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Comment by nocoiner | Hacker News Reader

I really cannot understand why an “all of the above” approach to energy production has basically no political salience. I guess because it has something for someone of any political stripe to dislike (fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables and storage - take your pick!) but in a few years when we’re all paying twice the electrical rates we’re paying today, we will probably wish we hadn’t been so doctrinaire.

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> cannot understand why an “all of the above” approach to energy production has basically no political salience

Anger is incredibly viral. In a country on social media, that means cutting opposition spreads faster than support. (Most elements of support, for this reason, scaffold themselves along opposition to something else. Even if that something is a manufactured totem.)

All of the above has a slight advantage, policywise. But it has, by sharing all its components’ weaknesses, a larger cross section than any one alone. Thus you’ll see all-the-above picked apart by the anti-renewable lobby at the same time as the anti-nuke and anti-gas greenies.

(Comprehensive energy policy articles on HN typically have a top-voted commentating the stupidity of a random component.)

Everyone wants to be "right", and prove others "wrong". It feels like building things have gotten very expensive, and margins are not that high, so it would only pay for itself in decades. Everyone is scared for committing to those numbers, and just keep running in circles until some magical thing is invented. Crazy stuff.

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