from Hacker News

Time to retire the term 'renewable energy' from discussion and policy directives

by 7402 on 2/6/24, 5:34 PM with 1 comments

• by JoeAltmaier on 2/6/24, 11:22 PM

  This sounds like sophistry. Not all renewables have fully renewable components! Ok, fine. But wind power isn't digging up and burning megatons of carbon and releasing it indiscriminately into the atmosphere, is it?

  The OP sounds like an attempt to blur the issues by handwaving. Since 'renewables' are not truly consequence-free we should stop talking about them! Especially since we have coal enough for a hundred years! Isn't that renewable too?!

  This rhetorical device, since things are not completely unambiguous, we should stop distinguishing them entirely! We can pretend they are the same! Wind is the same as coal! Solar hurts ... something(?) so it's not really renewable!