Hydroelectricity

Destroys aquaculture. TVA has absolutely killed those rivers, and there is no way to sugar coat that.

Geothermal can't be used in most places (but should absolutely be used where it can be)

Biomass is just burning shit all over again (thought that was the point of not burning coal).

I'm also skeptical of the pivot from using renewables as a decentralized solution and then touting a massive grid which requires lots of infrastructure. Unless your problem with centralization is targetability by bombing.

I've not heard much about compressed air as an energy storage medium, or thermal storage besides from using solar arrays to reflect light and melt a metal core (like Gemasolar which is another centralized solution), but I've heard nothing good about hydrogen except from breathless techbro types.

Meanwhile Nuclear is a mature technology now, absolutely a less dangerous solution than coal (even without looking a climate change knock-on effects, just looking at the effects coal dust has on populations near coal-fired plants), and can be used to meet the base-load of a local grid with various renewable solutions used to meet peak load demands.

How do we deal with balancing the uneven load renewables produce in places where pumped hydro isn't an option for power storage? I.e. lowland areas. Here in the southeastern US, night almost always means no wind as well as the obvious no sun. Chemical batteries, afaik, aren't a sustainable solution ATM.

Degrowth could definitely only be accomplished under a socialist model where we aren't price gouged for food and housing. A life with less work and less disposable crap sounds really fucking good though.

I'm disengaging.

Curious, as the person who you were originally responding to deleted their comment. Is that per year or a one time expenditure?

Also, 36k is still literally 44-80% higher than your initial claim.

Data instead of anecdotes?

1975 =/= 1980. Looks like housing went up 64% in those 5 years from the data I already linked.

That's an exaggeration. The median price for new construction in 1980 was $64,600. [1] As for existing housing stock, the median home value in 1980 was $47,200. [2] As housing prices are heavily right skewed, the prices of cheap housing is far closer to the median than the price of expensive housing. Based on a cursory overview of some charts, it seems like the bottom 20% of houses are no more that 30% cheaper than the median, putting them in the $30k range.

Most Americans have less than $1000 in savings. Unless you live day trip distance from something most people won't ever see it.

Agreed.

Wait, they took their ball and went home and you're defending that as a show of legitimacy?

I'm from hexbear, people are critical of it all the time on hexbear. You just can't criticize China and not know the people there are far better off than those in the US