[ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 10:55:54PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote:

> Dunno.  I'd give [rhetorically] equal odds on "they really think they

Nobody is thinking anything. There's just a lot of fight and
shortest-term profit maximalization. Trying to ascribe any rational
motive to the whole sordid mess is not particularly rational.

> can push renewables and efficiency enough to pull it off", "Merkel is

As they're busily killing solar, that's probably not the motive.

> making a bad decision for political gain or out of silliness", and "in a

I wouldn't call 'trying to stay alive' political gain. She's far
from silly, her stalling is remarkably sophisticated. People have
even bought the whole 'nuclear exit' idea which is basically the
slowest exit the red-greens decided upon, before it got renegaded
upon by black-yellow. Of course they deliberately, carefully avoided
making the exit legal, and hence opening up themselves for
litigation, giving excellent opportunity to pass blame to the
energy operators, with the taxpayer and end customers footing the
bill either way.

> few years they'll go 'oh yeah carbon' and quietly revert".

Nuclear electricity has about zero impact on carbon dioxide emissions.
In 2009, the energy tally was

Oil 34.6%
Natural gas 21.7%
Lignite 11.4%
Bituminous coal 11.1%
Nuclear power 11.0%
Hydro and wind power 1.5%
Others 9.0%

Puts these 17% of renewable electricity production in perspective.
I estimated nuclear to be 9% of electricity at the moment, due to 
7 GW capacity.

A drop in the bucket.
 
> I have a faint idea that EU targets might be more relevant for them than
> Kyoto now, but I'm not sure.

Kyoto is dead, Jim. US and China alone are quite enough to kill it.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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