Congratulations Ben!!

Oh, that's bad.
Unimaginably bad.

To reframe, it doesn't make sense to support H2 infra as much as EV infrastructure. There's proportionality. And that Bavaria number looked pretty big.

Recognizing that I am in the tiny minority, I remain confident that on a systems level, it remains very unwise to abandon niches. /end

... and optionality is how complex systems survive inevitable setbacks.
To quote French biologist Olivier Hamant, the big lesson of 3 billion years of evolutionary competition is that optimizing fragilizes. And what's fragile doesn't survive. /7

www.archambault.ca/livres/antid...

As a co-op I worked for startup with the daft idea of burning money on "drug carriers" instead of researching new drugs.
Many bankruptcies and much "govt waste" later, [their] LNPs enabled mRNA vaccines.
Nurturing niches keeps your options open. /6

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3...

Complex systems live [or die] on diversity [or lack thereof].
Princeton Univ Press blurb on Scott Page's book below.

You don't spend equal amounts on niches (ASL, Cree, LDV FCEVs) vs the dominant vector, but you keep options open. As with DAC. /5

press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Efficiency is relevant for simple machines. And like beef (100 calories of feed --> 2 edible calories) H2 vehicles seem unnecessarily complex.

But complex systems, like our energy systems, are different from simple machines. /4b

I bet that overwhelming majority is *vituperatively* split on support for CCUS generally and DAC in particular, which your EvC co-host has impressively championed into existence ("hyperstition", I think it's called.)

I'm sure DAC has *some* value, and deserves *some* scale of support. /4

Like me, you probably support funding for both. Some folks will insist it's not reasonable to expect govt subsidies for them moving forward. They'll say "the world has moved on", etc.
I'm in the very small minority supporting Bavaria, and you're in the overwhelming majority. But... /3

a) we now have instant, accurate subtitles. Unreasonable for govts to spend on sign language interpreters at announcements? 0.1% of CAD/US knows ASL.

b) our most spoken Indigenous language (Cree) is spoken by 0.2% of Canada's population. /2

I understand your logic. And no one changes minds in one interaction, so I'm not defending the amount, for now. (Though modular gas storage is interesting.)
If you'll indulge me despite your probable initial mistrust, can I probe that line-of-thinking? /1

You're a winter cyclist in Alberta.
You've been on the receiving end of the "why bother accommodating this irrational sliver of weirdos" conversation.
Everyone is part of that tiny sliver, in some dimension of life.
We let those Filet-o-Fish eaters be, so they'll support us in our eccentricities.

John Ralston Saul covers this in his magisterial book on the Indigenous Recovery -- "The Comeback."
It's the Monolith and the Circle.
Do we seek policies to make everyone the same -- or to make everyone included? The shames we bear as Canadians come from the former; every pride from the latter.

McDonald’s has a Filet-o-Fish and are working on veggie burger for North America. Why?
Not everyone wants chicken/beef [the BEV/PHEV proteins on their menu].
History is unkind to those who think everyone in society should conform to *their* preferences. All my homophobic relatives…

FCEVs will have a market share akin to, say, advanced geothermal, which will only ever be a tiny niche vs solar/wind [BEV/PHEV in this analogy].
Do we get where we want faster with some support for adv geo, which will always be more expensive than solar/wind? Yep.

Lower hoods should be available in some Japanese carmakers’ [non-BEV] lineups soon.

www.cnbc.com/2024/05/28/t...

That was a Catholic jibe during the Reformation! “What, is every man going to be his own Pope??” 😂

Which isn’t to say he’d have success getting his policies through Congress… 😅
But I bet some businesses would take the cowpox of (higher taxes and rule-of-law) over the smallpox of (lower taxes and fickle ruler tribute).

Thanks Montana! 😊
I don’t know. Feels like 1992 maybe, where someone will surge out of the blue on a resonating platform.
Me, I wish Sanders was 10-20 years younger. 😁 He almost toppled H Clinton in ‘16, and his message would resonate even stronger in a neofeudal ‘28.