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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   25275 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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Why are Americans becoming more anti-renewable?

The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say the country should prioritize oil, coal and natural gas over wind and solar power has doubled to 71% over the last six years. Majorities of Republicans see wind and solar power as less reliable than other energy sources, and decreasing shares of Republicans say wind and solar energy is better for the environment.

With rising energy costs and increased demand, Americans are still more likely to say that renewable energy should be prioritized over fossil fuels. But that share continues to drop: 57% say this today, down from 79% in 2020. About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners (83%) say the country should give priority to developing wind and solar production, but this share has also ticked downward in the last few years.

Wind and solar attract the most support, with about two-thirds (65%) calling for policies to expand production from these sources. And coal mining attracts the least support, with more saying the government should discourage (36%) this activity than encourage it (27%). Americans have more mixed views of other sources, with none attracting majority support, but also none facing large opposition.

Republicans have long been less supportive of wind and solar production than Democrats. In 2022, a slim majority (54%) of Republicans supported government policies to encourage production of these renewable sources. In four years, that has dropped 10 percentage points to 44%. This is consistent with past Center surveys, which found that the shares of Republicans who say they support more wind power and solar power both dropped by more than 20 points from 2020 to 2025. An overwhelming majority of Democrats (85%) continue to say the federal government should encourage the production of wind and solar power.

The opposite pattern emerges with fossil fuel sources: Republicans have been more supportive than Democrats of federal programs to encourage these sources, and the share in favor of such programs has grown. 62% of Republicans now say the federal government should encourage oil and gas drilling, up 11 percentage points since January 2022. 45% of Republicans say the federal government should encourage coal mining, up 13 points in four years. Much smaller shares of Republicans say the federal government should discourage oil and gas drilling (8%) or coal mining (14%). Just as in the Biden years, Democrats are far more likely to say the federal government should discourage rather than encourage oil and gas drilling and coal mining.

As with other attitudes around renewable energy, Republicans are less likely than they were five years ago to say solar and wind power are better for the environment. Republicans are 14 percentage points less likely now to say that solar power is better for the environment than most other energy sources. Similarly, there has been a 12-point drop in the share of Republicans who say that wind power is better for the environment than most other energy sources. About three-in-ten Republicans (29%) now say wind power is worse for the environment, up 12 points from five years ago. More Republicans say wind (44%) and solar (43%) cost consumers more than other energy sources than say these cost less than other sources (19% and 24%, respectively).

Americans view both solar and wind power as less reliable than other energy sources (though more Americans say wind is less reliable than say the same about solar). Republicans are especially negative about these sources’ reliability. This year, Republicans are far more likely to say solar and wind power are less reliable rather than more reliable compared with other energy sources, while Democrats are more mixed. Democrats are split on the reliability of wind power, and they’re more likely to think solar power is more reliable than less reliable.

Landman really is that popular, huh? Battery tech has only gotten better and cheaper, and the LCOE of renewables even with storage added is competitive with or better than fossil fuels, yet public opinion is backsliding. Gas is still great because the US has so much of it, but the DoE is even trying to force coal plants to keep running at cost to consumers, even when states and operators want them retired. Coal miners can't be that large of a constituency, surely, so what's driving this obsession in particular?

I think the major reason is not anything more complicated than "libs like renewable energy and often get annoying about it, so I like the opposite of renewable energy".

It's not that much of an exaggeration to say that you could get some right-wingers to jump off a bridge if you told them that the libs were against jumping off bridges, and vice versa that you could get some left-wingers to jump off a bridge if you told them that Trump was against jumping off bridges.

Or, say, get urban IPA-drinking millennial libs to buy Bud Light, or the alt right to listen to Kanye West.

Not many people remember years ago when there was debate about how automotive EV’s will ever become mainstream and you’ll never get people to switch over to using them. Next thing you know Elon (or rather the marketing department) came around and made it look “cool” to own a Tesla. Now you see them almost everywhere in the big cities. My mechanic however recently told me there’s something of an undercurrent of desire among people looking to go retro and away from all the bells and whistles. A lot of people want older cars little more advanced than a decent radio and power locks and windows; and I’m with them on that. I shook my head in disbelief years ago at the thought of “firmware,” or having to install a software patch on my car. Just give me something affordable, reliable and industrial; and that can be maintained. That’s all I need.

I know very little about cars. What is it about highly computerized cars that makes automobile manufacturers want to manufacture them? I doubt there was ever much demand for computerized cars before the manufacturers began to make them, but I could be wrong of course. Do customers actually get some extra value out of their cars being computerized? Is it more that the manufacturers like being able to easily get data from their cars and change the cars' behavior without having to modify hardware?

I doubt there was ever much demand for computerized cars before the manufacturers began to make them, but I could be wrong of course.

I think you are wrong. Regardless of vibes, many customers have been and probably continue to be willing to pay more, sometimes a lot more, for smarter cars, for extra features, for added convenience and performance. People definitely do get extra value from the infotainment, from all the power options, from the different driving modes and driver profiles, from automatic functions and driver assist systems. Not everyone, but the customers who don't get value from any of those things are extremely niche, and probably so cheap they're not going to buy a new car anyways.

The main advantages to carmakers is that it's a lot easier to make and especially to scale across multiple products and that it's easier to make changes after production, etc, even if you don't add any new functions or telemetry vs, say, 90s cars.

For a car to drive smoothly requires a lot of things to happen just right at the right times, in the right way, like a complex ballet performance. You can get there with exquisitely engineered mechanical parts, electrical parts, electronics, discrete computers or centralized computers (and yeah in a physical way, computers are electronics which are electrical parts, but the degree of complexity and flexibility is different). Having mechanical parts do all of this complex ballet is possible, but difficult; tolerances have to be extremely precise, the materials quasi perfect... It's slightly easier to fudge some of the things with simple electrical parts. For instance, instead of smooth high quality gears and cranks just put an electric motor and limit switches to control a window (it's also easy to make a cheap, bad window crank tho). It's even easier to have electronics like purpose made chips do some of it instead; a servomotor doesn't need to have as much complexity built into it to avoid decapitating a child whose head was out of the window when it started closing. And a computer makes it all even easier, you can start producing the car first and worry about how much strength the motor for the windows are able to push after, and if a regulatory agency changes it (or if different jurisdictions have different limits) you can still use the same part and just change the programming.

The big change from the 90s and early 00s to now is that we're going from multiple discrete computers, which can be limited and hard to access, to less, but more powerful, central computers. That's easier for the dealership to access (according to the industry though, giving independant mechanics access will get women raped in parking garages*).

For consumers, there's some advantages. You can have "modes" that change the throttle response of the car, you can have simulated shifting on CVT transmissions, you can have more complex features for controls like locking window controls for the back row from the front row, more complex security and safety features, a mechnical or electrical car is trivial to hotwire. You can also have features like accident detection that can, on top of calling emergency services on your behalf in some of the more advanced cases, in simpler cases it could automatically unlock the door so it's easier to evacuate. The cases where the consumers are (rightly) complaining is when manufacturers, following Tesla's lead, are replacing physical controls that are easy to use without looking with modal touchscreens (which require more attention from the driver to use). Part of this from the manufacturer is because it's cheaper, part of it is because there's the impression that futuristic means clean means no buttons.

And then of course, they like getting their telemetry data.

*Sadly I can't find the actual ad anymore.

Computerized car engines give you more efficiency, more power, less pollution, and more reliability than mechanical ignition and injection systems did.

Computerized driver controls I'm much less sanguine about. Nothing I might want to fiddle with while watching the road should be controlled by a modal UI, much less by a touch screen, rather than by a knob or button whose function is determined by a shape and position I can actually discern by touch.

get data from their cars and change the cars' behavior without having to modify hardware?

Well, this is perhaps the source of the design problems, not just the design decision, isn't it? Some of the common examples of risk compensation are claims that car drivers take more risks when they know they have anti-lock brakes or seat belts partially protecting them from the consequences, but software producers, including car software producers, also have incentive to take more risks when they know they have automatic patch application partially protecting them from the consequences. Do you really need to fix all the bugs before launch now, or can you just fix the worst of them and then try to get to more of the rest before buyers get too pissed?

If my theory here is right, then computerized car engines could actually get worse as cabin computer connectivity gets more popular. If your buyer can't do an ECU firmware update without going into the shop, they're going to be pissed if they ever need an update, and you'd better make sure that engine computer is solid from day one, whether or not there's a bug in the radio UI. But if you have an internet connection that lets you slip an ECU firmware update in without the buyer even noticing? Getting software solid is expensive, and you could probably save a lot of time and money by just getting it mostly solid and then waiting for the diagnostic data and the bug reports...

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