One of the most universal ideals of manliness is self reliance or independence. I’ve been shocked how the “manosphere” has convinced its followers that the best way to be manly is to depend on large petroleum companies for one of your most important consumables…instead of generating your own electricity.
Preppers are out there setting up offgrid arrays with massive battery banks to “survive the coming fall of civilization”. I think there is a significant overlap between manosphere people and preppers, but I don’t know how the preppers reconcile this of self generation hypocrisy with the rest of the the manosphere.
But here’s the thing: MAGA and the manosphere may hate clean energy, but they won’t be able to stop the rise of renewables. All they can do, possibly, is stop the rise of renewables in the United States.
That’s the most important (and most stultifyingly stupid) point. They’re acting as if they can stop the rise of alternative energy, and they quite simply can’t. It IS the future, and the only real question is whether the US is going to be an active part of that future or not. And for all intents and purposes Trump and his cadre of angry, shallow dipshits have chosen “not.”
It probably can’t even be stopped in the US. At this point, the unsubsidized cost of renewables are too low to bother with anything else. You could even argue that this is a good time to start backing off on subsidies; they don’t need the help anymore.
Even blocking federal permits is only going to slow it down. Those are only necessary for federally managed lands. It affects states like Utah and Nevada a lot, but it’s hardly everywhere.
The really big issue is electric infrastructure. Killing that makes renewables fight one handed.
Imagine if these ding-a-lings had been able to stand in the way of progress on other fronts - something like, say, the Internet, or smart phones, or…so many other things.
Why they are able to do this on the energy front is so infuriating and stupid.
What enrages me nearly as much as the energy thing is that the effect of so many idiots being able to vote is that they are going to torpedo advances in medical breakthroughs, too. We most likely will have to rely on Europe and China to do anything of note on cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, combating age, etc…that’s how stupid all this is.
Science in general for that matter.
It’s almost as if Trump and his cronies and sycophants looked around and picked out all of the rhings that were going to be most vital and significant in coming years, then said, “Okay, these are the things we’re not going to do.”
