this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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Its so hot, everyday new record temp breaks and still nothing meaningful is being done against climate change ๐ซ Well, at least impending water wars gonna be fun..
I sincerely think that China's massive government investment in solar panel production is the biggest thing our species has done about climate change. It's the reason it's now cheaper to build a new solar plant than to continue to operate an existing coal-powered plant. (Though we're not doing that in the US, because we've bottlenecked grid connection requests, which is holding up a ton of new solar buildouts.)
I mean it's not enough yet, but it's made a huge dent in the problem. Economics actually favor shifting to renewables at this point. It's just the entrenched interests working against it we have to overcome now.
The economics are so far past the tipping point now that even with all the political obstruction, renewables accounted for 85% of new US electricity capacity in 2023 - grid bottlenecks are definitley the biggest hurdle now, not cost.