Lots of temporarily embarassed millionaires + red scare propaganda still carved into people’s minds
There’s places with district heating from back in the days that people still invested in new infrastructure. We could do the same with cooling but I’m afraid the neoliberal rot has penetrated too far at this point.
Its like they only know the R in ROI. This short term thinking is the main driver of enshittification I think.
Why? Won’t they just get to sell more fossil fuels to meet the electricity demand while politicians endlessly drag their feet on cheaper, renewable alternatives?
EDIT: Oh you mean treating the root cause, yeah true
It’s crazy to me because surely you would be extracting more wealth from working people (and raising the blessed holy statistic known as GDP) with a grid that actually works and can take on new customers. I know they’re evil but I guess they’re also just stupid.
It’s definitely not ok, but when treating the root cause will take decades if not centuries (which we absolutely should still do), perhaps it makes sense to look into treating the symptoms as well
At least in my country (Netherlands) the neoliberals have decided every single fucking thing needs to turn a consistent profit and the company who handles the grid is only allowed to upgrade when there is “utility and necessity” which in essence means any time they want to upgrade in anticipation of future demand everyone involved drags their feet.
The result of that policy is that now there is a ridiculous waiting list for commercial grid connections and there are plans to also restrict new high capacity residential connections. For a country that has been run by businessmen for the past 20 years we sure seem to have an awful lack of long-term vision.
Don’t even get me started on the attitude that people here have towards A/C. We don’t live in a country that’s only hot for 1 week a year anymore but lots of ppl just won’t accept that. I guess it’s climate coping/denial combined with wanting to feel superior to Americans.
We will be cooked (literally)
EDIT: I just remembered that yesterday they unexpectedly had to cut power to 10000 homes for 14 minutes and it wasn’t even a hot day.
America will do anything except lay some fucking cable to provide internet to the ruroids.