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> IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it. Agreed. > The money spent on the Iraq war [& Afghanistan, etc.] would be enough to buy enough batte

by zamfi 7y ago

> IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it. Agreed. > The money spent on the Iraq war [& Afghanistan, etc.] would be enough to buy enough batteries to store ALL US ELECTRICITY for full two days. Or, a base-version Tesla Model 3 for every driving-age resident of the US. Given that they're manufactured in the US, you'd be reducing emissions and hiring however many tens? (hundreds?) of thousands of people in the manufacturing sector. We don't even need to be that creative to feed two birds with one scone.

rafa1981 7y ago
Fighting environmentalv issues with extra consumption may not be a good idea. Manufacturing a vehicle pollutes a lot. Up to 50% of the enviromental costs of a vehicle seem to happen at manufacturing time. https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-cost-manufacturing-vehicles https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-...
- zamfi 7y ago
  > Fighting environmental issues I’m not talking about fighting “environmental issues” — I’m explicitly talking about a) global climate change, which has little to do with ~75% of the environmental impacts of an electric vehicle, and b) not spending $trillions fighting wars due to Western society’s unslakable thirst for oil. [1] Let’s not goalpost this — mining & refining metals (etc.) is dirty business, and we should clean it up, but to be clear: it has a very limited impact on climate change. > extra consumption Extra consumption? I proposed taking the trillions of dollars spent on military equipment, plus fuel for planes, aircraft carriers, and other ships, tanks, etc., not to mention the deaths of thousands of people — war is “consumption” to an absurd degree — and replacing all that with domestic EVs. Don’t tell me that’s “extra consumption”. If anything it’s a dramatic reduction in consumption. [1] Whether you believe the war in Iraq was fought for oil or not, oil is a causative factor: without the presence of oil in the Middle East, and the riches its trade brings to the states in the area, it’s unlikely we’d be fighting there.

by zamfi 7y ago

rafa1981 7y ago

Fighting environmentalv issues with extra consumption may not be a good idea. Manufacturing a vehicle pollutes a lot. Up to 50% of the enviromental costs of a vehicle seem to happen at manufacturing time. https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-cost-manufacturing-vehicles https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-...

zamfi 7y ago
> Fighting environmental issues I’m not talking about fighting “environmental issues” — I’m explicitly talking about a) global climate change, which has little to do with ~75% of the environmental impacts of an electric vehicle, and b) not spending $trillions fighting wars due to Western society’s unslakable thirst for oil. [1] Let’s not goalpost this — mining & refining metals (etc.) is dirty business, and we should clean it up, but to be clear: it has a very limited impact on climate change. > extra consumption Extra consumption? I proposed taking the trillions of dollars spent on military equipment, plus fuel for planes, aircraft carriers, and other ships, tanks, etc., not to mention the deaths of thousands of people — war is “consumption” to an absurd degree — and replacing all that with domestic EVs. Don’t tell me that’s “extra consumption”. If anything it’s a dramatic reduction in consumption. [1] Whether you believe the war in Iraq was fought for oil or not, oil is a causative factor: without the presence of oil in the Middle East, and the riches its trade brings to the states in the area, it’s unlikely we’d be fighting there.