FWIS3

It's now cheaper in most cases to expand renewable power than to keep running old coal plants:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ergy-study

It's funny that you posted this. I was just listening to a segment from NPR on the public radio station in Buffalo, a PBS affiliate, and they were talking about how greed initially favored ignoring renewable sources of energy but now the script has flipped. And apparently in this context greed is good. And difficult to fight against.

I feel the same about Trash vs Recycling. You can't get the majority of people to recycle aggressively if it's so much cheaper to throw stuff out. I aggressively recycle almost everything I can, taking up my time and realistically burning more fossil fuels hauling loads to various recycling centers. Also taking up research time trying to figure out where I can take things like old batteries or florescent bulbs. We have a tiny trash can that rarely has more than one small bag in it each week. Yet I pay the same monthly fee as the people on my street who fill a ginormous dumpster and have piles and bags of trash next to it each week.

If the trash company charged me by the pound of refuse, and the recycling centers paid me by the pound, we'd see alot more recycling.

@Thumper

Yes, this! "Personal responsibility" is a stupid doctrine for things that affect public wellbeing. Sin taxes work. Incentives and disincentives work. Pleading that people do the right thing at cost to themselves does not work, and policymakers refusing to accept that belies their claims about being cynical realists.

Thumper wrote:..... I aggressively recycle almost everything I can, taking up my time and realistically burning more fossil fuels hauling loads to various recycling centers.....

Yes, that is so annoying. Last weekend I went to three separate places to dispose of 1)sharps and batteries, 2)expired medicines (why can't those be taken to the same place as sharps) and 3)electronics. I'm grateful that all of those disposal options are free, but it's such a hassle!

There's an effort in Oregon right now to get the law changed so the state-contracted recycling company can't impose a 'cans/day' limit. Oregon has a 10 cent bottle/can deposit on most beverages and homeless people make a living by rummaging through garbage bins fishing out cans to take to the recycling center. Cans and bottles that some of our upstanding citizens are too lazy to take to the recycling center themselves, or to one of the several non-profit places that accept them, instead throwing them in the trash. While is may be unsavory to some (not me) to have homeless people doing that, removing the daily limit serves two purposes. One, it provides economically struggling people with at least a little income and two, it gets more of those cans and bottles into the recycling chain. The company that runs the recycling program on behalf of the state is shit IMO. The state should re-issue the contract to someone that will do the job properly.