Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[tcg]

This is an important question, and the DPF may well contribute to a vastly changed economic environment, but different for each carbon source.

Let us imagine that for the moment that the promise of fusion, and wind, and solar is realized. We would still have considerable use for oil as a source for lubricants, feedstocks for plastics and drugs, asphalt, even. If we stop burning it in cars, the diminished use will be matched by the diminishing supply. Natural gas already has a huge application in the production of ammonia through the Haber process for Nitrogen fertilizers and other chemicals, and this will continue, although fracking the world to get it may not be necessary. Notice that so far these uses do not involve burning and liberation of CO2.

Coal would likely be the big looser, though. There is hardly any use for it but to be burned for electrical production, and there is a lot of it still out there. There is already a growing resistance to the environmental costs, but there are some very powerful interests pushing for its continued use.

Some may look to laws and government regulations to channel whatever change may occur, but I feel that the economic forces would be far more powerful. Anyone who can produce electricity cheap both financially and environmentally will have the world seek him out, and the competition will be holding a bag full of air.

The economic disruptions to come from such changes would be hard to calculate — massive change can bring both pleasure and pain. However, we are rapidly approaching a time when we may not have much choice in the matter. The economic and environmental costs of our current way of energy production are spiraling upward unsustainably, and it would be better to step toward something better while we can still choose where to set our foot.

The big investors with a large carbon footprint in their portfolio would probably fight such changes for a while, and then quietly slide out of their compromised investments. There is a special line on the IRS form for such things.