Why are we still using coal?

[Lemonvariable72]

'Nuff said.

One issue is that it takes a stupendous amount of oil to make solar panels.

[Ryantology]

'Nuff said.

One issue is that it takes a stupendous amount of oil to make solar panels.

The more we make, the less need we have for petroleum-fired power plants.

Also, once the technology matures and decreases in price (which it has done and will only continue to do), then we'll have cars like this (but much better) and we won't need to waste as much petroleum on transportation.

The Hunger Games are set way into the future, and they still mine coal then. So we'll obviously be needing coal for a long time.

Don't trust sci-fi writers to use all of their imaginations. The original Star Trek was set three hundred years in the future, but the computers they used on board the Enterprise look prehistoric compared to what we have today, much less what we'll actually have the 23rd century, because they were essentially just 1960s-era computers in design and function. Or, how about those flip-open handheld communicators that look adorably quaint compared to cell phones from 15 years ago.



Solar is the future, and it's not that far away. If we use coal at all, it would be as either a backup or used in places where solar is not feasible all the time.

[Drich]

Solar is the future, and it's not that far away. If we use coal at all, it would be as either a backup or used in places where solar is not feasible all the time.

You also have to remember in the trek universe society reset it self after the Third World War. It wasnt till the vulcans came did we emerge from post modern dark age.

Just saying.

[Minimalist]

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/electi...a-war-coal

Secretive nonprofits affiliated with oil and coal companies, including Koch Industries, are hitting President Barack Obama hard for what they call his “war on coal.”

Yesterday, for example, the nonprofit American Energy Alliance reported that its new ad “Stand with Coal,” cost more than a half-million dollars and is running for two weeks in the coal-producing states of Ohio and Virginia.

Those two libertarian scumbags are never far away.

[Ryantology]

You also have to remember in the trek universe society reset it self after the Third World War. It wasnt till the vulcans came did we emerge from post modern dark age.

Just saying.

Yes, I know. But, there is a span of 200 years between that event and the events of the original series. It's reasonable to expect that 200 years is way more than enough time for humanity to surpass what we did in the span of 20, especially when they've got FTL travel and the resources of thousands of worlds and civilizations to draw upon.

It's pure zeerust. Sci-fi writers have a tendency to think that the distant future is pretty much going to be the modern world with starships and aliens. One of the worst examples of that in Star Trek (and not just the original series) was how literature and music and culture seemed to stop happening in the 20th century. Everybody read Shakespeare and listened to jazz and watched plays which even we think of as classics. There's nothing about the culture which seems to overtly glorify the distant past over what would, for them, be modern culture. It's more like there simply is no modern culture. Probably because the writers were too lazy to explore the future beyond certain advances in technology relevant to space travel.