About costs: it is actually cheap. 95% of the average total cost of a MWh is in building the plant. Comparisons sometimes show the cost of a MWh from wind or solar, but is a fallacy because they assume an infrastructure on the side to ensure 24x7 power generation (i.e. they point out a marginal cost instead of average total cost).
Wind / solar + (largely non-existent) batteries are cheap!
Until you factor in the gas peaker plants that need to be built watt-for-watt unless you’re okay with poor people freezing in the dark, or melting in the heat. Because rich people can afford their own back up generators or on-site batteries.
The problem is as much time as it is money. We have reactors producing energy now, it will take a decade plus to replace them, and due to both climate policy and supply issues around the wars in Russia and the Middle East, we can't afford to do without the energy for that decade...
Fuck climate policy.
There could be an earthquake any moment now that ruptures a massive natural CO formation that would eclipse any anthropogenic generated emissions in matter of hours. What have we done to mitigate that risk? Nothing.
There is a non-zero chance Earth will be relieved of the responsibility of harbouring complex life any moment now by a loose pile of gravel travelling at 60 kilometres a second. Zero mitigation.
Let’s work out this food-housing-energy deal for everyone before we mandate unaffordable unreliable energy that results in unaffordable everything.
Maybe your shielded from that because your own a mid six figure income at $UNICORN, but I guarantee you the rest of us have had enough of this climate change fucking bullshit luxury belief.
It no longer rains enough?
Are you a time traveller?
Otherwise you can’t possibly know that.
When it comes to climate and weather, no amount of recent past data can reliably predict what’s going to happen next.
I'm not going to argue long-term weather cycles versus man-made climate change with you.
Climate change isn't a risk that needs mitigation, it is not a contingency of hypothetical events. It is happening right now, and lives are already being claimed.
Maybe you are shielded from that and want to keep your lifestyle rather than adapting.
We don’t actually know that.
We don’t have a second, identical Earth, where an industrial revolution powered by coal and oil and gas didn’t happen.