies seems less likely to be widely adopted/stood up around the world?
On a more general note . . . This discussion reminded me, somehow, of something one of my favorite undergraduate Economics professors said . . . He was teaching a course (this was back in the day) about the transition of post-Soviet economies to market capitalism, and remarked at one point that it is possible to make fish soup out of an aquarium, but no one has yet figured out how to go the other way around . . . I've never forgotten it . . . I understand this now as a comment on path-dependence, but it also suggests that some paths foreclose others . . . And I wonder how that might relate to the geo-political realities gestured toward at several points in this conversation . . . Are there points where political realities make it impossible to achieve something like the astonishing hairpin turn that China is aiming for? This may or may not relate to my internal debate about how likely my home country, the US, is likely to ever put some its current genies back in their bottles and accomplish an about face, politically, energetically, and/or economically.
The failure to utter the word “nuclear” in any ostensibly serious discussion of decarbonization renders the whole event farcical.