Too bad Henning is no longer around to weigh in here
"Hydrogen economy"
There, is that better?
And I firmly believe the government has no business picking (or trying to pick, Solyndra, etc.) marketplace winners and losers. Electric cars, alternative energy strategies, etc., should not be subsidized with our tax dollars. If they're good and relevant products, they'll stand on their own in the marketplace.
Not necessarily. As
@Gerhardt pointed out, the development of technology takes time (and a lot of money)... Right now, we are burning fossil fuels FAR faster than they're being replenished. Nobody really knows how much we have left. But right now, we still haven't quite reached the tipping point where electric cars are going to take the market on their own by being cheaper than the equivalent gas car. Letting the market take care of things means nothing would get done.
Fast forward x number of years, and we get to the point where the oil supply is at or close to its end. Can you imagine the chaos? Governments declare no more sales of petroleum products to the public to save what little oil they have left for military purposes. War likely breaks out as the most powerful countries attack the most oil-rich countries to get the few drops that are left. Europe would likely fare OK, as they're much less dependent on cars than we are, but in the USA? Holy crap, we'd be screwed. At first, people would converge on the grocery stores, but those stores would quickly run out of food with no way to replenish it (because it gets there on a truck). We would quickly be back into the 1800s, but with a lot more conflict because it's not like there's enough farm animals in every town to supply food needs, and frankly we don't remember how do distribute things without trucks any more. Cities would collapse, and countries too.
The market would certainly support electric vehicles and solar/wind energy at that point, but it would be far too late.
Or, you create some incentives for EV development now, which changes the economics enough that some R&D happens. As EVs begin to permeate the market from the easy missions (commuter cars, lawnmowers), through the moderately difficult ones (road trippers, SUVs, pickups), economies of scale make batteries cheaper and the number of EVs spurs further R&D to be the next step beyond batteries, and the subsidies are no longer necessary. The most difficult common ground mission (semis) goes electric, infrastructure is expanded, and now we've cut our oil usage in half.
Importantly, this doubles the length of time that the remaining oil will last, giving us time to develop technology that can replace the really hard things, like airplanes. And in the meantime, public health is improved (via breathing cleaner air) along with a bunch of other benefits.
"The market" is stupid. The market will always go for the cheapest, easiest solution and will continue with that solution until it dies a pretty sudden death. Occasionally, someone with both enough brains and enough money can take a risk and make something happen. But, there are things that will NEVER happen via market forces. If NASA hadn't gone to the moon in the 60s, do you think SpaceX would be around today? Hell, if NASA didn't exist TODAY, SpaceX wouldn't exist.
I've often thought of this. There is no free lunch. The energy that is taken from the wind, from the ocean currents, etc., what long term issues does this cause? And would it not possibly cause climate change? It would be hard to study, but not hard to imagine negative consequences.
I've thought about this too, but I have a hard time coming up with negative consequences. Tidal power is probably one of the easier ones to conceptualize the differences, but I bet even if the Earth was 100% tidal-hydro-powered, we wouldn't notice a thing. Yes, we would be slowing the tides coming in and out somewhat, but we couldn't possibly stop them... The earth and the moon are too big. We might just change the phase of the tides by a couple of minutes.
What do I do with my car, my other car, my other car, and my other car? How about the 3 airplanes (or airplane projects)? My mowers and other lawn equipment? How about all of the fossil fuel infrastructure (power plants, home HVAC, industrial consumption of fossil fuels, etc.), ships, and gazillions of other very expensive items that are worthless if fossil fuels go away?
To me, that's the big challenge. Nobody wants to throw away that much valuable equipment and start over.
Very true... But the cars will be replaced in a relatively short time frame anyway, unless you have a collector. Home HVAC is pretty easy to convert in the grand scheme of things. The big stuff (power plants and industrial uses) is the hardest to take care of, and will take the longest - But all power plants eventually become aged and go offline, and if you merely replace them with renewables, in 50 years they'll all be gone. Accelerating that to a 10-year time scale is one of the most difficult parts of this whole exercise, but it *could* be done. This is a political problem, not a technical one.
