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Published on February 27th, 2017 | by Zachary Shahan

February 27th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

It doesnt require complicated calculus to chooserenewable energy over fossil fuels and electric transport over oil-propelled vehicles. Its just simple addition these days.

For electricity generation, you look at the market cost of electricity from different sources (renewables are typically now cheapest), you add in any external societal costs, and you come up with the total cost. For fossil fuels, you do the same. Adding in the health costs of fossil fuels long ago made renewables the cheapest option. If you also wanted to take into account the potential societal collapse that comes from global warming, the equations even more dramatic.

Nonetheless, we continue to use and even build fossil fuel power plants.

Its a similar story with electric transport versus oil-based transport.

And, frankly, its a similar story in many other realms of our society.

As has been stated many times, a free market requires that full information be widely available. A democracy has the same theoretical requirement. It also requires that the population be engaged and make decisions based on that full & free information.

Clearly, we dont have full and free informationand we never will. We each have huge information gaps, and then we also have people actively working to disinform/misinform others. This means that we have fundamental flaws in any implementation of a free market or democracy.

Of course, the further we stray from full & free information as well as consumer & civic action based on that information the further we stray from a theoretical democratic ideal.

This point has become painfully obvious in the US over the past year. (I wont go into the details ofhow this has been so painfully obvious you either get it at this point or you are living in the kind of information-deficient and information-warped world that stimulatedthis article.) We are getting a taste of how extremely far we are from a free market and a democratic society. And while we taste this sour, bitter, out-of-date, rotten alternative, the debate many of us are having internally and externally is, Can we recover a half-decent democracy or are we headed for fatal collapse?

Again, I think looking at this matter through the lens of energy is useful and interesting. But before we do that, its also worth noting that we are in an odd situation in the US forvarious reasons.

Donald Trump Seems Legitimately Crazy

Even in cases where information is abundantly available and clear, even with the modern ease of Google, people dont want to be bothered to learn. They dont want to be bothered to look up the facts, dig into the details, and get a fairly objective, deep lay persons understanding of many topics that are relevant to their lives.

People preferentertainment and convenience.

People think its fine to remain ignorant.

Thats how we got Trump as president. He was probably the least qualified person to ever run for president under a major party, let alone win the presidency. But hes an entertainer and a brander. He knows how to persuade people even how to persuade people to throw $20,000 away on a phony get rich quick scheme disguised as a fake university and he watches TV news obsessively enough to have a decent sense of what the average American might feel is important to them politically. No, that didnt at all prepare him to bepresident, but people couldntbe bothered to figure that out and it was enough for him to win the presidency.

Back when Hillary clinched the Democratic Party nomination, I wrote an article of advice for her. I recommended that she get more progressive on the issues (yes, she has been progressive on several things, but she is a proud centrist and that needed to change big league), and I recommended that she have fun. The point of having fun was to entertain, to show people her humanity, to show people she was one of them. She seemed to tryboth of them a little bit, but she was much less effective than the NYC billionaire living in a gold-plated penthouse at entertaining and pulling people into her fold in that way. It was one of ~51 things that led to the black swan presidency we now have (other factors, of course, included Hillary being too establishment, a 25-year smear campaign focused on her, Russian interference, FBI screwups, etc., etc.).

The overall point is that, whether with the free market or democracy, we have a problem people dont dig into the facts, dont seem to care about the facts, and mostly want to be entertained and provided with easy answers that fit into their cultural or individual worldview.

What does this mean?

As much as I like and sometimes subscribe to the idea that the better tech, the better solution, the truth, etc., etc., breaks through and wins the day eventually, that is sometimes a fallacy itself, especially when you consider the tight race we are in.

If wewant important and useful information to reach more people, we need to entertain, we need to persuade, we need to realize that our democracyisnt close to pure and never will be, just as our free market isnt close to pure and never will be.

Im certainly not recommending playing dirty or using alternative facts, as somepeople do, but persuasion is critical, and it is not simply about presenting the facts. Democracy is in essence a battle of persuasion. Unfortunately, many of the people with non-alternative facts are losing right now lets do more than blame the idiots. The idiots have always been there.

When it comes to energy, we can be sure that the extremely rich and powerful fossil/pollution energy industry will use any methods it canto persuade people and limit cleantech growth. We cant approach the challenge lightly or limply. We need people power to overcome $$$ power.

Additionally, as we transition to a cleaner energy world, I think its worth keeping an eye on where we are shifting the power. If we continue to shift it to megacorporations, they will continue to use their money to their advantage over ours. If we shift power to communities, local businesses, rooftops, schools, etc., we can have a more democratic energy system, and thus a much more democratic society and world. The opportunity is at our fingertips. Use your time and resources wisely.

Related:

Our Community Solar archives.

Our Rooftop Solar archives.

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Tags: Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Republicans

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species) with the power of the typed word. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor, but he's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession, Solar Love, and Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and energy storage expert. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in.

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Our Real Problem With Democracy - CleanTechnica