Make America 1890 Again

Donald Trump has pronounced solar power “too expensive” and has pledged to revive the use of coal. The former is a falsehood, the latter a genocide. (Coal kills people with lung disease and [exacerbates] global warming). Moreover, Trump keeps complaining that China is eating Americans’ lunch with regard to bilateral trade. But if he doesn’t back American solar industry, he’ll be giving the economy of the future away to . . . China.

[...]

Prices of renewable power sources have fallen 80% in a decade and probably the prices will go on down from there. Prices can fall for several reasons– better efficiency, cheaper materials, innovative technology. Solar is already cheaper on paper than the least expensive of the hydrocarbons, coal, and so looking 10 or 15 years out, fossil fuels are dead without their investors or owners knowing it or perhaps being willing to admit it. (If people believed what I just wrote, Exxon-Mobil’s stock price would fall to zero tomorrow; which it should).

[...]

Not to mention that the Chinese government is highly committed to renewables. In fact, it was largely owing to Chinese investment and research and development that solar costs have fallen 80%. In fact, China is able to reduce its subsidies to renewables because solar panel prices have fallen 30% this year alone! [...] The problem is that then it is the Chinese who get the profits on this $100 billion sector (which will grow in size), not American companies.

  Juan Cole

And if they are the ones who have put the money into the development, then they should be the ones to reap the profit.

How fast the solar transition can take place out in the real world is demonstrated by India. [...]

[...]

India already has 9,000 megawatts of solar in 2016 and plausibly hopes to be at 20,000 MW next year this time.

[...]

India is now the third-largest solar market after China and the US. Will it use Chinese panels and other technology? Or American?

Let me guess: rhetorical question.

The answer is in Trump’s cabinet appointments, all of them deeply entangled in the 19th century technology of bubbling crude.

[...]

Thermal Focus of China has just bought a proven Australian heliostat technology that uses lots of small mirrors to boil water to turn turbines. With every Chinese innovation and every such purchase, it gets further ahead of the United States in this field.

[...]

What is tragic is that Americans over time will have fewer jobs, less money, more expensive energy, and more lung disease because of the reckless decision they made in November of this year.

Yes, but not the Americans in charge, which includes Trump and his fossil-fuel cadre, and the Democrat elite. They'll be just fine.