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Canada's Energy Superpower Status Threatened As World Shifts Off Fossil Fuel (www.cbc.ca)
Robson Fletcher, reporting for CBC News: Canada's status as an "energy superpower" is under threat because the global dominance of fossil fuels could wane faster than previously believed, according to a draft report from a federal government think-tank obtained by CBC News. "It is increasingly plausible to foresee a future in which cheap renewable electricity becomes the world's primary power source and fossil fuels are relegated to a minority status," reads the conclusion of the 32-page document, produced by Policy Horizons Canada. "It's absolutely not pie in the sky," said Michal Moore from the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. "These folks are being realistic -- they may not be popular, but they're being realistic." Marty Reed, CEO of Evok Innovations -- a Vancouver-based cleantech fund created through a $100-million partnership with Cenovus and Suncor -- had a similar take after reading the draft report.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. The world will always need hydrocarbons, so they will always be valuable. They are needed for plastics, chemicals and all kinds of useful things besides fuel.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
We have more hydroelectricty than we can use... Does this not qualify as renewable energy?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
^
Even though I staunchly support freedom of speech, part of the first amendment in the US also means you have freedom of association. That means that a private organization can squelch whatever speech they want so long as it's within their own domain. Censorship is only when somebody who is within a public domain or are outside of a domain that you control is curtailing your speech while you are in said domain.
Because slashdot is neither a public domain, nor a domain that you control, then nothing anybody can do to you can be considered censorship.
Nice bit of editing there. The full quote is:
In case you don't know, Cenovus and Suncor are major producers of dirty Canadian tar-sand oil. So a more accurate assessment would be:
Another company with everything to lose by declaring fossil fuels are on the way out is hedging its bets.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Keep in mind Bloomberg is predicting *worldwide* markets, not just first-world markets. You're probably right that this prediction is somewhat pessimistic, but I still think you're being rather overly optimistic, especially if you think it's going to happen in *less* than ten years. Hopefully we'll both be around in another decade, so we'll see who is right.
I think one mistake people make is that they don't account for the lag time with long-term purchases. Even if, starting tomorrow, a new prototype EV was created that was better and cheaper than gas vehicles in every way imaginable, it would probably still take at least a few years to get production ramped up. It will take another number of years for enough people to get rid of their old cars and buy new ones, and even longer for those cars to trickle down in the used market for those that can't afford a new car. Given all that, I just don't see how in ten years time a significant number of cars will be EVs. It's going to take time to saturate the market.
Smartphones are a hell of a lot cheaper and don't last nearly as long as cars, so adoption is a lot easier when it only costs a few hundred bucks. Cars, on the other hand, run $15K at the cheapest, with most in the $25k to 50K range, and most new cars will easily last a decade with moderate use.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.