The only part of this discussion I find useless is when people that run their AC all summer and their heater all winter and drive hundreds of miles a week tell those of us that don't how we need to save energy.

Well, it's all about harm reduction. I'm aware my plane travel sucks for the environment. In my day-to-day, I stopped driving a car (I walk to work/to places of leisure, and use an uber/lyft once or twice a month), I stopped eating meat and dairy, use LED bulbs. My electric bill is about $30 a month. Can I do more/better? Of course! I could make a better effort to buy locally-made food/reduce the food miles. I could stop flying places. I'm imperfect, like everyone else.

That is annoying...BUT, I haven't really seen any posts proposing anyone should save energy. Only that energy should, someday, come from different sources.

Good point. But to me not using excessive amounts of energy or as little as possible is a similar goal.

There is certainly a nuance though. If my house was solar I'd crank the AC to 55 degrees in the summer. Let the fat lady on the beach suffer...I'm stealing the suns rays!

So while I am in agreement with most of your posting and am really pro renewable. I think that ensuring grid stability by subsidizing coal and nuclear isn't a bad idea. Right now natural gas is the fuel of choice. Mothballing nukes and coal plants and relying just on natural gas just isn't a good idea. You really should have diversity in fuel choice. I think we need reasonable energy policy that allows for subsidization of renewables as well as coal and nuclear to have a more balanced energy profile. Another thing to consider is the impact on the local economy when these plants are shut down. The impact will kill entire communities. When you subsidize the cost you realize far greater benefits than what the subsidy costs and adds to system stability as a whole.

We aren’t likely to get to China-like smog conditions too soon in major US cities I don’t think? So it’s down to relative costs.. or how the government alters relative costs with incentives, funding or legislation. It would be nice to see storage tech make a leap.. you can only put so many renewables reliably on the grid without traditional reserve spinning to pick up load because we have yet to put in a good, cheap storage system. That could be a game changer but it doesn’t help when the government slashes research funding

Nice job! If only everyone else did this not only would we reduce our energy consumption, but increase our life expectancy and quality of life.

I eat plenty of meat and dairy, but can't stand LED bulbs. And my quality of life is just fine.

Latest word is a lot of our smog is coming from fertilizer and not so much cars anymore.

So the best thing to do would be Ca. not being such an agricultural force anymore. And let each state grow it's own crops.

Ironic that we live in Orange County and our orange juice comes from Florida. But they would have a hard time beating our Avocados.

Yay for the era of "alternative facts" and science that doesn't matter provided you get your daily pep talk from a news channel paid to tell you global warming is a commie lie.

Take it easy there sparky, lets keep the politics out of this. Everyone here agrees that clean air and water are good things. No need to get political about it.

These seem pretty cool and a step in the right direction...
https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

I worked with two guys a few years ago. One was from Cali and the other used to be an independent trucker who hauled produce from California.

Both of them, at different times and different places in the shop, said Florida oranges were trucked to Cali and then Cali oranges were trucked to Florida.

It always sounded like a waste of gas to me but searching Google shows that Florida's hot and humid climate produces oranges with more juice while Cali's hot and dry climate produces oranges with thicker skin and they are better for eating instead of juicing.

What's even cooler is that some people offer DIY on how to make them for much cheaper.

This is just an example but there are litterally 100's of post out there about this topic

I think you're talking about capitalism in general, not just China. Before regulations, EVERYONE did that kind of stuff. Why spend tonnes of money safely disposing of chemicals when you can just build your factory by the river and dump the chemical slurry into the water? There's no law against it, and it is very profitable.
All across North America and Europe this happened all of the time until regulations were enacted. Some waterways are still in their decades/centuries long recoveries.

Yep. Has nothing to do with china. Has to do with where they are in their economic development. When we were in our industrial revolution companies did horrifying things. Still do but with cameras in everyones pocket the power of better information plays as big/bigger a role than regulators can sometimes...

I'm literally drooling over that 21 window VW bus in the thumbnail of that video.

Right? Dude has a 6 figure VW and is soldering LION batteries together!

He knows how to save money!

Your pic of whatever smog filled city that is reminds me of when I was passenger on a military flight into Orange California in 1973. I loved looking out the windows when i used to fly. The plane started losing altitude when preparing to land. As I as looking the window and watching the buildings, roads, and cars grow larger we flew into the smog. It was a son-of-a-bitch! moment as visibility dropped to zero and the only thing I could see was brown smog.

Once landed and outside the plane there was this brown haze in all directions. It was a sobering experience.

Ok I didn't read the whole thing but I have read that the 4th and 5th generation nuclar, as Bushie would say it, are far safer and cleaner than anything els we could use. They also can burn the use the waste that is left from older powerplants. If so why are we not doing this?

Yes, conserve resources. Look at enery efficient heating and cooling products, appliances, lighting, transportation. Every bit counts. Less demand = less usage. I just replaced my 25+ year old clothes washer with a new high-efficiency top-loader. It's weird to see it not fill with water and cycle the agitator constantly, but it is for the greater good. Also the clothes still come out clean.

By taking care of and watering the orange tree in my back yard, it produces some of the tastiest and juiciest oranges around, but I can see how on a larger scale a moister climate would produce juicier oranges overall.

Renewable energy and energy storage is the future. Lithium Ion batteries will be replaced with improved technology in the next 2 decades. Renewable energy can be captured on a more localized basis reducing the risk of large regional blackouts due to storms, terrorists, etc. New products like the Solar City shingles are a really interesting and as efficiency improves and prices come down, these will become a practical solution for homeowners just like LED bulbs were $10 to $15 a bulb just a few years ago and had a 5 to 10 year payback timeframe but now I can buy one for < $2 per bulb.

Yep. My Mom’s orange tree produces really sweet oj. I’ll usually throw a few less ripe ones in because I like it a little tart. Avocados off her tree are great too.

Lobbyists

Without advanced energy storage (battery or some other scheme) wind and solar are of limited usefulness. Currently batteries lack capacity and are very destructive to the environment to manufacture plus they and wind turbines require exotic raw materials which are mostly mined in China. New nuclear plants are safe (pebble bed reactor) if you don't build them in areas prone to natural disasters and have proper maintenance.
Here in Florida solar would work great but it is still not anywhere near to competitive with $0.085/kWh which I am paying to FPL. Currently our biggest resource is our wastefulness. With minimal effort we could reduce energy consumption by 30-40%. Insulation, smaller cars (I know that's IMPOSSIBLE), efficient public transportation, bike lanes, etc.