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Comment by tordrt

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Comment by tordrt

The Industrial Revolution started in 1760-1800 and was driven by coal, completely replacing wood as the primary industrial fuel. We almost exterminated whales and deforested the entirety of Europe before discovering fossil fuels, which both bounced back after.

The first EV an the first solar panel are second order effects and only possible because of the industrial revolution driving massive human innovation and growth. Good luck reaching the levels of industrialization and tech required to mass produce solar panels by using wood. Producing 1 ton of charcoal from wood, requires 4-7 tons of wood. To smelt a single ton of iron you then again need multiple tons of coal. Good luck industrializing without turning the whole planet into woodchopping and wood planting farm. It was all made possible by fossil coal, oil and gas.

Everything is essentially downstream of industrialization enabled by coal and subsequently the superior oil and gas.

And saying that oil and gas was breaking our planet doesn't make sense, if anything these are great replacements of coal.

You are also diminishing the brutal life of pre-industrialization times. Staggering high child-mortality rates, low life expectancy, and an high amounts of deaths caused by starvation and extreme weather events, like droughts and floods.

Solar plus battery takes many years to be paid back. If this setup is actually cheaper, industrial scale solar+battery would be huge. Solar on its own is a great cheap pairing with stable energy sources like hydro, gas and coal, which is partly why china is doing this.

People do actually adopt green tech when it makes financially sense, just look at the huge boom of adoption of AC and heatpumps around the world. Because it massively reduces electricity cost of heating and cooling.

Its not because people cant do math.

Replies tordrt · 2026-05-30
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