this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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The rich oppose clean energy because it is renewable. If clean energy became non renewable, or fossil fuels became renewable, they would no longer oppose a transition to clean energy (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by shadysus@lemmy.ca to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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For years I've considered investors and executives in the fossil fuel industry to be lazy and stupid. They could make more money in the long term with clean energy, and yet they entrench themselves in their ways and opt to poison our discourse and slow down human progress.

I apologize if this thought experiment is messy. I got out of the shower with these thoughts and started writing. To separate clean energy from renewable energy, I will define the following:

  • Renewable items can be "farmed" on demand, using natural processes that exist on the planet
  • Non renewable items are created slowly, at a fixed rate, and cannot be created on demand. This includes fossil fuels and precious metals.

Those entrenched in fossil fuels oppose the alternatives that take away their power. Since fossil fuels are extractive and non renewable items, there exists a fixed amount of it on the planet. There is value and power from controlling this scarce resource.

Renewable energy can be created on demand by anyone with the means to do so. Solar and wind energy cannot be monopolized as both can be harvested planet wide by anyone with the resources to set up a "farm".

In an alternate universe, if it was possible to harvest and store energy in the form of oil and gas, it would not be as attractive. Likewise, if it was possible to limit access to wind or sunlight, the rich and powerful would have an incentive to do that.

If people can recognize this difference, they will be more likely to ignore fossil fuel talking points and not act against their own self interest

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[–] this@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Well yes I agree running power cables between continents is generally unviable(I was thinking more along a neighboring country/state scale). For your example, it would make the most sense to just build seperate infrastructure and have both countries be energy independent imo.

Allow me to address the battery concerns though. There are batteries that do not require rare earth minerals, and even if you do use ones that require them, once they've been used past their lifespan(which is still 1000s of times more uses than gas, which is single use), those rare earth minerals don't just vaporise and go away(like gas), they can be recycled into newer batteries, and for a fraction of the overall effort of mining new rare earth minerals.

In any case, my original point is that you can in fact "bottle" and transport renewable energy, even across continents, even if it makes no sense to do so.

And honestly, If every country had enough oil reserves, it probably wouldn't make much sense for oil either

[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 0 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Well the cant was more in the terms of "you cant have a viable business" than "its physically impossible". I mean in a theory it would be possible to create moonbase and power it up with AA-batteries, but its just not something that can be done.

Also with batteries you did not say anything about what would happen to the empty ones. There would be logistical hurdle to overcome with those. Even the cheapest industrial sized battery would still be leagues more expensive than the sheetmetal used to transport oil.

Again, not talking trying to defend fossilfuels. Just making points why big companies are fighting against the change.

[–] this@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

All fair points, though I would argue that the main reason we transport oil isn't because it's cheap, it's because we kind of have to. You can generate electricity pretty much anywhere, oil has to come from specific holes in the ground.

Gas stations, tanker trucks, oil pipelines, ect were all originally built because we needed those things in order to make the things that use them go, including most of the things that bring the finished oil products to us.

And yes, it would be costly and impractical to move uncharged batteries back to where they are charged.

If anything, I think this comversation highlights the absurdity of modern oil infrastructure when compared to electric.

With electricity you can build machines that sustainably harvest it, keep the power generation away from the things it's used for, and transmit it efficiency at a low cost(albeit not overseas). While on the other hand, oil must be mined in a specific location, transported, refined, transported again, and burned at the appliance, never to be used again. I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I really think the only thing holding renewable electric power back is politics, like oil subsidies and the like.

[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

Gas stations, tanker trucks, oil pipelines, ect

These are big reason for the push back also. Companies have spend hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars building the infrastructure for fossil fuels and they will fight for keeping those investments alive.

Another thing slowing down clean energy is that wind and solarpower arent yet as reliable as coal power. Cities and nations can calculate how much coal or fossil fuel they need to keep lights on and stockpile fossile fuels for future use easily and they work even if there is no wind or sky is cloudy.

Hydroelectric is renewable and quite reliable, but its not neccessarilly good for enviroment either. Geothermal would be great, but its really expensive and its not possible to harvest everywhere in the world.

My personal opinion is that nuclear power with auxilary solar, wind and hydroelectrics would be best compination. Especially since battery technology is currently taking big leap with solid state batteries and it seems we might soon have electric vechicles with reasonable range. Even more so if the new batteries are as safe as manufactorers claim and in case of accident there is less of an risk of the unholy hellfire batteryfires are currently.