But even cheap is a misnomer: wind and sun are free and inexhaustible; you just need devices to collect the energy and transform it into electricity (and transmission lines to distribute it). Free energy!
….
“clean-tech costs have fallen by up to 80%, while investment is up nearly tenfold and solar generation has risen twelvefold.
Free is so cheap that we’ve had to raise investment by an order of magnitude.
Coal is also free of course. We’ve just got to go and dig it up. It’s just free, there, under the ground!
Apparently, yes, there are people this stupid.
15 or years ago, Ireland was having protests against introducing water charges. The common cry of the protesters was that Ireland has so much rain that is free. The idiots never worked out the cost of storing, purifying, and transporting it and the cost of removing and treating the effluent was what the charge was for.
Ah mate this sort of fuckwittery is Canon Law amongst the Greenies. They all believe it.
See also “impossibility of infinite growth on a finite Earth.”
And
1.5C warmer than pre industrial era
And people cast doubt on nominative determinism.
Of course wind and solar are free, that’s why they need subsidies to encourage businesses to develop them and keep them running.
And as they are free, things like this will never happen:
https://climatechangedispatch.com/after-only-15-years-of-operation-germanys-first-offshore-wind-farm-being-scrapped/
Of course! If there weren’t people this stupid, we wouldn’t have the Greens to begin with!
We are promised that wind turbines will get cheaper and cheaper.
However turbines from the firm Vestas, the leading manufacturer, have increased in cost by 65% since the 2018-2020 average of EUR 0.75m average to EUR 1.25m in Q1 2025
Everything is free, isn’t it? Energy, raw materials, food. They’re just lying around waiting to be used. What costs is the capital/labour inputs to take advantage of them.
You may laugh but I suggested to an obviously sane and intelligent Kiwi that a partial solution to Christchurch’s water problems was metering the domestic water supply and charging for it. He was outraged at the very thought of it.
Even the coal was made from free sunlight and CO2, just a while ago. What harm could come from getting the energy back and releasing hte CO2 to its natural place in the atmosphere?
@Gunker,
Well, they were Irish, with all that connotates …
‘But the majority of climate change comes from burning fossil fuels, and we know exactly how to transition away from that and the transition is underway – not nearly fast enough, not nearly supported enough by most governments around the world, actively undermined by the Trump administration and many fossil fuel corporations and states.
But still, it is underway. And, arguably, unstoppable.’
Someone should stop by her office and tell that North America, South America, Africa, and Asia are not playing. ‘Unstoppable’ is profoundly ignorant. Nobody cares what you do on your little island.
There is another barrier to ‘unstoppable.’ You are going to run out of money pretty soon. Wind is so cheap, you are going to run out of money.
Oh, wait . . . another thing ‘the transition is underway’ can be noted be the continuing INCREASE in fossil fuel consumption. Solnit seems to be a strange being from another planet; none of what she says is happening is happening on this planet.