> So you seem to be saying you're against all the ways of reducing dependence on foreign fuels but are sure that dependency will be reduced.
First of all, if foreign fossil fuels are a dependence, and we are striving to remove that dependence, it is worth considering what our new dependence will be on. Is it going to be on local fossil fuels, extracted at great cost to our own quality of life? I'd hope not. The global economy is already interconnected as hell, we don't need to be in such a rush that we make a bad decision rewiring our supply chains. We should implement a superior replacement first, and we're definitely in the R&D phase of that.
Secondly, I'm certainly not against all ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and I resent that you present it as a binary. Fracking and nuclear are cool technologies, but it's pretty damn important to scrutinize how and when they're being deployed. Slow is good in this case. I'm very against using "oh no we're dependent on foreign fossil fuels" as a rallying cry to avoid environmental due diligence and to ignore all the negative environmental externalities that occur from the realities of dirty energy. Like, building a long oil pipeline is not externality free. The physics of such an endeavor make it so that spills are basically unavoidable, and often difficult to find before damage is done to the long term health of ecosystems and humans.
In terms of "how will we remove our dirty energy dependence" at large, I think it's fair that nobody has a real answer yet. The problem is not "the US depends on dirty foreign fossil fuels" -- the problem is that "everyone depends on dirty fossil fuels." Most countries understand at some level that they need to fix this.
My money is on a combination of fixing the issues that prevent renewables (including wind/solar/geothermal) from making up the better part of our energy budget (and sure intermittency/storage is part of that story, though if you're that aware you must know that tons of innovation is happening in this space too right), and renewable fuels (hydrogen, ethanol, etc).
For just rearranging the US energy dependence graph there are potential solutions to be had that are cleaner than fracking like leaning harder on natural gas which is relatively plentiful here. It seems likely that we could do more nuclear, but when you get into the weeds of suitable nuclear sites the story isn't as optimistic as you might naively think. And again, nuclear is not as clean as folks might imagine.
In general I think it's dangerous to look at the picture and be like "okay looks like X, Y, and Z are the only solutions" ignoring the timescale over which you have to solve the problem, the metric by which you measure the gravity of the problem, the total cost of potential solutions including all enumerable externalities, and potential / ongoing technological advancements.
First of all, if foreign fossil fuels are a dependence, and we are striving to remove that dependence, it is worth considering what our new dependence will be on. Is it going to be on local fossil fuels, extracted at great cost to our own quality of life? I'd hope not. The global economy is already interconnected as hell, we don't need to be in such a rush that we make a bad decision rewiring our supply chains. We should implement a superior replacement first, and we're definitely in the R&D phase of that.
Secondly, I'm certainly not against all ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and I resent that you present it as a binary. Fracking and nuclear are cool technologies, but it's pretty damn important to scrutinize how and when they're being deployed. Slow is good in this case. I'm very against using "oh no we're dependent on foreign fossil fuels" as a rallying cry to avoid environmental due diligence and to ignore all the negative environmental externalities that occur from the realities of dirty energy. Like, building a long oil pipeline is not externality free. The physics of such an endeavor make it so that spills are basically unavoidable, and often difficult to find before damage is done to the long term health of ecosystems and humans.
In terms of "how will we remove our dirty energy dependence" at large, I think it's fair that nobody has a real answer yet. The problem is not "the US depends on dirty foreign fossil fuels" -- the problem is that "everyone depends on dirty fossil fuels." Most countries understand at some level that they need to fix this.
My money is on a combination of fixing the issues that prevent renewables (including wind/solar/geothermal) from making up the better part of our energy budget (and sure intermittency/storage is part of that story, though if you're that aware you must know that tons of innovation is happening in this space too right), and renewable fuels (hydrogen, ethanol, etc).
For just rearranging the US energy dependence graph there are potential solutions to be had that are cleaner than fracking like leaning harder on natural gas which is relatively plentiful here. It seems likely that we could do more nuclear, but when you get into the weeds of suitable nuclear sites the story isn't as optimistic as you might naively think. And again, nuclear is not as clean as folks might imagine.
In general I think it's dangerous to look at the picture and be like "okay looks like X, Y, and Z are the only solutions" ignoring the timescale over which you have to solve the problem, the metric by which you measure the gravity of the problem, the total cost of potential solutions including all enumerable externalities, and potential / ongoing technological advancements.