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The argument (I say this as a midwesterner who has lots of relatives and such who are regurgitating the prepublication lines) always comes back to “the tech isn’t there yet” “you can’t recycle panels or turbine blades” “panels and turbine blades don’t last worth a damn”.
Whether or not any of that is true idk so how can I argue? My plate is pretty full on reading material.
So find the arguments they’re using and go from there.
“the tech isn’t there yet”
tell them to get a solar quote for their home and compare it to their power bill. Very likely the monthly solar payments will be lower even with financing.
“you can’t recycle panels or turbine blades”
firstly, that's not true, we are constantly improving our ability to recycle. Anyway, you sure as hell can't recycle coal or natural gas so that's a double standard.
“panels and turbine blades don’t last worth a damn”
they last a hell of a lot longer than fossil fuels do.
Oil rigs don't last forever either. Oil refineries are insanely complicated and are very costly to maintain.
Everything you own will break down without maintenance. Even with maintenance, it'll have to be replaced eventually.
Don't try to argue that wind turbines and solar panels are magical things that will solve all problems. Talk about them as they are... machines. But unlike the machines that run on oil, the cost isn't dependent on resources controlled by unstable countries. They're producing energy from local resources. No need for the government to invade a country to keep the price of oil down.
Isolationism tends to be a something people want but with oil you have to be involved with the politics in the Middle East. Sure the US might not be a net importer of oil, but if the oil companies can sell a barrel of oil to another country for a higher price they will. That's just how capitalism works. Unless you want a socialist oil industry? If not, oil prices will be determined by the global market rate, which means if you want cheap gas you need to care about the politics of the Middle East.
So it's a choice between the complexity of oil rigs, oil tankers, oil refineries, or the complexity of wind spinning around a turbine or a solar panel collecting photons. It's all complicated machinery in the end, but some of that machinery means you gotta be pals with Mister Bonesaw and using the other complicated machinery (Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, etc) means we can all tell that lunatic to go pound the sand above the oil underneath it that we don't care about anymore.
Cowboy Bebop or Firefly reference?
You mean my username?
Space Cowboy is more of a trope to me. A trope that I like. So it's kind of a little of both Cowboy Bebop and Firefly... but mostly the space cowboy I liked when I was a kid... Han Solo.