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Two-Thirds of Americans Give Priority To Developing Alternative Energy Over Fossil Fuels (pewresearch.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pew Research Center: A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources, compared with 27% who would emphasize expanded production of fossil fuel sources. Support for concentrating on alternative energy is up slightly since December 2014. At that time, 60% said developing alternative energy sources was the more important priority. There continue to be wide political differences on energy priorities. While a 2016 Pew Research Center survey found large majorities of Democrats and Republicans supported expanding both wind and solar energy, the new survey shows that Democrats remain far more likely than Republicans to stress that developing alternative energy should take priority over developing fossil fuel sources. About eight-in-ten (81%) Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party favor developing alternative sources instead of expanding production from fossil fuel sources. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are closely divided: 45% say the more important priority should be developing alternative sources, while 44% say expanding production of oil, coal and natural gas should be given more priority. There also are differences in public priorities about energy by age. Americans under the age of 50 are especially likely to support alternative energy sources over expanding fossil fuels. About seven-in-ten (73%) of those ages 18 to 49 say developing alternative sources of energy should be the more important priority, while 22% say expanding production of fossil fuels should be the more important priority. Older adults are more divided in their views, though they also give more priority to alternatives. Among those 50 and older, 55% say alternative energy development is more important, while 34% say it's more important to expand production of fossil fuel energy sources.
Contrast this with the incoming administration which wants to favor fossil fuels above pretty much all else https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/us/politics/donald-trump-global-warming-energy-policy.html, http://www.nature.com/news/trump-s-next-move-scientists-struggle-with-foggy-future-1.21339.
The majority of Americans will support anything as long as someone else pays for it. If you ask them if they are willing to pay an extra 5 cents per gallon of gas to pay for alternative energy, of course they will say no.
How much business sense does it make to invest in cheaper and cleaner energy instead of expensive tax-subsidized pollution-heavy energy that can't exist without taxpayer subsidized mining leases on public lands and non-accounting of pollution costs?
I mean Big Government demands we do the worst possible most expensive fossil fuel version!
If we don't Fill The Swamp with massive tax subsidies for old Soviet-style fossil fuels, we might become independent of the Middle East!
And then what excuse will we have to start foreign wars to make billionaires richer at the cost of American blood and treasure?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
To be fair on those affected by the resulting pollution, fuel prices should more than double. That people could care or complain about a measly 1 cent per litre (as you suggest) beggars belief.
"65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources"
Too bad those 65% don't vote for what they want, apparently.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
but you apparently prefer "alternative facts", which, as Merriam-Webster corp. tweeted today, are not, you know, actually, facts.
Just as one easy counter-example, you can build a solar-panel-building factory in the sahara desert, converting local sand into silicon solar panels, using nothing but the energy from the sun to power the factory and the construction vehicles, after a short initial pre-sustainable bootstrapping period.
Also, the environmental cost of just shipping fossil fuels from producing country to consuming country currently dwarfs all of those environmental costs you mention, and that doesn't even count the environmental costs of burning said fossil fuels.
So one has to question the motivation behind your remarks. Are you a driver of an embarrassingly oversized "tru-u-oo-u-uck" used only for grocery hauling, or a paid fossil-fuel industry shill?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm certainly no expert on the topic, but the things you're describing here sounds like one time costs - ie, the pollution created only occurs once, unlike fossil fuels which continue to produce the pollution.
Trump has not banned alternative energy but welcomed it. He repeatedly stated that he wants to unleash all forms of domestic energy, not just Coal. This will break the energy dependency we have had for.. 50 years or so and reduce energy costs in the US. The propagandists won't repeat that part of his policy statements or speeches though, because that does not fit the agenda.
It really helps to study _all_ sides of the debate.
As to the "one time costs" it's not quite so simple. Storing nuclear waste is extremely expensive and horrible for the environment without considering failures like Fukushima, Chernobyl, or 3 Mile Island. I find Nuclear to be the best option, but it's a massive investment to bring a plant up and work out the logistics of waste disposal.
Wind and Solar require huge amounts of land resources for roads and cabling. The large amount of cabling needed for them means higher maintenance costs. Making Cable requires huge amounts of heat, and a whole lot more pollution. Geothermal requires killing off rare ecosystems to trap the heat. Tidal plants requires destroying and interrupting large areas of the coast. Each of those has it's own unique maintenance challenges, and are very expensive to maintain as well but for different reasons.
Yes, petroleum has nasty gasses that hit the atmosphere. Is it worse than any others? Yes, but the amount of difference is not as big of a margin as people want you to believe.
Everything has a cost and every aspect of energy can be argued against and for.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not an expert, but as far as I understand, the problem with the molten-salt reactors is in the name: you have really hot, radioactive molten salt you need to deal with, and that's just a hard problem in many aspects.
Many of the presentations seem to come from people interested in the physics, and for that kind of people, it's just a set of engineering problems.
But the thing is that you don't just need to solve them, you also need to do that in a manner that is competitive with traditional nuclear plants and renewables like solar and wind. And renewables are getting cheaper every year.
So it's a really, really tough problem. Don't trust the hype.
They may have voted, but if 65% wanted priority given to alternative energy sources over fossil fuel development, yet half of all the voters, roughly, voted for the candidate who is "Captain Coal", then clearly, a lot of people voted AGAINST THEIR OWN INTEREST.
Right, because Hillary would have totally owned this one <eyeroll>
The Democrats idea for promoting "alternate energy" is giving large sums of money to Democrat donors like Solyndra. It doesn't actually help anybody except the cronies and the party, in case you're wondering.
Do you have ESP?
I always hear this argument and it ticks me off. Mostly because it is bullshit. Here's the thing: I didn't go to the polls, vote for the president, and leave. I voted on no less than TWENTY THREE items. Some national, some state, some local. Many of the local results (as an example, a bond referrendum to build a new police station) were w/in the 3000ish range with 20K votes reporting in. The Florida Solar amendment was barely defeated. Sure, the presidential and senatorial races are mostly pre-decided, but we had a tight city council race based primarily on the question "are we going to be a fancy town, or a rural town?". The citizens decided (fancy town, debt, higher taxes, more parks, high-rent shop district), but only because they voted. Many people stated opinions on the matter (no more traffic! I hate apartments!), but without voting it doesn't mean anything. Sure, the Senate/President portion of the election is mostly decided, but many of the important daily issues to ME (the school board official for school I drive by daily, my property taxes to pay for a police station, the downtown revitalization project) are far from decided.