I think that anyone in the renewables field would be happy to end any and all subsidies for renewables at the point that they're equal to the value in today's dollars of all the subsidies that have gone into fossil fuels and nuclear. To be fair we'd include direct and indirect subsidies such as the cost of running NRC and the DOE labs, Coast Guard oil cleanup infrastructure, EPA, BOEM.....but I'm feeling generous so let's just go with direct subsidies including tax subsidies. Heck, maybe just end the billions in subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear that we're still giving out to this day! And ignore the cost in dollars and lives of things like the wars in Iraq, Yemen, and South Sudan, as well as maintaining the defense budget to allow for that. Maybe throw in a bit of the $800B a year in health costs that would be saved if we stopped burning fossil fuels, nothing like unpaid externalities to make it easier to compete as a fossil fuel plant. Heck, maybe we can all just agree that it's complete and utter bullshit that to this day fossil fuel extraction gets the tax benefits of the MLP structure but renewables are specifically excluded? Of course you know better than me that there is no "free market" in energy. It's one of the most highly regulated fields in the U.S., and small changes every aspect can have dramatic impacts on the economics of renewables versus fossil fuels. Just the small tweaks in the PJM capacity market that are going on right now will have dramatic impacts, as an example that comes to mind. I am all for free markets, and the fact of the matter is if we truly had frictionless free markets with externalities priced in then we'd be predominantly operating on renewables. Unfortunately "Free markets" are a fiction in the energy business. There are markets that have spent trillions to drive down the cost curve of fossil fuels, provide fossil fuels continuing tax advantages and subsidies, externalities not priced into fossil fuels, and market design that was built around a fossil fuel reality from the past. Get rid of all that, and anyone is for "free markets"!
Let's start with something we probably both agree on, that atmospheric CO2 levels are close to double what they were at the beginning of the industrial revolution and higher than they've been in 400,000 years. Agreed? From there, it's a simple equation...CO2 + H2O -> (H+) + (HCO3-) Double the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere and it's a basic chemistry equation that you decrease pH. I'm not sure if you were attempting to argue that we haven't observed lower ocean pH levels with the discussion about the difficulty in measuring pH, but that's really a red herring (see a discussion on the subject here https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Quality+of+pH+Measurements+in+the+NODC+Data+Archives) that sadly attempts to subvert the scientific process in the same way I described earlier with the "see, they made a mistake or have a difficult data set, everything they've ever done should be disregarded". Again we're performing a massive experiment and one of the impacts, that of dissolved CO2, is something so easily replicable in a lab that it's being intellectually dishonest to claim that it's unlikely it occurred or is occuring. Are there factors like ocean currents and strata distributions that could impact this, absolutely. However for those to negate a basic chemistry process is to have an almost childlike belief in stable systems as some kind of universal law....the headwind is definitely against this being the case. As for Hansen's Hypothesis, it's funny that in the 80's when he first proposed it up until about 7-8 years ago when the facts made it unavoidable those of you who dismissed him claimed that warming was not occuring...full stop. All kinds of claims about how is wasn't possible to make measurements that accurately (sound familiar) and the like. At the point that sea ice and glacier melt became impossible for all but the most willfully ignorant to ignore, we switched to "well, sunspots" and "the models are probably not right". The models probably aren't right, we all agree. However you can't deny that we're performing a massive experiment on a global scale, and the climate change deniers have pretty much zilch in the way of evidence that provides confidence that it won't have a negative impact. Your post is a great example, it consisted mostly of why the current consensus on climate change is wrong, and no evidence or studies beyond the hopefully belief in negative feedback loops that doubling CO2 levels will have no impact. If you want to be taken seriously, you can't spend your time proving the current consensus wrong, you need to spend your time proving that this huge experiment we're doing will not cause harm. The science on that is abysmal. And one wonders, why would anyone be so against clean air and removing the detrimental impacts of oil on geopolitics at the cost of less than one Iraq war, even if you are convinced that carbon itself is harmless?
So Watson is pretty much an asshole. From his demeaning comments about Rosalind Franklin, to the comment about aborting fetus' with "the gay gene" to the belief that thin people work harder than fat people and he'd never hire a fat person to saying that our social policies in Africa are doomed because of our incorrect assumption that people there are equally intelligent as elsewhere to saying "while people might wish all humans were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Now if he had done research into any one of these things and his research was being attacked your statement would have merit. But he didn't, he's just a bigoted asshole and being part of a team that made a major scientific discovery doesn't turn asshole behavior into not asshole behavior or excuse bigotry. It's not over-politicized, over-sensitive or over-tenured to call an asshole and asshole. In fact I would argue it's all of those things to ignore that type of behavior and give someone a pass because they accomplished something great. Read up on the guy and you may regret the "mildly unpleasant but scientifically irrefutable" label, I'd sure like the see the "scientifically irrefutable" part of "while people might wish all humans were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”?
I don't disagree with your last sentence. However on the whole corporations are way ahead of government in the U.S. when it comes to clean energy, everyone from Walmart to Amazon to pretty much any tech firm is already procuring or on their way to procuring 100% renewable energy. This is one area where post citizens united combined with inertia gives results that are out of synch with nearly every interest in the country.
This will never happen unless their customers stop consuming plastic, which Walmart, Amazon et al sell in abundance.
You may be surprised. One of my b-school classmates moved to Bentonville and spent several years basically focusing entirely on reducing the plastic content of their packing. He had good things to say about the experience.
It was my understanding Watson was blacklisted for tying genetics to intelligence,which is scientifically irrefutable. Reading a little more about him reveals he may have also been generally unlikeable, a legend but not going into the hall of fame akin to barry bonds.
How do you see the balancing of environmental concerns with native corporate interest in competing with firms in countries with less stringent environmental regulations corresponding to lower costs of production?
NextEra, the largest wind power Company in the US, is also the most heavily subsidized Company in the Fortune 500. I recall reading an article in the Journal last year that they became the global king of wind power on the backs of outright grants in the form of local, state, and federal subsidies - many billions of dollars. And very low or even interest free loans to service their massive building program and their operating expenses. And then they sell their wind generation to ISO's even during periods when the ISO can't use or distribute the power. [so it gets 'wasted' as excessive spin] What a racket. So yes, I am all for letting markets pick winners.