Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

It's just facile, IMHO, to "commit" to doing something 31 years from now.  It's just verbiage meant to sound good to the voters (some of them).

I see it as pandering.  You commit to something in 2050 about which you cannot be held to account, ever.  Now, if you state it as a goal and lay out a concrete plan with actions starting now, or soon, I might have a bit more respect for it.

"Hey, I'm your new coach, glad to be here, I commit to winning an NC by 2050, thanks."

Electricity from coal plus NG today is 60% of our production.  That isn't going to "go away" because of some politician's comments.  And the System still needs some kind of reliable baseline power from somewhere.  Wind is at around 7% and solar maybe 1% on the grid.  You can triple those figures and not replace coal, particularly if transportation starts going electric.  And that demand would be significant and at night, largely.

Great point that would place more of a burden on the grid.IMO the corporate creeps will take the easy money until it runs it course be it Coal,Nuke or NG.Then they'll employ the new sources which by that time they will have finagled the rights/patents to from the properly placed lobbyists

What is needed, and absent, are realistic practicable plans, with costs estimates.  I've never found any anywhere.  I think there is a reason for that.

Instead, we propose toothless high sounding and trite "commitment" and "goals" with zero enablement.

All these renewable portfolio standards have intermediate goals (eg. 50% by 2030, 80% by 2040) with requirements in place. Some states do merely have renewable energy "goals", which are not binding, but those were put in place awhile ago before wind and solar become cost-effective. It's also not just states making these mandates. Utilities are self-imposing them, as well, even in traditionally moderate and conservative areas (XCel in Minnesota and Colorado, NIPSCO in Northern Indiana, NVE in Nevada, etc.).

I still believe that coal will be gone sooner than most people think. It's already gone from California's grid, where there is also basically no natural gas plants in the works (LA originally planned to build 3 new ones but energy storage systems proved to be more cost-effective).

Also, the EIA's projections are notoriously conservative. Even the oil & gas companies realize the energy transition will happen faster. The EIA is good for historical and current data but not future projections.

The Climate Strike by students was also today. It's encouraging that there's a substantial number of people born after 2000 (I feel old just typing that) that are aware of these issues and motivated to do something about it.

The great thing abut Winter in the North is that it really slows down the passage of time for a few months. March-November just fly by, but Winter just sorta drags on and on after a while. If I lived in a warm climate year round I feel like the years, decades, etc would go by way too fast. 

The GND is impossible.



1, we don't have enough money to make it feasible.


2, there is not enough manpower in the construction fields to make it happen (that number keeps dropping, as more people want art history degrees).



Can we make strides? Absolutely. I know this, because already have.

Option #2 is a significantly bigger hurdle than #1. That and having enough steel/concrete/resources is the stuff that actually matters for ambitious gov't programs. And labor can be corrected by reincentivizing trade school paths and "up-incentivizing" engineering.

Why is #1 less concerning? Mostly because the national debt isn't like civilian debt. When the US runs a deficit of $5, that means its citizens/corporations and infrastructure received a surplus of $5. They always balance. And though the Treasury has to be attentive to the balance, deficits and debt are not automatically "bad" unless it results in consequences like default or inflation.

First, let's get ahead of the first: Default ain't happening. Full stop. Politicians may claim there's a risk of "national bankrupcy" but that's true nonsense - just fear mongering to win. Second up: inflation can happen. It's the thing to watch like a hawk. But inflation pains are not likely in this environment. Just look at inflation changes since 2000. That's the last year we had a national budget surplus and it's the year when national debt was its lowest across many of our lives.

We've soared by trillions in debt since, and inflation hasn't been a bogeyman of ours. At least not yet. Because we appropriately adjust our interest rates and the Treasury has a very strong bond market to account for every deficit. And that's ignoring how our national assets (nearing $120 trillion) have climbed faster than our debts during these same years.

All of which are good arguments for taking on MORE debt than we have during good economic stretches. Because taking less debt is missing opportunities to strengthen our infrastructure and private sectors without real consequences. It's also a good argument that the average person misunderstands/overemphasizes national debts and deficits. Inflation signals are the ones to pay attention to  - not bankrupcy or "how will we ever pay China?" fear mongering.

Anyway, this isn't to say that the full GND as popularized so far can be paid for by taking on more debt. But we could definitely afford an intermediate version. We just need to find one (trivial), agree on it (impossible for now), and remember that US history already has a famous example of taking on New Deal debt to solve massive problems.