This add on the bus suggests that with sufficient energy conservation the city of Seoul can reduce electric usage sufficiently to justify reducing the number of nuclear power plants by one.
Reducing nuclear power through conservation
This add on the bus suggests that with sufficient energy conservation the city of Seoul can reduce electric usage sufficiently to justify reducing the number of nuclear power plants by one.
One of the ways to do this is to use heavy pricing. While unpopular, the worst thing for conservation is to have cheap, reliable energy sources. It’s a hard game to play: If you built it, they will consume it. Raise the price, and you save the environment by making people pay heavy costs, which always trickle down to hit the poorest the hardest – whether in direct fees or lost job or lost opportunities or disproportionate economic impact. So this is a direct conftrontation of “the social good” and a social-minded approach and an ecological approach. They’re in absolute conflict. And here is where the real test of the elite liberal’s values lie: Side with the poor, down-and out who need X or the penguins, etc.? it’s not that simple, of course; true conservation (especially if the economic impact is heavily mitigated) helps everyone, especially if you get one less nuclear plant, but at the same time, in a proximal sense, some will lose out. But efficiency helps all.
The best mechanism is techological improvement. This is the most easily integrated and most equitable mitigating factor.