Putin: global warming is a fraud

[Benton]

(11-30-2015, 06:14 PM)RoyleRedlegs Wrote: So it would basically be useless for countries trying to go through their own industrial revolutions like India, to realistically put significant resources into this as the backbone of their economy?

It seems like the small scale is key. Companies may choose to use these to reduce costs but it seems unlikely in the near future that it would be ideal for countries (especially ones as large as the US) to go to a green energy dominated economy. 

A lot of it depends on the country. Just looking at two familiar ones, we've got the US and Russia. Russia owns and exports a lot of its resources. The country makes money and in turn businesses and people benefit (or at least that's how it's supposed to work). For the US, private business owns resources and the country subsidizes those assets, with the lost tax money getting passed on to the consumer in the form of lower rates (or at least that's how it's supposed to work). In either one, it's easier for a country to subsidize/produce energy or resources if they're cheaper to create.

In a country where government isn't as involved and has more of a free market than the US, my opinion is it would be a lot harder to build dams or put up significant turbines to create wind power. But the businesses themselves could come together and do it for their own interest. Like instead of the Army Corps of Engineers building a dam here at taxpayer expense for lower energy costs, you might have a cooperative of energy producers go together to build a hydroelectric dam.

Smaller countries should put more pressure on those who can (industrialized countries like Russia and the US) to work on renewable energy if those countries are going to pressure them into being cleaner. Once one country figures it out, everybody will eventually benefit.