Why Solarpunk Is Already Happening In Africa (substack.com) 130
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Substack post by economist/entrepreneur Skander Garroum:
You know that feeling when you're waiting for the cable guy, and they said 'between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.
What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.
And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.
What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.
And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.
Anti-stakeholders (Score:2)
It's good to see Africa figuring out solutions to their own problems. No one else was going to solve them for them without getting more in return.
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It's good to see Africa figuring out solutions to their own problems. No one else was going to solve them for them without getting more in return.
china. the power of non-colonial oriented superpowers ...
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Are you referring to the non-imperial China that took over Hong Kong
omg. hong kong has been china since imperial times. they didn't take it over, they got it handed over through negotiations long after it had become ... wait for it ... a fucking british colony.
and Nepal,
wtf are you talking about? when did china "take over nepal"?
and is actively trying to take parts of India
china has border disputes with india. india has a lot of border disputes, and most of them trace back to british colonialism. then again relations between china nad india have considerably improved lately.
and Taiwan?
taiwan is actually china, at least china has plausible
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Taiwan declared independence from the mainland, and the mainland didn't try to take it back when they had the chance. Now, it's an independent nation and the mainland's feelings about it can either change or lead to an unnecessary war.
China's debt-based colonialism is no better than anyo
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Taiwan declared independence from the mainland
no, it didn't. taiwan never declared independence. after losing its position on the mainland the kuomintang exiled themselves to taiwan in 1949 and declared it to be the roc. that's not a declaration of independence, there is no official international recognition, although de facto relations.
the mainland didn't try to take it back when they had the chance.
oh, they did try. they intended to culminate the civil war but were blocked by none other than the us (don't say!) in 1950. they never recognized the roc's legitiacy, nor renounced the the reunification. they just put t
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Won't happen in the Unted States (Score:2)
until after the second civil war.
The utilities lobbyists will see to that.
Utility lobbyists? (Score:2)
That's got nothing to do with lobbyists that's got everything to do with how just well, everything works. A large public works project is going to be more efficient than a single person doing something. Again, economies of scale.
What's holding back sola
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As long as it is connected to the grid. Unless you in the middle of nowhere, you'll fight both the utility, and your county or city government via building code law to disconnect from the grid and be totally self-sufficient.
Re:Utility lobbyists? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Utility lobbyists? (Score:3)
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The people voted for this? Sounds more like corruption.
Re: Utility lobbyists? (Score:3)
Re: Utility lobbyists? (Score:2)
Re: Utility lobbyists? (Score:2)
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The utilities lobbyists will see to that.
This.
It works in Africa because there are no incumbent producers whose market is being threatened.
It could happen in the USA, but for the structure of the utilities' capital financing. You may _think_ you are paying so much for a kilowatt-hour. In reality, a good chunk of utilities costs are fixed. And the rate structures are designed to recapture those, concealed as energy rates. Now here come the micro solar and wind producers, expecting to use the grid as their marketplace. Buying and selling energy ac
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And when you say "Fuck you" and try load defection with solar panels and batteries, city and county code enforcement will come after you and threaten to condemn your property unless you reconnect back up to the grid.
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Yes. Welcome to public power. Move to an investor-owned service area and utilities political power is much less. Because capitalism and free markets. With publicly owned facilities, "We decided" to do X. So there's no backing out on an individual basis. Even if "We" is an elite group within the government.
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It doesn't matter if it is investor owned or publicly owned. Here in San Diego, we have San Diego Gas and Electric, who are known for some of the highest electricity rates in the United States. People have looked into disconnecting from SDG&E here, but they risk getting a letter from code enforcement saying they'd better reconnect or there will be consequences. What matters is if your city or county building codes have a section making disconnecting entirely from the grid illegal.
Also public power comp
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It doesn't matter if it is investor owned or publicly owned.
Probably not in California. Investor owned companies pay taxes into the system to help keep public utilities cheap. In return, they get favorable regulations to keep revenue up, competition out and taxes rolling in. As long as they don't squeal too much under the thumb.
It's really a merger of state and corporate power.
"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing agaisnt the state."
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I think I have already left enough hints.
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Big whoop (Score:3)
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I completely agree.
Too much safety. Too much regulation.
Not enough creativity. Not enough dealing with the imperfect.
We really need to amp up freedom.
Re: Big whoop (Score:2)
Re:Big whoop (Score:4, Insightful)
TFS is about people getting tired of waiting for a government-supported solution and finding their own.
Your post is about encountering municipal bureaucracy when you had it in mind to do it yourself in the first place.
I'm no fan of bureaucracy for its own sake. But there's a reason you need to jump through some hoops when you want to change something on your property. Those trees you want to cut down might be crucial for flood mitigation. That room you want to turn into a spare bedroom might be a fire-trap if it lacks a window or quick access to an exit route. Digging on your property might disrupt buried pipes or cables.
Like it or not, we do need rules, even though sometimes they may seem silly to you.
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The correct answer exists between your post and the GP's. Yes some regulation is important, like the ones you list. In other cases it's just completely pointless bullshit. My example (not America, so be happy you aren't the only special ones) we had dormers installed. The one on the front roof required council permit approval. They insisted the dormers have white frames and rejected our desire to make it in anthracite on the basis that both our neighbours are white and wanting a "consistent look". They only
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not holding my breath (Score:2)
in the US and Europe people complain about the lack of total integration of the power grid down to the house or even device level.
I'm all for resilience through federation, local production , and self reliance,but that's not the arc since the end of the Cold War. Instead we ship cotton across the Pacific to make T-shirts to ship back across the Pacific.
And move to cloud computing which is super reliable and redundant... until someone closes your account; possibly by mistake; possibly because you're seen
So isn't this coming from china? (Score:3)
It's that whole belt and road initiative. I don't think Africa is in a position to do anything about it so they'll just have to try and make the best of it but just like the rest of the world has traditionally exploited the whole continent China is going to do it too.
To get back to the article no this is not how infrastructure is going to be built over the next 50 years. Most countries wouldn't allow China to do what they're doing to them. Those loans aren't coming from inside Africa they ultimately track back to China and the African nations are going to end up with a metric shitload of debt that will be leveraged in order to get obedience on a wide variety of issues.
I guess what I'm saying is this isn't some free market miracle like the article makes it out to be. This is a very large country working to put another country that is in a worse position into debt for various foreign policy reasons.
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To get back to the article no this is not how infrastructure is going to be built over the next 50 years. Most countries wouldn't allow China to do what they're doing to them. Those loans aren't coming from inside Africa they ultimately track back to China and the African nations are going to end up with a metric shitload of debt that will be leveraged in order to get obedience on a wide variety of issues.
I don't think you read the article at all as none of this is due to loans from China. It's people acting in their own economic interest because these products replace more expensive alternatives. Part of it is funding through carbon credits which is a separate sort of idiocy, but the companies involved have built a viable business model around supplying something people want in a way that they can afford. The only involvement China has is that they manufacture much of the hardware and it's not some governme
Most ambitious infrastructure project?? (Score:3)
Over exaggerate much? Installing solar panels to power individual homes doesn't even come close to the "most ambitious infrastructure project in human history". Maybe building a railroad across an entire continent, or building a massive roadway system with thousands of bridges that span mighty rivers and gorges. Perhaps digging canals to connect the planet's oceans, or building power plants and distribution systems to provide power to a billion people...
What is funding this is companies trying to buy carbon credits. I actually tried to read this article but it was so overhyped and the guy was so giddy to blow it out of proportion my eyes almost got stuck in a permanent eye-roll.
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Over exaggerate much? Installing solar panels to power individual homes doesn't even come close to the "most ambitious infrastructure project in human history".
It may not be for you Mr Rich Westerner. But you come from a world where shared pooled resources optimised the delivery of infrastructure. That is far less ambitious than tens of millions of people working to build their own.
Maybe building a railroad across an entire continent
The entire railroad industry during construction of the railroad employed only a small fraction of the people compared to what is being discussed in TFA.
or building power plants and distribution systems to provide power to a billion people...
Power plants are lucky to be the work of a workforce more than a couple of thousand people strong. It's not ambitious or difficult in
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I'm sorry but the words "most ambitious infrastructure project in human history " were put together to form that sentence. HUMAN HISTORY. Ever hear about the great pyramids in Egypt?
Installing solar panels, batteries (are they even using them?) and charge controller / inverter for a home is an extremely fundamental thing that most anyone can do given simple instructions. In the US and other developed countries it often isn't done by a homeowner because if they intend to sell power back to the grid it has t
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Ever hear about the great pyramids in Egypt?
We have, but I should point out that if the great pyramid of Giza was broken down to its approximately 2.3 million blocks, 100 million people could relatively easily pick them up and carry them around. There are some logistical constraints with getting that many people working within such a small area, but if you ignore those and consider the construction of the great pyramid in terms of work units, moving and stacking blocks 100 million people could do all the actual physical labor in a day. So, the questi
Implied (Score:2)
The slashdotter who posted this said in an inplicit way that the industrialised world would copy the electrical infrastructure of Africa. Then i lost interest and stopped reading.
Re: Implied (Score:2)
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Ok, i'll trust you and read further. :)
Ok, read. I wish i had not. I hope the author is young and will become less pretentious with age. He presents this at the end of the article as THE solution for rural paupers of the third world the grid ignores, lumping Latin America in it. But he still claims it is "the infrastructure model" implying more. Which makes me suspect he believes in an old hippy mantra of decentralized infrastructure that is at least 50 years old. But it matters little.
But, reported by some
Really happening right across the developing world (Score:2)
Not just Africa (and more on that here: https://ember-energy.org/lates... [ember-energy.org]), but also Pakistan and many other places in SE Asia. Cheap panels and storage plus shitty grids is one heckuva structure to incentivise the rollout of decentralised power.
Fine (Score:2)
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I guess I should have made it more clear that it was a movie quote :)
Bajau (Score:2)
what? (Score:2)
so there are loads of people who earn $2 a day and spend 10% of that on cooking ? How much can you cook with 80ml (16 teaspoons) of kerosene? Would it even warm up the tin of soup on which you spent the 90% of your earnings?
And these people are buying solar panels? What are they mounting them on? Who is paying the rent and council tax on the property?
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How much can you cook with 80ml (16 teaspoons) of kerosene? Would it even warm up the tin of soup on which you spent the 90% of your earnings?
So, that would be 676 kilocalories (also known as a capital C Calorie, the kind that are confusingly used to measure energy in food). That is enough energy to heat a liter of water by 676 degrees Celsius. In other terms, it is enough energy to completely vaporize about 1.09 liters of water. Obviously you don't normally have to completely vaporize water to cook things (in most cases, anyway). So, this assumes high efficiency, which is another matter, but you could certainly heat an 800 ml family size can of
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Thanks for the calculation. I was just thinking it sounded like so little fuel.
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Oh, it's a pittance, to be sure and it is a very limiting way to live
Yet the gaslighting for fossil fuels continues (Score:2)
Sites like 'The CO2 Coalition' are putting out "news" and "analysis" that portrays RE/net zero as harmful to developing nations, proposing that it will cause starvation and worse. Only fossil fuels with that ever so helpful addition of CO2 to the atmosphere is moral.
Meanwhile solar initiatives like this (and some wind) are leapfrogging traditional infrastructure just like cell phones did for both telephony and network access. And with battery prices falling through the floor, there is no practical limit.
What's "punk" about that? (Score:2)
Do these panels come with leather jackets and liberty spikes? Do they blast Black Flag when active? Do they only work in the Southeastern corner of Nigeria (who gets that reference?)?
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You clearly have no clue about hopepunk, or cyberpunk, for that matter.
What you need to know: "the street finds uses of its own" (for what, five or ten years before, was "cutting edge tech".)
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Cobbling things together from junk isn't what makes a thing punk. Not unless you're trying to get high off it, hurt something/someone with it, or just generally be o
Re:Cable guy? (Score:4, Funny)
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A metaphor is like a simile.
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You have a large company in the cable company causing you to stay home all day (not making money) and all to often causing you to lose multiple days work. If they do show up and you aren't home they still charge you. So you pay for what you don't get. They are comparing that to all the promise to bring electricity to these regions for 50! years and it is still a no show. That is the comparison they are making.
This "Solar punk" is different in that instead of dealing with a major corporation you are deal
Re:Cable guy? (Score:5, Informative)
You have to get cable installed because it does not come with the house.
In Africa, you have to get an electrical line installed because it does not come with the house (except in the Urban areas - where it is just like America.)
For 50 years, many African leaders keep promissing that the Utility company will build an electrical grid that goes to the rural areas and but they have repeatedly failed.
Now, you can just get Solar power installed and screw the utility.
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Re:Cable guy? (Score:5, Informative)
Solar is used in subSaharan Africa for a bit of light, charging mobile devices, possibly a fan or refrigeration. The loads are much smaller than in the developed world. And fires are going to decrease, not increase, because cooking fires and lighting fires are very frequent in non-electrified households.
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You are thinking of wiring a whole house for outlets, lights, heat, appliances, etc.
This is more like you buy a set of solar panels and a battery that comes with say 6 outlets. The kind of thing you use for Glamping.
Then you get 6 extension cords and glue them to your walls. Do not staple, GLUE.
Re:Cable guy? (Score:4, Interesting)
we went on a bunch of homestays in very remote parts of Fiji earlier this year. These are villages you can only get to by small boat, and then on an island there's only rough walking tracks between them.
The govt had a programme going to install solar in all homes, so most villages we saw had one panel installed per house which just connected directly to one outlet. It was really common to see integrated panel/light setups just where it was needed. More enterprising villagers installed a couple extra panels (and in one case we saw even a battery) and bought a freezer - they used this to buy meat to sell to other villagers. But mainly houses like this were the central point for villagers to charge their phones - there'd often be like 10 or more people hanging out just charging their phones.
What was interesting was visiting ad hoc 'shops' (just peoples houses who bought extra food to sell) - you'd go there to buy 3 potatoes and then do an electronic transfer for payment via cellphone. It worked really well.
Bit of a digression but it was quite eye-opening overall coming from the 'first world' to see them getting on with it - I guess it'd be roughly the same in Africa. I did worry about the electrics in some of these places but they are generally powering 3 or 4 lights max, and maybe a fridge if they're rich. Totally different world.
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Exactly. This is the perfect example.
Over the next decade, cheap solar + cell network + cheap banking will rapidly increase the quality of life for billions of people.
Cable theft (Score:2)
I used to work for a company that tried laying copper cable for networking in Africa. You could rely on the fact that it would only work for a short period, since it would be dug up and sold for the price of the copper.
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It's a little surprising that this doesn't happen more in the US, where some people seem to like being rugged and independent.
It is very viable to go off-grid, or at least have enough backup energy storage and generation to survive days of no grid power.
You don't even need to deal with regulations, there are products that allow you to have it all isolated to your own home, or simply plug critical appliances into a box of batteries and solar panels when needed.
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Thanks for the clarification posts guys.
I read the summary again. If whomever wrote it had left out the entire first paragraph completely, since it has nothing to do with the story, the entire thing would have been much more clear.
Thanks, everyone.
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It's a very apt 1st world analogy of 3rd world problems. It's not a 1:1 analogy.
Rural places wait decades for the 'modern world' to reach them...just like suburbia waits hours for the Cable guy.
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I don't understand what this has to do with the cable guy not showing up.
It's a bad analogy because when you call the cable guy, the infrastructure already exists and you just need someone to hook up a box (and then they try to upsell you to the ultra premium mega bundle pack that costs $150/mo).
The issue in those parts of Africa is that there's no power lines, which is like what the broadband situation was for rural America until Starlink became a thing.
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You could, don't know if it would work, say that since they didn't show up, you don't owe a bill for that day or whatever. Argue that your bill doesn't start until you have service at your home.
It's all the same principle... if it's cable TV, internet, or a truck dropping off solar panels... it's the same thing. You said one time, and you show up a few days later, I shouldn't get billed for those few days you didn't show up.
Do you wanna pay for cell service that doesn't work?
If someone was trying to sell
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Plus, how is my day wasted? I'm home anyway.
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Are we not calling the cable guy "he/him" anymore?
I believe the cable "guy" in this case is gender neutral. And since there is no "them" in the sentence, there would be no "him". The question is why not use "he/she". Frankly ,"they" is a lot better usage in any case. It may be a plural that does not match the singular "guy" but given the ambiguity of mixing plurality and the clumsiness of the "he/she" construction I would take the plural. And even people who use that clumsy construction when writing rarely talk that way.
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The point is that guy is sometimes a gender-neutral term. Eg “you guys” is sometimes used to refer to a group of girls or women.
People on Slashdot seem incapable of understanding that language continually evolves and that English has never been rigid with its rules anyway.
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Who writes this shit? Are we not calling the cable guy "he/him" anymore?
In this context, it seems pretty clear that "they" does not refer to the "cable guy", but to the cable company. "They" is the correct pronoun there because we are talking about a collection of people. Sure, there might have been one specific spokesperson who contacted you, but the language in question is just clearly treating the cable company as an entity. Now, maybe the cable guy did contact you directly, but that is pretty atypical. Even then though, this is a general scenario, not a specific scenario, s
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You are delusional and have no understanding of even basic science or engineering. The nation needs a grid to make things and to power over half its dwellings.
Africans aren't getting the energy a modern house needs from their panels on shacks.
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You are delusional
I think its you that is delusional.
The nation needs a grid to make things and to power over half its dwellings.
The nation has a grid and lots of large centralized sources of power.
Africans aren't getting the energy a modern house needs from their panels on shacks.
But there are plenty of people living off grid in the United States and elsewhere who are. And there are plenty of opportunities to place solar where the power is needed.
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yet here you are on the global comm grid
Which has nothing to do with power grid.
Solar can supplement in most places in USA, not replace the grid.
No more than personal computers could replace mainframes. That doesn't mean the solution to providing more computing power was to put a bunch of small computers in a warehouse miles from anywhere while expanding a massive fiber optic network to connect them to places that needed computers. Its the same with solar panels.
It will be a lot more efficient to distribute the panels to where the power is needed. Like Africans, most Americans would benefit financially from
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oh you think the global internet including your local cell tower isn't powered by power grid? You're funny.
No, you fucking idiot. That's not what I think and that's not what I said.
Over half the nation are in poor location for solar power.
BS. That may have been true when solar panels were expensive but there are solar arrays all over the country. Are some area "poorer" than others"? Sure. Are their locations that are totally shaded that won't work? Sure. But most of us have a location that will produce power at a lower cost than buying it off the grid.
When grid fails of course the industry loses money, not just all woes pushed on the consumer. Hence they restore power quickly.
And their customers pay the cost of restoring it along with a return on the investment required. What don't you underst
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You claimed internet / telecom had nothing to do with power grid
It doesn't unless your only point is that it uses electricity. In which case you are just being deliberately stupid.
ah, never had power loss long enough make fridge warm or affect ability to work from home
Lucky you. Then there is the entire state of Texas and an area stretching up to North Dakota that lost power for days when the Texas grid went down. There are hundreds if not thousands of power outages every year that last longer than a refrigerator will keep stuff cold.
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First, I would like to say that you're both very pretty. I think this argument might be doomed to go around in circles thought because it does not look like either of you are characterizing the other's position quite right. It does not look like RossCWilliams is advocating for ditching the grid entirely, or even ditching grids at the local level. It seems more like the argument is that you can have a grid, but not everything needs to be connected to, or at least reliant on one central grid. If houses or ent
Re: Centralized Energy Industry (Score:2)
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Well, I think if you append "...to live a modern lifestyle" onto that first sentence, it becomes a pretty dubious proposition for some people. Not everyone. There are plenty of people who could generate their own electricity and be able to use modern electrical appliances without the grid, but there are also plenty who can not. Cities are a prime example of this. City dwellers in apartments, condos, rented houses, cramped ground footprint, etc. are often not able to live off grid due to practical limitation
Re: Centralized Energy Industry (Score:2)
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Sure it is possible in the cities.
To clarify, do you mean sure it is possible to generate electricity yourself, or do you mean sure it is possible to live without electricity? Either way, while some city dwellers can, it is simply impractical to the point that we might as well call it impossible for many people currently living in cites to live in high rises and skyscrapers without electricity. It is also practically impossible for most of them to generate enough electricity with the tiny access that they have to the resources they would ne
Re: Centralized Energy Industry (Score:2)
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Basically what you are doing is spewing nonsense that's orthogonal to the actual conversation. I have to note though that it is odd to have an issue with the electrical grid, but have no problem with using natural gas stoves to cook considering the required infrastructure behind that.
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Ok. If you don't have any position at all, this is pretty pointless.
Re: Centralized Energy Industry (Score:2)
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I think differently all the time. Certainly not in Apple slogans, so that's "differently", not "different". For purposes of anything like an actual plan though, I start with certain axioms, and then work pragmatically from those axioms. So, for example, one of those axioms is that mass, rapid die offs of humans are bad. Another related axiom is that unnecessary suffering is bad. Given those axioms, it follows that rapidly emptying human population centers without a specific plan of how people will survive i
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Re: That's all very nice, but... (Score:2)
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Reading carefully and working the math it's a very big deal in a lot of metrics (time too) as well as lessening environmental destruction. And not just in Africa but other countries as well. This is a viable path from poverty.
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Easy way to tell us that you have no idea how big Africa is.
Re: Holding THIS as a positive example? (Score:2)