>calculate only the cost to industry

Industry is perfectly capable of calculating its own costs, and advocating for its own motivated self-interest, thank you very much. This is not a bug we need to fix.

The purpose of agencies like the EPA is to "see the [Pareto optimal] forest for the trees" and counterbalance industry's [Nash equilibrium] profit motive.

Otherwise let's just rename it the Shareholder Protection Agency, because that's all it would be.

It is, but degrowth is an election losing proposition. Any talk like this needs to be transparently non-hostile to demand for political purposes. The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, or tax them and put the money into a subsidy fund for clean energy.

Thank you for acknowledging the elephant in the room. I've literally seen people on HN argue that AI's increased power demand isn't bad for climate goals, because the money will encourage renewables.

It's astounding how people don't see it, even when it's the invisible hand of the market that's choking them to death.

Yep, someone was bragging recently they used 13B tokens last year. At 8mg CO2/token that's ~100t of CO2. Consumption of 5 households (or 200 NYC-London flights) just for vibe coding!

I don't like the social harms related to AI but I think the energy is a silly emphasis. No one has ever thought twice about any heavy industry or absurdist garbage for consumers, home heating, etc.

If we were on track for everything else a serious uptake of AI might have put us barely off track.. But this is like blaming the wafer thin mint for the fat guy exploding.

We can power it all and then some with renewable and nuclear energy. We elected a regime openly hostile to that and openly pro fossil fuel. Like they literally ran on burning more coal, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we are burning more coal.

AI doesn’t matter. If it’s not AI it’ll be EVs. Or if you’re pro immigration (as I am) then what do you think letting more people into the country does for power demand? It’s something like 5kW averaged out over 24/7 per head. That’s probably conservative when you do a full accounting of all demand per head. Every new immigrant is probably equivalent to a rack of GPUs.

Degrowth is political fantasy. It will establish a populist backlash every time. Or are you going to line up to be the first to become poorer?

I look at that stuff as a very privileged fantasy. Only the rich can romanticize poverty. The people who fantasize about green back to the land scenarios are usually wealthy middle or upper class people in developed nations who have zero first hand experience of what that actually means outside the Avatar films.

I think it's still worthwhile, though. AI, given its current trajectory, will be able to help immensely with science and engineering challenges. Degrowth isn't a recipe for sustainable reduction of CO2 emissions.

Searching online, it seems to be comparing to coal miners specifically, not the industry as a whole. In any case, what conclusions are you drawing from this?

There are more people eating sandwiches than committing school shootings. This is insightful.

When entire industries are automated, and one CEO can mine and sell millions of tons just by clicking buttons on a computer, it raises the question what incentive governments have to protect that industry.

There is no longer the "voters don't want to lose their jobs" argument. Now it becomes purely a "these guys pay lots of taxes" argument - but with most big companies being very efficient at tax planning, a huge mine might pay next to no taxes too. Then it becomes politically far easier to ignore them, and eventually maybe shut them down on a whim, eg. to appease green voters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Public_Power_Associat...

Your link is from a lobbyist for energy providers. I don't trust their opinions are biased in the public's favor.

That's the exact reason it's being subsidized with tax dollars, to try and keep it competitive with other energy sources.

The current administration is actively undermining pretty much any attempt to move towards renewables.

> In my mind, the only viable way out is the power density of nuclear.

How adding would more expensive energy solve it? I don’t get what ”energy density” has to do with it at all?

All western schemes to build new nuclear power are enormously subsidized.

There is evidence that coal has worse environmental impact than other fossil fuels. For one, burning gas produces CO2 and water, whereas burning coal results in just CO2 (+ soot and other pollutants). Another is that (open) coal mines have devastating effects on large land areas.

So yes, best leave all fossil fuels where they are, but coal is especially bad.

I have a personal vendetta against coal in particular because of the way it destroys the entire communities and towns. Coal got an early head start in environmentalism villainy because it has immediate and very visible environmental impacts in the process of getting it out of the ground.

While we arguably are at a brink of WW3 today considering the invasion of Ukraine, China rattling sabres like never before towards Taiwan, Trump being hungry for Greenland, internal strife in Iran, the actions of Israel… I bet that the next major flareup will be directly attributable to climate change such as a large drought affecting multiple nations.

US bad, China good basically.

Coal share of energy likely peaked for China in 2025, even as overall energy usage increased - almost all that increase has come from renewables, which China is of course doubling down upon. China is on trend to become an electrostate, USA on trend to regress on energy infrastructure which will power the next 100 hundred years

What does it matter? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Edit: cursory search shows a flat/falling trend.[0]

[0]https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

China and India coal usage dropped for the first time in 52 years[1].

It's also silly to look at anything other than per-capita metrics. If China arbitrarily splits in half or expands, the per-capita metric remains invariant to the historical luck factor behind why national borders are the way they are.

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

If you take life long CO2 emissions they have a fat margin before getting to US levels. And they've manufacturing 75% of the gadgets you buy in the west

Why do I get the feeling that if the answer is that they're polluting more as well, parent will argue that makes it OK for the US, as if we should be following their lead. But if the answer is they're making progress on lowering emissions, he'll argue the opposite?

China will almost certainly never reach the cumulative emissions that the US already reached in the 70s.

2.7% lower in 2025 compared to 2024. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

Not per capita. Absolute.

Any other questions?

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

Why should it be compared 2024 2025 and not 100+ years?

Why?

We were doing that through efficiency-focused rebates and incentives that the current administration decided are not worth continuing. Instead they're "unleashing American energy" and deregulating any emissions-producing industry they can.

Good thing the US cut incentives for homeowners to improve efficiency in their homes.

And why not both? You can criticize the Trump admin's energy policy, and advocate for thermal isolation of homes at the same time.

I feel bad for the alligators.

We have cheaper energy than coal even without renewables. Subsidizing end of life coal plants that were reasonably going to be shut down isn't cheap and honestly it doesn't seem very dependable, build some natural gas plants or something.

Which is why it subsidized coal so it’s competitive with every other source of energy?

Cheap? Depends on how you look at it. What about treating all those respiratory illnesses caused by burning coal? Is that accounted for in the price of the electricity as well?

And we represent 0.1% of the population at best. Not really sustainable.

We are destroying the planet and we will come to regret this on our death beds. If anyone doubts that, go for a walk in nature and appreciate how incredible our ecosystems are, and how lucky we are to have that biodiversity, not AI agents.

Edit: I see you edited your comment from 'I have gotten gotten tremendous value from AI agents' to 'The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents'. But the general point still applies.

I think you mean "NVIDIA and data centers have gotten enormous value".

>The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents

Any quote on that part...

10 years ago nobody would have doubted that it's sarcasm.

Now...