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Separate thought related to this-- I've personally made the following investments to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide I'm directly emitting -- and these are
by sxates 7y ago
Separate thought related to this--
I've personally made the following investments to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide I'm directly emitting -- and these are the sorts of things we'll need millions of people to do in the coming years:
* 6kw of solar panels (no A/C): $22,000
* Powerwall batteries to power house when not sunny: $18,000
* Whole house insulation as part of remodel: $15,000
* Conversion of all kitchen appliances from gas to electric: $5000
* Replace gas water heater with electric heat pump: $3-4000
* Electric car: $30k+ (mine was $50+)
The remaining gas-powered appliance in the house in our furnace, which I'll get to replacing in the next few years (est $15k) - at which point we'll probably also have a second electric car, and need to increase our solar production as well to keep up.
How many people can afford the above list for their homes? In 10 years if the above items cost half what they do now, how many can afford it then? How many landlords are going to make these investments for rental properties?
The transition we face is potentially economically stimulating (there's a lot of stuff to replace!), but also has really high up-front costs (and sunk costs) that will have to be managed. This goes both for national infrastructure all the way down to people's homes.
- wmf 7y agoPretty much nobody can afford to do that. At best you could stop selling new gas appliances and gas cars at some point and then wait 20 years for the old ones to naturally fall out of use. But a corollary is that you have to slowly ramp up carbon prices over 20 years.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI wonder how much carbon was emitted from all your investments.
- truckerbill 7y agoShort term thinking
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoAs someone who doesn’t own a car or fly anywhere because of climate change I don’t think you can accuse me of short term thinking.
- truckerbill 7y agoThat's really good to hear. It wasn't a personal attack, just calling out that one specific point you made. For reasons the sibling post pointed out.
- sxates 7y agoMore than 0, hopefully less than will be offset. But I think part of why you were accused of short term thinking here is that if we don't spend the carbon to build things like solar panels now, we'll never move off a carbon economy. We have to accept that manufacturing of anything isn't entirely green right now, but the solar panels we make now will enable the next solar panels to be built with less carbon, which will enable the next batch to be built with less carbon, etc. Carbon will power the innovations that get us off carbon - no way around that. But we still have to do it so we can get to that end state where entire supply chains are electrified with renewable energy.