This video doesn't get posted enough--I heard about it months ago but only just now watched it.
They're cutting down all the trees to burn as fuel.
also FUCK SIERRA CLUB
Also this article by Max Blumenthal that debunks a bunch of shitty astroturfed criticisms about the film https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
They're not scams. Solar and wind is the future, how else are you going to get renewable energy without those? Is there any energy source that's renewable in your opinion if those doesn't count?
What do you do when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining? Or, you live in a boring place where those things rarely happen.
Unfortunately, on those common occasions, renewable sources won't produce any electricity. So, you need a consistent supply to maintain the electricity grid. As of now the only consistent sources of electricity are non-renewable.
Fluctuating renewable sources are thus locked into a dependency with non-renewables. Wattage produced by renewables needs to be backed up by an equivalent, most likely dirty source.
Sure there will be some carbon savings (on sunny, windy days, minus the cost of resource extraction and manufacture), but not exactly the panacea we were promised.
We need batteries. We need clean future technologies. But, most of all, we need to use less fucking electricity!
There are already grid-scale (and home) storage solutions that solve this, but also redox flow battery tech is moving along fairly quickly, and those could potentially be made using relatively common metals unlike other battery types (like lithium). This video gives a good overview of how they work.
Regarding nuclear, I think micro-nuclear power could be useful and should be looked into, but with large scale nuclear plants, start-up costs and time are prohibitively high vs solar and wind. Most people aren't aware that nuclear projects often take 10-20 years before they're up and running, and we just don't have that kind of time. They also wouldn't fit very well with the decentralized smart grids that would be more ideal for solar and wind. Unless we can somehow magically solve these problems very quickly, nuclear just seems like a much worse option compared to the alternatives, and even China has been moving away from nuclear and more towards wind and solar.
This is what offshore wind power is for. The wind on the ocean is far more consistent and stronger than it is on land because there aren't mountains and buildings blocking its way. As a result, offshore wind production is much more effective. The UK for example has plans to build 50GW of offshore wind in the next decade which will be enough to power the entire country. Nations like the USA, China and Japan have huge coastlines, there is so much potential there.
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You aren't going to get renewable energy, is my takeaway.
Their argument is that it takes energy and natural resources to build solar panels and wind turbines and that's true. What they miss is that when they are built they are going to produce energy for a long time forward without the need for any extra input.
Wind and Solar are also more efficient now than they show in the movie because a lot of this movie was shot 10 years ago! Because this is relatively new technology a lot has happened in 10 years and solar panels can produce 3 times as much energy now than a decade ago
Here's another more recent skeptic of solar. I listened to these a few months ago, but his main points are it takes way too much acreage to produce enough energy and that we are in danger of using up all of the finite raw materials that making solar panels requires. We only have a finite amount of desert as well, which solar panels completely destroy, and the desert is very alive and a necessary part of the planet. Etc. Read the transcripts or listen if you want.
https://therealnews.com/solar-energy-is-renewable-but-is-it-environmentally-just-1-2
https://therealnews.com/the-land-politics-of-solar-energy-2-2
In 2010 the world used 141,057TWh and in 2019 used 158,800TWh. That's 12.5% more in just 10 years. There's no way technology for solar or wind can keep up with that.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy
Literally today the person interviewed in my adjacent comment is tweeting about four million solar panels being decomissioned this year with no plans for how to recycle them.
https://twitter.com/DustinMulvaney/status/1328472638033825792
What about that mountain where they were going to shove the very, very scary nuclear waste?
theres tech that works to recycle nuclear waste, there just isnt any money in using it because capitalists are shortminded