The Big Misconception About Clean Energy
I’ve been thinking about energy use all wrong. Subscribe to support Huge If True, an optimistic tech show. As long as most of our …
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January 29, 2026
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I’ve been thinking about energy use all wrong. Subscribe to support Huge If True, an optimistic tech show. As long as most of our …
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Important video. Even today.
If vertical farming is better but the lamps cost to much why not just use mirrors to redirect the sun to where the plants are??
We do have a heat island problem, and that won't go away with "clean" energy.
As long as a president can become elected by receiving money from conservative Texas oil barons, i doubt the USA is going to contribute to reducing the CO2 emissions… sorry to make this political… but it's a vested economic interests problem, not a technical one. Same with world hunger, also an 'economic problem'. Because if stuff gets so cheap that everybody can basically have it for free, who's going to make any money off of it, let alone do the work to achieve it for free… It's a completely humanly made up 'problem' though, money/economy that is… Sorry to be such a bummer, but it's important to understand the background of a problem before we can truly find the solution that actually works (or one that could work within the confines of the reality in which it would have to work).
Yes sunlight is free but the materials to convert sunlight into energy IS NOT FREE and NOT REALLY CLEAN!
The misconception about clean energy is it isn't clean… Is it an alternative to oil and gas? Absolutely. Is it clean? Because of the manufacturing and refining processes that goes into the materials that are used and then have to be disposed of once they reach the end of their life cycle, they are not clean.
We have had exacly the needed technology to replace fossile power plants since way before you were born. Nuclear. There is enougth uranium to produce 100% of the worlds energy with nuclear, even without recycling. And the technology should be getting cheaper and more safe each year. It has gotten more safe, but not cheaper. And thats because we have discarded it.
The big problem with indoor farms isn't energy, it's labor, which is too expensive. But between A.I. and fusion, indoor farms can become our standard way of producing much more food. 🙂
My concern is that we have been vastly over simplifying the dangers of all of our current energy sources. Carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant out there. It's also not the only greenhouse gas. While we desperately need to get off of fossil fuels asap, we also need more legitimately clean viable energy sources.
I think this is such an important point to remember even when it’s hard, to believe or hope for a better future and fight for it
I thought I already said it, but I can't find it, so I'll say it again: Cleo, you should go to Devens Massachusetts and talk to Bob Mumgaard and Josh Hartwig about fusion. Wind and solar aren't enough. Nuclear will work, but people are afraid of it, which makes it expensive and slow. Fusion will be clean, abundant, safe, and cheap. All of your abundant clean-energy dreams can easily come true. 🙂
Most of the energy used now is completely wasted anyway.
Disappointingly click bait title. In recent decades it has been ALL about switching to clean energy to reduce carbon levels. It has not been about using LESS energy per se.
Excellent video!!
For worldwide flourishing we need More energy, Cheaper Energy, and Reliable (not intermittent) Energy. The only clean energy today that competes with fossil fuel in those metrics in Nuclear.
So, the answer is (at least today)…. Nuclear. No other clean technology scales reliably and affordably enough at this point.
What this video is missing is what everyone of us needs to do to convince our govt representatives to invest in clean energy. Fossil fuels will always be needed for some product or another. You cannot make plastic, or other items out of solar energy.
I just hope that climate change doesn't cause too much irreversible damage before fusion comes online and gives unlimited clean energy to everyone for the rest of human history. 🙁
Everything that can be done to reduce CO2 production should be done. 🙂
The biggest problem with vertical farms now isn't the cost of replacing the sun, but the cost of labor; AI can help with that, but it'll also require more energy. 🙂
Ok so I guess lng is bad because boohoo fossil fuel. Talking to environmentalists is absolutely pointless.
I think fusion is coming soon, and then we'll have unlimited clean energy anywhere and any time of day for cheaper than current clean energy sources. But until then current clean energy sources will limit the damage done by climate change and possibly prevent irreversible damage such as penguin extinction, so everything that can be done to reduce climate change should be done. 🙂
Leaving the high-energy dog at home felt like a waste of it’s energy (and a bit sad)
Should not still be highly problematic to see yourself, consume more and more of the natural world? Would not a positive vision of the future include having a deep love and respect for the ecosystem. Could it be that the worst possible problem that could happen environmentally speaking would be infinite clean energy? Why so you ask? Because then it would give us even more energy to over fish more energy to other harvest slumber, and etchetera..
The real solution is a solution of wisdom rather than a technical solution. Technical solution are part of the movement forward, but they need to come from a different way to conceive our place on the planet.
Hold on, what would we be doing if we had unlimited amount of energy? Produce more? Harvest more of nature? Harvest more material from the earth crust? Make more babies? It does seem to me that the question of living with an arm means will still catch back to us no? We need to find them mentally out there how we see ourselves with the rest of the ecosystem no?
Isn't global warming a theory? If it wasn't then more people would take it seriously, I think. I will need to educate myself more on this…
Commenting to support 🎉❤ I love your videos and how you make science accessible and available!
Totally agree, we need to use clean energy. But what is clean energy? Look at how much waste and inefficiency goes into windmills and solar panels just for intermittent power supply. The solutions are nuclear, hydro, & thermic.
The way to do it locally
It's pretty easy to talk about clean energy when it doesn't directly affect your day today in a really meaningful way. For us rural folks windmills and solar farms are a dangerous intrusion that can't compete economically in the real world and untill they can they are pipedreams.
this clean energy talk is to just have the elites have more control over us. Fossil fuels are already converted clean.
Nuclear duh
Lots of pictures of wind turbines and solar panels, both of which are horrifically dirty to build, maintain and decommission.
Not a word about nuclear.
If you want large scale clean energy, you are going nuclear.
As James Hansen says renewables need nuclear power & taxes on carbon to be reimbursed to the General Public.