You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

I recommend this video from YouTuber Technology Connections: ▶ this video I appreciate his ability to talk renewables for almost an hour and barely mention climate change. This video has a bit of a twist ending, but he gives you a solid out before he becomes political if you're showing it to someone who won't be receptive to that messaging.

Highly recommend everyone watch this video ▶ this video Briefly, the most important reason an EV is better because it unlocks energy portability . You gain the flexibility to source your energy in many more ways than with a gas car. Oil energy is about as optimized as it's ever going to get. With electricity, we're just getting started.

Yeah, the technology connections video on this was fantastic. If one was to cover that land in solar, you’d produce far more than the current energy demands of the US. Relying on an energy source which requires constant, continuous resource extraction is fucking stupid when we can spend resources up front and get reliable energy (solar + battery) for decades with minimal operating cost & maintenance. And then we’ll have a recycling loop to minimize future resource extraction. If you want to debate that, spend some time with this video first: ▶ this video

> in effect you've basically hamstrung green sources of energy around the country by being very smart for your own state. > The question is, should you be allowed to this. "...you've basically hamstrung green sources of energy"? Well, after we stop growing corn to feed exclusively to cars and start using solar panels deployed on that land to harvest electricity for cars and houses and everything else that runs on electricity [0], if we're still short on power we can have the discussion you're itching to have. [0] The immediately relevant discussion starts here < ▶ this video > and runs through to about 38:29, but the entire video is very, very well worth watching.

> And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles. Why is it every single time someone in this thread speaks up they are just plain wrong? Here is a direct link to the part about batteries. He talks about them for about 15 minutes which is something like a quarter of the video. There is even a chapter mark to take you to that part. He also mentions them half a dozen more times throughout the video and warns in the beginning that people like you will chime in with misinformation without watching the video. You proved him right. ▶ this video > applicability to annual cycles. He talks about that too. I'm not going to bother linking. Actually watch the video or move on. > Just take a weekly chart of the actual energy output of the panels for the year, and calculate the price relative to the worst week I don't have to. The United States government did and even considering the cost of storage, it's still cheaper than all the alternatives. Has been for years now. See my earlier comments for links. Private investors have done the same math, and that's why almost all new electricity generation being built is solar. It's the basically free money. Nobody with a brain can legitimately think that digging goop out of the desert, doing expensive processing to it, shipping it to the other side of the earth, and literally lighting

Related: Alec Watson’s recent, and excellent, Technology Connections YouTube piece on renewable energy. “You are being misled about renewable energy technology” ▶ this video

Solar and wind energy have been more economical than fossil fuel on a cost per unit energy basis for quite some time. The reasons we're still so tied to fossil fuel are largely political, not economic. Technology Connections goes into this in exhaustive detail: ▶ this video

I was shocked (pun) to hear how my relatives were each reacting to solar energy. One was rural and was concerned about nearby land getting turned into a solar farm. Another was concerned about farmland being edged out in favor of solar. And a third spent some time in emergency response on a solar farm and was off-put by their vastness and the electrical danger while traversing through them. Coincidentally this video emerged within a day of my conversation with the three of them. I shared it; they probably didn't watch it but it sure was pertinent. ▶ this video

The cobalt thing is apparently misinformation. You've been misled. Technology Connections did a great video that goes into this: ▶ this video

If you like (VERY) long form videos, you might enjoy the recent video about renewables from Technology Connections: ▶ this video Some of the interesting take ways for me, as someone who was already pretty hung ho about solar and batteries: * Solar has gotten so cheap that it's still profitable in the shady northlands * The amount of land it would take to run the US primarily on solar is "a lot" in absolute terms. But it pales in comparison to the amount of land we currently use to grow corn for feeding gas cars.

This really illustrates how important it is to switch to renewable energy. I know it's not an easy task for impoverished communities to get the startup capital to install solar+batteries, especially one in such a politically tumultuous position, but that really is a path to stability for so many people around the world. A YouTuber known for talking about dishwashers and Christmas lights recently put out a long rant about how ridiculous it is that humanity still leans so much on single use fuels: ▶ this video

It was, several years ago. That's so much not the case now that renewables + batteries were by far the largest source of new generation in the US (yes, the US, with Trump actively trying to destroy them) last year. Look up some of the new information coming out about them recently. Here, I'll give you a relevant video I watched recently to start with: ▶ this video (channel is Technology Connections)