What set of ideas and motivations may be preventing the oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear industries from investing into cleaner, renewable, and climate-benign sources of energy?
could anyone please educate me about what may be stopping the major coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas corporations from investing into wind, solar, wave energy, and other non-fossil fuel sources?
A person by the name of Pat Marida, who is involved with the Ohio Sierra Club told me that some people think that the support for nuclear power as an energy source is linked to people who want to maintain the ‘nuclear weapons industry.’
It may be the case that there is some degree of affinity between people who are generally at odds with urgently investing in non-fossil-based sources of energy and people who seem to favor having a type of US foreign policy that focuses more on military might and less on using what some people refer as the ‘soft power’ of the United States–that is, our nation’s ability to influence other nation’s via our ideals, diplomacy, and our economy. (Yet some people would refer to the economic influence of the United States as a type of coercion in at least some situations.) That basis for common ground may also involve people who support nuclear power, given the military role that nuclear energy plays.
Perhaps as someone who considers himself an environmentalist, I may want to keep in mind the apparent limitations of using renewable energy. Comment if you think I am overlooking some details in terms of renewable energy solutions not seeming to apply to what to do about powering our military machine (except for how, maybe, having in place a renewable energy infrastructure may enable our nation to significantly decrease, though not eliminate, the extent to which we wage war in a struggle over scarce resources.)
Maybe one way of thinking about how the US military and the militaries of other nations depend on petroleum is to acknowledge that petroleum, sooner or later will become drastically and increasingly scarcer and more expensive.
But I don’t know what to present as even a remote possibility about what to do after making that acknowledgement. Well, actually, at least one thought comes to mind : as a matter of realism and as a matter of making an imperfect situation significantly better, we ought to seek to urgently invest in renewable energy, so to significantly reduce, though not eliminate, our nation’s inclination toward militaristically pursuing its continued access to whatever petroleum remains (along with reducing, though not eliminating, the ecological problems associated with using fossil fuels and nuclear power.)
Similar to the mentality of a nuclear arms race, using our military to get access to whatever petroleum may remain or choosing not to take that action, involves the issues of trust and distrust that have been, I venture, a part of the human psyche, since our species emerged on this planet.
Suppose the United States doesn’t use its military for continuing or enhancing its access to whatever petroleum may remain, and, suppose that, say China and/or Russia does? I guess there are multiple scenarios that you can imagine.
But I keep thinking that the people in the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries would want to invest into solar, wind, geothermal and other cleaner renewable types of technologies so as to make a lot of money. Do the leaders of these fossil-fuel and nuclear based corporations think that it’s more profitable to use up all of the fossil fuels and uranium and plutonium first, and then get serious about investing into non-fossil fuel based sources of energy?
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