Rick Perry wants to talk with AOC about GND

[emailking]

I have no idea what Perry might say to AOC.

When it comes to the Green New Deal, there are two important concepts in conflict.  One concept is the idea that Global Warming is caused in part by human behavior, and there are things humans can do to reduce, and even reverse, the effects.  The other concept is the idea that, at the present time, we have ALTERNATIVES to fossil fuels, but no SUBSTITUTE for fossil fuels, and a SUBSTITUTE is not in the offing anytime soon. 

How do we balance the danger of burning stuff to have energy with the idea that only by burning stuff at the levels we currently do will we maintain our current living standards?  If you can figure this out, you'll be a rich, rich person.

The clean, renewable substitute to fossil fuels has existed for generations but AOC and her allies oppose it on ideological grounds.

We should probably do more nuclear, but it's only going to help offset a portion of the energy we get from fossil fuels. And while it's debatable how much uranium can actually be mined, it's definitely not renewable.

The only way we can completely replace fossil fuels is to use a lot less energy.

[emailking]

Any serious energy scholar or expert would say that storage technology is the key bottleneck. It requires a lot of additional R&D but it is certainly attainable within the next couple of decades.

That's a pretty big assumption. Just because technology has advanced a lot in the last century does not mean it will continue to do so. The technology does not exist. We don't even know if it's technically possible to ramp up storage that much. And if it is, we don't know what resources it will depend upon and in what quantities. It may be infeasible or even impossible given the resources on Earth. And even if it's possible and feasible, we definitely don't know how long it will take us to figure it out. Could be a breakthrough tomorrow, or a long hard slog that takes 100 years. No way to know.