Like I get that the US capitalist system sucks at providing reliable energy to it's citizens, but that isn't because of a lack of supply. The US has plenty of energy in fossil fuels, more then enough to export to Europe.
For once? Trump's entire political career is based on belittling and exposing the previous system as a sham. He has always been bombastic, crude and--clever in subtle ways. He appeals to a very specific slice of america. No not just white. No not just rich. No not just male. But a surprisingly diverse group that hates the status quo. Hates the decorum of the old ways.
The mentality is embodied in any social media post like this one. The performative pearl clutching, faux-outrage with how vulgar trump is. The refusal to examine why Trump appeals to millions of people, and the ever present moral judgement about America as a whole.
Trump is a result of America's politics. A mirror of society. He is or at least was, a master showman and clown but not as a pejorative. After all that is how he got elected.
If you are thinking in terms of "my" or "I" you have already lost. You need community, you need city-services that can operate outside of a federal system, you need the ability to work with others to survive collectively.
Helathcare CEO's have no problem with murder as long as they can claim their actions are just saving money. Murdering healthcare CEO's literally saves lives.
It’s in every hydro dam that’s already built in between Arizona and New York. If we even do need more, there is plenty of land to use.
This is the key factor I'm talking about. There is not "plenty of land" for hydro storage, and flooding the amount of land required to provide grid level storage is an ecological disaster. Plus your analysis of mega-project like nuclear plants going over budget and over-time absolutely applies to any grid-level storage project you would need to go 100% solar/wind.
But just for fun, how much space would the grid level storage projects take up? I'll let you use Hydro because it's the best case scenario that exists today as far as energy density.
But beyond that what is your point, that humans shouldn't build big projects, and any attempt to do so is "boneheaded?" Capitalism can't build big projects I agree, but the problem isn't the projects themselves it's the profit-motive.
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space. Anything else, batteries, pneumatic mines etc etc are going to be worse in terms of space by orders of magnitude, not to mention the actual costs. Hand waving the need for grid-level storage by saying we would us hydro shows you don't understand the scale of the problem.
That excerpt from that engineer is great, but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can't because it does not exist. New Nuclear plants are being built, finally, but there is a reason that no grid-level storage exists. It's literally not possible today. There exists a pilot battery plant in Australia, and there exists a few megawatts of storage in Scotland, but these are few and far between and none of them are suitable for massive deployment.
Show it. Tell me where the grid-level storage exists for a city like Tokyo, or NYC, or Chicago, or Mexico City, or Paris, or London. Hell pick your own city, show me where it exists right now today.
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Like I get that the US capitalist system sucks at providing reliable energy to it's citizens, but that isn't because of a lack of supply. The US has plenty of energy in fossil fuels, more then enough to export to Europe.