Okay so let me go over this again as I have an idea…
Nation that’s struggling with dependency on petroleum and unreliable supply chain turns to renewable energy. The solar energy is clean, reliable, requires little maintenance, and is helping that country become less reliant on foreign petroleum.
If that works for Cuba, a tiny nation with few resources, perhaps it would work in other more wealthy nations also. Perhaps if a nation were, say, reliant on petroleum to the point that they start multiple multinational wars to ensure their own access to oil, costing literally $trillions, it might be cheaper to put some or all of that money into renewable energy. Presumably China will sell their solar panels to whoever’s buying, yes? So why wouldn’t a larger, more developed country purchase them in great quantity so spending $trillions on military actions in the Middle East would no longer be necessary?
If a country like this has some of their own domestic oil production, wouldn’t it be a desirable future to just walk away from the Middle East entirely, let the oil assholes kill each other without our involvement, and run the country for a few decades on sunshine? Use that money to buy solar panels literally by the boatload / container-ship-load (or buy the tech and manufacture them ourselves), and then national security is improved through removing foreign dependencies?Or is this just crazy talk?
Not crazy talk, Australia currently leads with the highest per-capita uptake of solar panels and it’s having a noticeable impact on our overall energy costs:
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/household-solar-electricity-generation-australian-national-accounts
We actually produce so much excess solar during peak times that households without panels can opt for electricity plans which offer free electricity between midday and 3pm every day (inc. weekends).
We’re also rolling out a heap of household batteries to better help take advantage of this surplus production and offset peak demand times too.
The world is rapidly approaching a post-fossil fuel world; the transition will be slow at first, and then drastic all of a sudden.
It’s infuriating how successful the oil companies have been at turning solar vs oil into a fucking culture war.
Have you even said thank you to the oil companies?!
Have you even said thank you to the oil companies?!
Good point. They made oil prices so high I bought a Tesla. Thanks guys you really did me a solid, best car ever :D
Out of all EV manufacturers, why tf did u decide to get a Tesla?! Hope you got yourself a used one, at least.
There was a point in time where Teslas really were the only good EV worth talking about.
I bought it back in 2022ish, before Elon’s association with Republican politics.
That said- I’d buy another one in a heartbeat, new or used. The self driving feature is light years ahead of anything else. And unlike other manufactures (looking at GM) they don’t sell their customers driving habits to insurance companies. The security is actually pretty good unlike most automakers who institutionally don’t understand computers so they outsource most of it to their suppliers like Bosch, Delphi, etc.
If that’s your best car ever, you haven’t driven many cars.
It’s a 2023ish car so pre-refresh. The suspension is stiff and it lacks a lot of luxury creature comforts. But it’s FUN AS HELL to drive, tons of chargers everywhere, the nav system is top notch, and the self driving system is light years ahead of anyone else’s. Plus they don’t sell their customers data like GM and some others or show ads on the display like Stellantis.
But like diversified not controlled by a single entity, let’s see how the shareholders feel about that first.
Yes but what about the oil companies’ profits? Have you even considered their feelings?
Or said country simply likes killing people around the world and oil is a convenient excuse.
But what would the shareholders of oil and MIC companies do if we stopped spending that money on oil wars? Won’t someone please think of the shareholders!?
Who is making solar panels?
My wife used to work for a company that manufactured the glass for solar panels in the UK, but there was just no way that they could compete with Chinese prices. They would have had to have sold it below cost to match, let alone make any profit. It’s not the most labour-intensive of industries, but the energy costs are massive to melt all the glass. China has made massive investments in hydro and has a lot of cheap power for industry, which ironically means that making solar panels for green power is easier too.
Does it matter? It’s not the US, they wouldn’t be selling to cuba
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China?
At what point will the USA admit their embargo was and is a huge fuck-up and an embarrassment? It’s become a symbol of how full of crap we are. Has it been fifty years of this?
p.s. I looked it up because I’m dumb, it’s been SIXTY-SIX YEARS. It’s even older than me.
All the USA had to do for a fantastic ally by now is stop being an asshole. We could at least return the illegally seized Guantanamo Bay, which is kept just to insult them, really.
I mean, if their goal is to increase suffering for the Cubans, than that blockade is working pretty well.
It would be nice to imagine, but unfortunately it’s not like the solar panels are gonna solve all of Cuba’s problems, especially because they don’t have enough money to pay for a full transition.
But where will commit torture in legal ambuity if don’t have a site off the coast on a land that isn’t us jurisdiction but also not the jurisdiction of a country we recognize validty of their human rights laws?
Like it’s a really special plot of land if are really trying to specialize in human rights abuse in internationally and domestically legally dubius ways.
All that say, honest wtf is wrong with some of these people
After Trump is gone they may admit it.
Dunno why people don’t realize that Trump never admits he’s wrong about anything. He’s an extreme narcissist who throws tantrums like an overgrown toddler. His ego is inflated to such an extreme degree that any hint of any kind of fault on his part drives him into rage spirals from the cognitive dissonance.
Insert “good” meme
Seems like China recognized a pattern about nations that invest heavily in the poorer parts of the world.
That was how USA used China against the socialist bloc after all. Of course they did.
I absolutely love that the tyrannical bullying by the US is going to result in a globally-visible solar win.
That being said, now I worry that this administration will simply bomb them from existence to keep it from happening.
see look it’s a revolutions YES YES YES
the commies were RIGHT oh oh oh OHHHHHH
they said the word!
There is a dangerous hope of the US admin being just such a fucking heel that the world is forced to be on the side of good in just pure desperation and opposition.
They are killing real people though and we do have to stop them still. The silver lining of mushroom bomb cloud can provide some comfort but if we see it we have still failed.
You can’t bomb wind and solar since they’re very spread out
It’s like they’re trying to crush a bar of soap that just keeps slipping away.
“The more you tighten your grip, the more [countries] will slip through your fingers.”
Except not, as the same movie shows, some of them will be crushed and not lost.
I always recognize this Leia quote.
The evil commies win again. Thanks Obama, you’re still ruining America years later.
So that “drill baby drill” didn’t just backfire, it backfired spectacularly yo the point where I’m thinking that we still might have a chance to stop climate change. Thanks Cheetos!
Cuba was already on track to build solar farms back in 2023, with planned completion by 2025.
I hate to tell you, but building solar isn’t going to do it. We need to basically defy thermodynamics in order to decarbonize the oceans and atmosphere simply to SURVIVE climate change. We are not stopping it. It’s already at heat levels that were, at one point, predicted to arrive in the later half of this century.
I’m open to defying thermodynamics, if that’s what it takes!
Putin & Trump will be sited as being responsible for the push, by the World, for more solar and electric energies. These oil dinosaurs are forcing people to choose green alternatives just to exist. Which is exactly what they both never wanted. hahahahaha
funny enough Putin troll farms/propaganda and backing right wing govts was to make them dependant on natural gas/oil permanently, instead his propaganda worked to well and it had the opposite effect.
Exactly, Europe was about to declare gas energy plants as “clean energy” but only thanks to Putin they were able to 180 before ratification
God I’d love to escape reliance on shitty power grids that usually end up torturing its citizens. Maybe once Orange Clown bites the dust we can FINALLY get some proper support for renewable energy like Solar Power.
Solar is already pretty popular in a lot of places, we’re going to have to start building out grid-scale storage and increased transmission capability between the different countries of the EU now if we want to be truly independent of fossil fuels without spending a quadrillion euros on nuclear plants everywhere.
I live far enough north that in the summer we peak at 18 glorious hours of daylight. Electricity prices go negative at times, you have to stop selling to the grid or you’ll lose money. But if you’ve got 18 hours of summer daylight, that means you have 18 hours of pitch black in the winter. The sun rises so low over the horizon that on the few days that it isn’t overcast, solar panels barely produce anything. Solar doesn’t produce anything for about 2-3 months. The difference as measured by a company doing home solar installations, is about 30x between the best and worst month. That’s a company that wants to sell you solar, so they’re not likely to overstate the reduction of efficiency in the winter.
We’re then dependent on our fossil plants (somewhat unreliable), wind (somewhat unpredictable) and Finnish nuclear plants - but those power us through the underwater ESTLINK cables and those don’t have enough bandwidth for heavy consumption periods, nor can the Finns sell everything they generate to us… And worst of all, some of that sweet nuclear power gets passed on to Latvia and Lithuania too. Oh and this is winter, where a lot of people need to run our heat pumps full blast at significantly reduced efficiency over spring/autumn time.
But at the same time, southern Europe isn’t affected as much by the lower solar angles and shorter days. There’s a reduction in generation for sure, but not comparable to northern Europe. If that electricity made its way here, we wouldn’t have to run our fossil plants as much in the winter. With enough storage, perhaps it could even be enough to last through cold winter nights as well.
I am hopeful that after the orange piece of shit eventually goes tits up, I’m really hoping that there will be a hard correction in the other direction.
There will only be a hard correction if we get politicians who are working for the US, and not to make themselves richer. We need to let them know what we expect from them.
meanwhile leaving their own countries lagging behind. “America First” lol.
*cited*
Putin made sure Western countries currently don’t want to use Russian fossil products. Ukraine is making sure that they can never be used again.
Their alternative is literally to bankrupt their countries, because those stupid fucking idiots put too many eggs in one basket.
Without oil/gas export, they can wave goodbye to their economies as they are today.
Truly champions of the environment and the common people. lol
Poor US always on the wrong side recently, and with such good intentions too.
cuba is always used as a boogeyman to keep cuban immigrants for voting against the gop
Bwahaha… Good intentions, that’s rich
No, you’re thinking of the people keeping us in this mess.
So they went full solarpunk?
no, read the article: they went a smidge solarpunk, are mostly petrolpunk, and often there-is-no-electricity-todaypunk
Cuba in Ten Years
not the first time for this kind of thing. they have had a lot of things like organic farming to.
Big hotels
Amazing what a country can do when its continued existence depend on residents doing it.
This is gonna be the way. PR too, America’s second-least-favourite protectorate after Samoa (you forgot it existed, didn’t ya?). PR can shore up a bunch with solar power – and whatever one does for things like storm damage mitigation, the other can also.
And let’s do haiti next, although that’ll need to be a whole new secure endeavour out of like an embassy basement or something that can’t be stolen or blown up.
Anyway I can donate to help them out or does that violate stupid US sanctions?
No, almost certainly not. We’re stupidly enforcing a sanction that was created before most of us were born.
China is helping. They’re securing a future customer and buying the goodwill of a country for cheap.
Probably violates sanctions. With your DHS being super racist and paranoid, best not upset them and get sent to the thunder dome.
