They did say "or financiers". There's an old quote:
Finance literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry. The result is that erstwhile scientists, people who in another age dreamt of curing cancer or flying to Mars, today dream of becoming hedge fund managers.
For much of my late teens and early 20s, I was hearing about people using vegetable oil as a substitute for diesel. If that still works, there may be some additional impact that both limits the fuel price and increases food prices: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/272515844?_gl...
To the point of the comment you're replying to, US cars are infamously inefficient compared to European cars, and also there's that old quote about how "In the US 100 years is a long time, while in Europe 100 miles is a long way", so the US can still get a price shock even with cheaper fuel than the UK/EU.
> Is the problem inequality or rather poverty? Because those are not the same thing.
According to the OP, inequality: "Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement."
> What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.
Are you talking about manned Moon missions or unmanned Earth-orbiting satellites? To use your own words, those are not the same thing.
In any case, poverty is a policy decision, a refusal to redistribute the wealth.
This is a policy decision insofar as the policy isn’t to liquidate entire groups of people over class and status resentment. “Just redistribute the wealth bro, it’ll work this time bro I swear let’s just do a redistribution”.
NASA may be cool, but the main reason SpaceX was able to undercut old launch providers was all the I Can't Believe It's Not Corruption of pork barrel spending by those old launch providers.
So SpaceX made space cheaper, was good value for the US taxpayer, and was also a money transfer scheme from the government to him. (Worse with Tesla, but this isn't about Musk just SpaceX).
That said, now there's questions about if Musk is corrupt with all those US government ties that result in suspicious direct pressure on non-US governments, including with Starlink which even if theoretically separate to SpaceX is obviously functionally inseparable at present.
I think that helping the less fortunate is cool, and launching people to the Moon is lighting money on fire for utopian and inevitably corrupt money transfer schemes.
> Is hardly the same as objecting to activities that distress pretty much all animals in the vicinity long term.
A big thing which distresses pretty much all animals in the vicinity is "shipping".
One other specific animal harm that wind farm get blamed for is bird deaths. Know what is responsible for more bird deaths? Skyscrapers.
The only way to not harm the environment (with current science) is a choice which is unsustainable, because the choice requires everyone everywhere to not only agree now but forever, and "forever" is really hard because anyone defecting from "degrowth" is necessarily stronger for that defection.
So yes, objecting to wind turbines on these grounds is absolutely concern trolling.
Oil is (close to) fungible, which means the higher prices in US fuel pumps are just as much financially supporting dictators in Tehran and Moscow as EU fuel pumps.
Ironically, the "close to" part is just enough to prevent the USA from isolating itself from the world market by refining and using what it currently exports.
Pretty sure the US does not buy energy from natural gas pipelines to Russia, neither are we shutting down all of our Nuclear Power Plants (like Germany) because it's green to import more gas ?
As an American I couldn't tell you what their logic is exactly.
> Pretty sure the US does not buy energy from natural gas pipelines to Russia, neither are we shutting down all of our Nuclear Power Plants (like Germany) because it's green to import more gas ?
Irrelevant. Natural gas isn't the only fossil fuel, the US trades oil on the global market, that oil trade cannot help but support all other petrostates.
To use the table that the chart is supposed to be based on, the peak of nuclear production in Germany was only about 60% of 2025's renewables, 284.6 TWh renewables in 2025 vs 169.6 TWh nuclear in 2000: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung_in_Deutschland
The planned graph is an almost straight line from 2005 to 2050, which it is following very closely in the best of German stereotypes.
A decade or so ago, this was described as:
while the German approach is not unique worldwide, the speed and scope of the Energiewende are exceptional
While they could've done better in a magical alternate universe where the population was not terrified of nuclear power, the transition has in fact been very fast.
We did. Most of the oil and gas there has now been removed and sold. Oil production peaked in 1999, gas in 2001.
If the same place, the North Sea specifically, was filled with wind farms, it could supply about half of the EU's electricity.
(If all the waters around the British Isles had wind farms, it becomes 140% of current EU total primary energy consumption or 660% of the electricity consumption, assuming I did the substitution efficiency multiplier right).
Israel's not even close to being the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.
This is because Israel's neighbours who they are attacking aren't in Europe, and also there's a lot of tourists in Europe that Israel would like to be visiting them, but the point isn't why, it's just that Israel are not themselves a threat to Europe.
USA's probably number 2 threat after Russia. But neither Israel's nor the USA's belligerence regarding Iran seems to be so much as painting a target on European backs this time around. Which may be because Iran noticed the USA threatening Europe, IDK.
- Israel foments conflicts and urges/pressurizes the US to fight them out on its behalf - already confirmed by General Wesley Clark who talked about the Seven Nation Plan.
- Refugees flee those conflicts and move to the closest nations providing asylum en masse - Turkey and then the EU.
- Israeli and other Jewish NGOs facilitate refugee migrations to Europe in the name of humanitarianism.
The US at least helps/used to help protect Europe via NATO. Israel doesn't.
None of those things are a "biggest threat for the way of living in Europe", which is what I was quoting from the now flagged comment from juliusceasar.
Not even with the asylum seekers arriving via Turkey; though as the Turkish leadership actively tried to use the flow of asylum seekers to extract concessions from Europe, IMO Turkey gets the blame for that.
The US indeed used to help protect Europe via NATO, but even back then (so, two years ago), the much bigger metaphorical footprint of the US vs. Israel means the US posed a bigger threat than Israel currently does just by mis-stepping.
Israel may be important to the US, but the nation is just not that potent in any direction in Europe.
> Iran doesn’t have the resources to deny access to the entire Indian Ocean.
I have what may be a scale issue in my imagination, so bear with me if this is silly.
There are reports of international drug transport via seaborne drones in the 0.5-5 tonne range, and of these crossing the Pacific, and the cost of the vehicles is estimated to be around 2-4 million USD each. If drug dealers can do that, surely Iran (and basically everyone with a GDP at least the size of something like Andorra's) should be able to make credible threats to disrupt approximately as much non-military shipping as they want to worldwide?
> if drug dealers can do that, surely Iran (and basically everyone with a GDP at least the size of something like Andorra's) should be able to make credible threats to disrupt approximately as much non-military shipping as they want to worldwide?
Sure. Do you think that means worldwide shipping would shut down?
And the point isn't to take the risk to zero. But to a level where military escorts can feel safe.
> Do you think that means worldwide shipping would shut down?
I think there's a danger of that, at least if countermeasures are not easily available for normal shipping.
Even 1-on-1 rather than 1-v-everyone, there's too many players (not all of them nations) with too many conflicting goals and interests. If Cuba tried to do it, could they credibly threaten to sink all sea-based trade involving the USA? If not Cuba, who would be the smallest nation that could?
And the same applies to Taiwan and China, in both directions, either of which would be fairly dramatic on the world stage, even though China also has land options. Or North Korea putting up an effective anti-shipping blockade against Japan.
> But to a level where military escorts can feel safe.
Are there enough military ships to do the escorting?
> the US and Europe would be pretty fucked since we depend on it much more.
China could still get resources from russia and is much more self sustained
America would be fine. We have the Americas and Asia to trade with, and Iran can’t restrict those oceans in any meaningful way.
Europe, the Middle East, Africa and non-China Asia would get screwed.
Personally, I'd also add "Big Tech" to the list, as per a more recent quote:
- https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/747678-the-best-minds-of-my...reply