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I read the whole article with sympathetic interest, until the conclusion: > One way to solve the problem of high power devices is simply not to use them -- thi

I read the whole article with sympathetic interest, until the conclusion: > One way to solve the problem of high power devices is simply not to use them -- this is the approach that's followed in sailboats, motorhomes and caravans > Obviously, this strategy implies a change in our way of life. It would mean that electricity is used only for lighting, electronics and refrigeration, while non-electric alternatives are chosen for all other appliances. Not coincidentally, this is quite similar to how DC grids were operated in the late nineteenth century, when the only electric load was for lighting -- first arc lamps and later incandescent bulbs. > Thus, no dishwasher, but doing the dishes by hand. No washing machine, but doing the laundry in a laundromat or with a manually operated machine. No tumble dryer, but a clothes line. No convenient and time-saving kitchen appliances like electric kettles, microwaves and coffee machines, but a traditional cooking stove operated by (bio)gas, a solar cooker, or a rocket stove. No vacuum cleaner, but a broom and a carpet-beater. No freezer, but fresh ingredients. No electric warm water boiler, but a solar boiler and a small wash at the sink if the sun doesn't shine. No electric car, but a bicycle.

function_seven 5y ago
I get unreasonably angry when Victorian cosplayers think they've found the solution to our wasteful modern life. Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock! Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night. Was it cloudy yesterday? Simple!, take a whore-bath¹ at the sink and be thankful your meetings are on Zoom these days :) Ok, ok, those are caricatures of the final paragraphs, but that's what I hear when the word "simple" is abused that way. [¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?
- tootie 5y ago
  It's frequently much more energy intensive too. Cars are a lot more efficient than horses and dishwashers are more efficient than hand washing.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Can you explain how dish washers are more efficient than hand washing? Is it about water use? What if you don’t run the water while you soap your dishes and only rinse them in a rinse tub?
    - spijdar 5y ago
      I haven't watched this video in a while so apologies if it's not specifically elaborated on, but I believe it's covered here: https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 From memory yes, it's partially about water usage, but dishwashers are in general just pretty good overall about efficiently using energy to maximize "food grime removed" per unit of resources fed in. Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you. Another advantage is the dishwasher heats its own water, whereas with hand washing either you need to use a house-wide water heater or preheat water in a kettle or something, which will have its own energy wastes. This of course depends also on how your house's water is heated. One page I found googling elaborates on these ideas, concluding that you could potentially be more efficient hand washing, but only with a lot of effort: https://www.treehugger.com/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-washing-which-is-greener-4858791 https://www.treehugger.com/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-wash...
      - Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
        >Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you. I once ran the dishwasher with the outlet hose in a bucket because the drain pump was on its way out. I expected to have to empty it several times, but at the end of the cycle there was less water in it than I would use to fill a washing-up bowl to do the dishes by hand (and the amount of dishes it cleaned might have required more than one bowl).
      - nielsbot 5y ago
        Thanks. I read the treehugger link—pretty convincing overall. Not sure why my question was downvoted tho. (Not accusing you)
- el_oni 5y ago
  > Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? I like bird bath for this. I agree with your overall sentiment, I do also aknowledge that we (as a society) are very wasteful with resources. I would like to see some form of incentive for using less power and producing less waste. My energy provider during the first lockdown actually paid us to use electricity because it was being produced at renerwable plants and would otherwise go unused. We set our washing machine to start during the period they would pay us and did our morning routine a few hours earlier. That small incentive was enough to change our behavior
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock" My question is, if those people actually tried that by themself before suggesting it, or if they just picture the women doing it somewhere. I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried. And I did too, while off grid. It gives you a special connection to your clothes. But suggesting this as a general way of life is a bit offworlds.
  - hippari 5y ago
    I grew up doing all of those by hands, with the exception of washing machine, I still do all of those chores by hands now. And I'm still only in early 20s, not some old dudes. We debloating our computers all the time, so what's wrong with debloating our houses, and our life ?
    - temporallobe 5y ago
      Absolutely nothing wrong with that (I grew up hanging clothes on a line and using gas stoves, for example), but suggesting these kind of regressions as a drop-in solution to our modern lives is misguided.
    - radus 5y ago
      Doing more manual chores is the opposite of debloating IMO.
  - ip26 5y ago
    I think if you read lowtechmag much it's fairly clear they are true believers and probably have done a fair amount of washing clothes the hard way. They aren't simply armchair philosophers. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-sustainable-decadence.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-susta...
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      I know: "I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried" But the person I was answering to, was speaking more broadly of people proposing "awesome simple solutions". Who in my experience seldom lived their solutions.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > whore-bath at the sink / Or, “PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? Not particularly derisive, but I've always called it a “pits & bits” wash. I've heard it called a “got lucky rinse” too, presumably a variant on the whore-bath.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > [¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? Sponge bath? > 1. A quick sponge bath by hand, using a wet washcloth or a pre-moistened towelette, to extend the interval between showers or clean up after casual sexual intercourse. * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whore_bath https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whore_bath * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sponge_bath https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sponge_bath
- starfallg 5y ago
  > Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night. This might be a positive though. Having moved to the UK years ago, the average trip to the supermarket is for around a few days of food, a week at most here. The supermarket is 7 minutes by foot or a 4 by car. It means we buy a lot more fresh items, and this is natural due to the limited amount of freezer space we have (60/40 fridge and no chest freezer in our house). It's arguably better than the experience I had back in Canada plus for the same quality of food, it's much cheaper over here. So it isn't exactly the same as the olden days with wet markets and whatnot, but it's much closer to it (they even have manned meat, fish and deli counters at our local).
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market Middle class Victorians, in England at least, had things delivered. I imagine that quite a lot of cosplay characters are middle class. In fact food delivered to homes of all types was a normal feature of life in England when I was a child in the 50s and 60s. Milk, eggs, etc., every weekday morning delivered directly to the door before breakfast, grocery van came to the street once a week, bread van twice, another van came a bit less often selling lemonade and other drinks. Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class. We didn't have a freezer until 1966 and I'm not sure that we suffered from the lack. But once everyone had both a freezer and a car those services became unprofitable and eventually disappeared.
  - brobdingnagians 5y ago
    > Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class. I think that's key. The wealthy live well enough in pretty much any society. It is the poor who often have the greatest to gain (and lose, when mis-applied) from technological innovations and from having them become widespread.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    My grandma didn't have a drivers license. She had to use those trucks to get food, or wait for grandpa to get home to go to the store. Those trucks were a real life saver for her. Today women drivers are not a rare exception.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Simplicity is not a synonym of ease; very often it's an opposite. Making something both simple and easy is a highly sought art.
- hippari 5y ago
  Victorian ? Where I'm living that's what most people do ( well except for the washing machine ). I think the same applied for the majority of population in underdeveloped / developing countries.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Getting unreasonably angry is usually a pretty good sign that you're trying to distract yourself from a good point that was made
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Not trolling. If the response were, "_simply_ throw a small child into the nearest wishing well", you wouldn't be angry. It's only because there is truth therein that you are upset.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Pirate bath/shower is what I've heard them called: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20bath https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20bat...
ashtonkem 5y ago
You do have to wonder if they’re confused on why this isn’t persuasive to normal people. Go cook outside on a rocket stove[0] and washing clothes by hand every day? Come on. Meanwhile the thing that has actually gotten people out of their cars is the ebike. It turns out it’s much more effective to produce a more convenient and comfortable solution for people rather than just demand that they go back a century or two just because. 0 - It’s also telling that such advocates never seem to actually say who should be stuck doing all the labor that machines like washing machines now do for us. Washing clothes and dishes by hand is hard labor, and someone is going to have to give up their career or free time to do it if we’re going to ban these machines. No extra credit if you figure out who will get stuck with the task…
- ip26 5y ago
  never seem to actually say who should be stuck doing all the labor They are probably not actually closet misogynists or anything like that, they probably just haven’t thought that far ahead.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    > They are probably not actually closet misogynists or anything like that, they probably just haven’t thought that far ahead. I agree, this is more probable than the closet misogyny theory. But it's still not exactly a ringing endorsement to say "whoops, we didn't think about who would have to do all that labor once we took away all those labor saving devices!" It's not like this is some hard to predict third order effect, after all. Overall, the whole argument they're making is kind of silly. Washing clothes by hand sucks, people rushed to buy machines to replace this labor for a damned good reason. If someone's plan for the future involves persuading people to go back to doing labor the vast majority of people don't want to do, then they should prepared for a lot of failure. Given the continued sales of brand new washing machines at my local home improvement store, I would argue that they have failed thus far. (Ironically, there is probably a good lower-tech argument in making labor saving devices simpler and more reliable. The short lifespan of our appliances is both deeply unpopular and environmentally problematic, and doing anything to make them more repairable would both be good for the environment and incredibly popular.) Back to their original argument, there's a reason why I hold up the e-bike as an unqualified success that the authors here are incorrectly ignoring. Cycling enthusiasts--myself included--have argued for decades that biking is better and people should switch over to using bikes for more trips. Repeated appeals to the environment, the wallet, and ones health haven't really moved the needle much in this area. Yet it's the high-tech (gasp!) e-bike that appears to be finally getting commuters out of cars and into the saddle. It turns out that while moralizing is fun, actual change involves making compromises towards the convenience and comfort of your average person.
pl-94 5y ago
This is a low tech blog. It is difficult to reduce your carbon footprint while experiencing an exponential urge to consume new tech. Tech products footprint is either during consumption (most of the devices requiring heat or cold) or during production (the other devices like smartphones). Obviously this rule is a trend and countries with low carbon electricity are exceptions. While most people are OK for lasting a smartphone a bit longer, the same logic would imply to reduce the heat/cold consumption. So yeah in this sense, a freezer is a luxe we can't afford.
pkulak 5y ago
Exactly. The problem here is that everyone will just switch to gas for everything. Dryer, stove, water heater, car, etc. That’s terrible! The 380-volt DC sounded nice, so long as DC to DC is more efficient than AC to DC, but I have no idea if that’s true.
- xxs 5y ago
  DC-DC actually converts DC to high freq. AC 1st, then uses a transformer and then rectifiers, smoothing, feedback, etc. If no isolation, i.e. common ground is fine, a choke instead of a transformer is fine too.
  - elcritch 5y ago
    One possible benefit of a DC-DC circuit is that the converter can choose its switching frequency. That can give some room for optimizations for power or size.
    - stephen_g 5y ago
      So do AC-DC converters. They rectify the incoming AC, then it’s basically the same as a DC-DC converter. They have a switch that produces basically PWM in the hundreds of kHz to low MHz range, that it punches through a transformer.
- Reason077 5y ago
  The article overstates the conversion losses anyway. Modern solar inverters are something like 95%+ efficient. Consumer devices vary, but it’s a safe bet that modern cool-to-the-touch GaN power adapters are far more efficient than those old black bricks from the 1990s. Saving a few % just isn’t worth all the incompatibility and inconvenience of rewiring your entire house for. 380-volt DC sounds dangerous!
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Low Tech Magazine always writes like this. They always offer some idea which seems interesting on its surface but leaves gaps. They then end the article explaining away the gap with a moral polemic about how we need to change our ways and return to an older way of life. These days I just take the magazine for what it is; a medium containing interesting ideas but overall disingenuous and often impractical. (Though I do think that Americans uses clothes dryers _much_ more than they should. Most other G20 countries do not. In our household we hang dry any load of laundry that doesn't involve our heavy blankets, and that usually ends up extending the life of our laundry as well, while taking just a few additional minutes. (See, "often impractical" not "always impractical").)
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Not always using a clothes dryer is fine and good advice. But not using an electric kettle and replacing it with heating water on a gas stove is so beyond absurd I'm shocked how they even came to this conclusion since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. And a kettle is so low impact anyway. It uses a high amount of power for a very short time and spends almost all of its life turned off. The faster you heat the water the less waste there is as it cools during the heat process.
  - citrin_ru 5y ago
    > since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. When you use electric kettle you use energy which was obtained mostly from coal and gas (60% of it in the US) and efficiency of the conversion is less than about 40% on average (limited by efficiency of a steam turbine). Then about 8% of this power is lost during transportation/distribution. When gas is burned in a gas stove 100% of its energy converted to heat. The only problem - some fraction of this energy heats a room instead of a kettle. But it is not bad if you had to heat room anyway (where I live 8-10 months out of 12 I'd prefer indoor temperature to be higher then it is). I expect this loss to be smaller than 50%, but I've not found credible numbers for this. Efficiency for an oven may be low because it measurably heats a kitchen, but ovens is another story.
pomian 5y ago
Some things you can't recreate. But vacuum cleaners, refrigeration, freezers, coffee machines, kettles, dishwashers, and even driers, are all possible and available. Not sure about a microwave, but normal heating elements are there.
ciconia 5y ago
I think it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Supposing a future with 0 to low fossil energy usage, we'll all need to adjust. If you want governments to do whatever needs to be done to limit climate change, you also need to be willing to "pay the price" in the form of reduced material comfort. Besides, there are quite a few people (a big chunk of the world population actually) living today without dish washers, without microwaves and without coffee machines.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > If you want governments to do whatever needs to be done to limit climate change, you also need to be willing to "pay the price" in the form of reduced material comfort. Which is why nothing significant has been done, nor will it.
agumonkey 5y ago
For some it's stupid for some it's less clear. Instead of driving to the gym and bike 1h you may commute by bike (with enough safe paths its pretty nice, not perfect but pretty nice and health improvements come very rapidly as a bonus).

function_seven 5y ago

I get unreasonably angry when Victorian cosplayers think they've found the solution to our wasteful modern life. Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock! Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night. Was it cloudy yesterday? Simple!, take a whore-bath¹ at the sink and be thankful your meetings are on Zoom these days :) Ok, ok, those are caricatures of the final paragraphs, but that's what I hear when the word "simple" is abused that way. [¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?

tootie 5y ago
It's frequently much more energy intensive too. Cars are a lot more efficient than horses and dishwashers are more efficient than hand washing.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Can you explain how dish washers are more efficient than hand washing? Is it about water use? What if you don’t run the water while you soap your dishes and only rinse them in a rinse tub?
  - spijdar 5y ago
    I haven't watched this video in a while so apologies if it's not specifically elaborated on, but I believe it's covered here: https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 From memory yes, it's partially about water usage, but dishwashers are in general just pretty good overall about efficiently using energy to maximize "food grime removed" per unit of resources fed in. Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you. Another advantage is the dishwasher heats its own water, whereas with hand washing either you need to use a house-wide water heater or preheat water in a kettle or something, which will have its own energy wastes. This of course depends also on how your house's water is heated. One page I found googling elaborates on these ideas, concluding that you could potentially be more efficient hand washing, but only with a lot of effort: https://www.treehugger.com/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-washing-which-is-greener-4858791 https://www.treehugger.com/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-wash...
    - Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
      >Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you. I once ran the dishwasher with the outlet hose in a bucket because the drain pump was on its way out. I expected to have to empty it several times, but at the end of the cycle there was less water in it than I would use to fill a washing-up bowl to do the dishes by hand (and the amount of dishes it cleaned might have required more than one bowl).
    - nielsbot 5y ago
      Thanks. I read the treehugger link—pretty convincing overall. Not sure why my question was downvoted tho. (Not accusing you)
el_oni 5y ago
> Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? I like bird bath for this. I agree with your overall sentiment, I do also aknowledge that we (as a society) are very wasteful with resources. I would like to see some form of incentive for using less power and producing less waste. My energy provider during the first lockdown actually paid us to use electricity because it was being produced at renerwable plants and would otherwise go unused. We set our washing machine to start during the period they would pay us and did our morning routine a few hours earlier. That small incentive was enough to change our behavior
hutzlibu 5y ago
"Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock" My question is, if those people actually tried that by themself before suggesting it, or if they just picture the women doing it somewhere. I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried. And I did too, while off grid. It gives you a special connection to your clothes. But suggesting this as a general way of life is a bit offworlds.
- hippari 5y ago
  I grew up doing all of those by hands, with the exception of washing machine, I still do all of those chores by hands now. And I'm still only in early 20s, not some old dudes. We debloating our computers all the time, so what's wrong with debloating our houses, and our life ?
  - temporallobe 5y ago
    Absolutely nothing wrong with that (I grew up hanging clothes on a line and using gas stoves, for example), but suggesting these kind of regressions as a drop-in solution to our modern lives is misguided.
  - radus 5y ago
    Doing more manual chores is the opposite of debloating IMO.
- ip26 5y ago
  I think if you read lowtechmag much it's fairly clear they are true believers and probably have done a fair amount of washing clothes the hard way. They aren't simply armchair philosophers. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-sustainable-decadence.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-susta...
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    I know: "I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried" But the person I was answering to, was speaking more broadly of people proposing "awesome simple solutions". Who in my experience seldom lived their solutions.
dspillett 5y ago
> whore-bath at the sink / Or, “PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? Not particularly derisive, but I've always called it a “pits & bits” wash. I've heard it called a “got lucky rinse” too, presumably a variant on the whore-bath.
throw0101a 5y ago
> [¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive? Sponge bath? > 1. A quick sponge bath by hand, using a wet washcloth or a pre-moistened towelette, to extend the interval between showers or clean up after casual sexual intercourse. * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whore_bath https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whore_bath * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sponge_bath https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sponge_bath
starfallg 5y ago
> Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night. This might be a positive though. Having moved to the UK years ago, the average trip to the supermarket is for around a few days of food, a week at most here. The supermarket is 7 minutes by foot or a 4 by car. It means we buy a lot more fresh items, and this is natural due to the limited amount of freezer space we have (60/40 fridge and no chest freezer in our house). It's arguably better than the experience I had back in Canada plus for the same quality of food, it's much cheaper over here. So it isn't exactly the same as the olden days with wet markets and whatnot, but it's much closer to it (they even have manned meat, fish and deli counters at our local).
kwhitefoot 5y ago
> instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market Middle class Victorians, in England at least, had things delivered. I imagine that quite a lot of cosplay characters are middle class. In fact food delivered to homes of all types was a normal feature of life in England when I was a child in the 50s and 60s. Milk, eggs, etc., every weekday morning delivered directly to the door before breakfast, grocery van came to the street once a week, bread van twice, another van came a bit less often selling lemonade and other drinks. Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class. We didn't have a freezer until 1966 and I'm not sure that we suffered from the lack. But once everyone had both a freezer and a car those services became unprofitable and eventually disappeared.
- brobdingnagians 5y ago
  > Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class. I think that's key. The wealthy live well enough in pretty much any society. It is the poor who often have the greatest to gain (and lose, when mis-applied) from technological innovations and from having them become widespread.
- bluGill 5y ago
  My grandma didn't have a drivers license. She had to use those trucks to get food, or wait for grandpa to get home to go to the store. Those trucks were a real life saver for her. Today women drivers are not a rare exception.
nine_k 5y ago
Simplicity is not a synonym of ease; very often it's an opposite. Making something both simple and easy is a highly sought art.
hippari 5y ago
Victorian ? Where I'm living that's what most people do ( well except for the washing machine ). I think the same applied for the majority of population in underdeveloped / developing countries.
darkerside 5y ago
Getting unreasonably angry is usually a pretty good sign that you're trying to distract yourself from a good point that was made
- darkerside 5y ago
  Not trolling. If the response were, "_simply_ throw a small child into the nearest wishing well", you wouldn't be angry. It's only because there is truth therein that you are upset.
HideousKojima 5y ago
Pirate bath/shower is what I've heard them called: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20bath https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20bat...

ashtonkem 5y ago

You do have to wonder if they’re confused on why this isn’t persuasive to normal people. Go cook outside on a rocket stove[0] and washing clothes by hand every day? Come on. Meanwhile the thing that has actually gotten people out of their cars is the ebike. It turns out it’s much more effective to produce a more convenient and comfortable solution for people rather than just demand that they go back a century or two just because. 0 - It’s also telling that such advocates never seem to actually say who should be stuck doing all the labor that machines like washing machines now do for us. Washing clothes and dishes by hand is hard labor, and someone is going to have to give up their career or free time to do it if we’re going to ban these machines. No extra credit if you figure out who will get stuck with the task…

ip26 5y ago
never seem to actually say who should be stuck doing all the labor They are probably not actually closet misogynists or anything like that, they probably just haven’t thought that far ahead.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > They are probably not actually closet misogynists or anything like that, they probably just haven’t thought that far ahead. I agree, this is more probable than the closet misogyny theory. But it's still not exactly a ringing endorsement to say "whoops, we didn't think about who would have to do all that labor once we took away all those labor saving devices!" It's not like this is some hard to predict third order effect, after all. Overall, the whole argument they're making is kind of silly. Washing clothes by hand sucks, people rushed to buy machines to replace this labor for a damned good reason. If someone's plan for the future involves persuading people to go back to doing labor the vast majority of people don't want to do, then they should prepared for a lot of failure. Given the continued sales of brand new washing machines at my local home improvement store, I would argue that they have failed thus far. (Ironically, there is probably a good lower-tech argument in making labor saving devices simpler and more reliable. The short lifespan of our appliances is both deeply unpopular and environmentally problematic, and doing anything to make them more repairable would both be good for the environment and incredibly popular.) Back to their original argument, there's a reason why I hold up the e-bike as an unqualified success that the authors here are incorrectly ignoring. Cycling enthusiasts--myself included--have argued for decades that biking is better and people should switch over to using bikes for more trips. Repeated appeals to the environment, the wallet, and ones health haven't really moved the needle much in this area. Yet it's the high-tech (gasp!) e-bike that appears to be finally getting commuters out of cars and into the saddle. It turns out that while moralizing is fun, actual change involves making compromises towards the convenience and comfort of your average person.

pl-94 5y ago

This is a low tech blog. It is difficult to reduce your carbon footprint while experiencing an exponential urge to consume new tech. Tech products footprint is either during consumption (most of the devices requiring heat or cold) or during production (the other devices like smartphones). Obviously this rule is a trend and countries with low carbon electricity are exceptions. While most people are OK for lasting a smartphone a bit longer, the same logic would imply to reduce the heat/cold consumption. So yeah in this sense, a freezer is a luxe we can't afford.

pkulak 5y ago

Exactly. The problem here is that everyone will just switch to gas for everything. Dryer, stove, water heater, car, etc. That’s terrible! The 380-volt DC sounded nice, so long as DC to DC is more efficient than AC to DC, but I have no idea if that’s true.

xxs 5y ago
DC-DC actually converts DC to high freq. AC 1st, then uses a transformer and then rectifiers, smoothing, feedback, etc. If no isolation, i.e. common ground is fine, a choke instead of a transformer is fine too.
- elcritch 5y ago
  One possible benefit of a DC-DC circuit is that the converter can choose its switching frequency. That can give some room for optimizations for power or size.
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    So do AC-DC converters. They rectify the incoming AC, then it’s basically the same as a DC-DC converter. They have a switch that produces basically PWM in the hundreds of kHz to low MHz range, that it punches through a transformer.
Reason077 5y ago
The article overstates the conversion losses anyway. Modern solar inverters are something like 95%+ efficient. Consumer devices vary, but it’s a safe bet that modern cool-to-the-touch GaN power adapters are far more efficient than those old black bricks from the 1990s. Saving a few % just isn’t worth all the incompatibility and inconvenience of rewiring your entire house for. 380-volt DC sounds dangerous!

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Low Tech Magazine always writes like this. They always offer some idea which seems interesting on its surface but leaves gaps. They then end the article explaining away the gap with a moral polemic about how we need to change our ways and return to an older way of life. These days I just take the magazine for what it is; a medium containing interesting ideas but overall disingenuous and often impractical. (Though I do think that Americans uses clothes dryers _much_ more than they should. Most other G20 countries do not. In our household we hang dry any load of laundry that doesn't involve our heavy blankets, and that usually ends up extending the life of our laundry as well, while taking just a few additional minutes. (See, "often impractical" not "always impractical").)

SilverRed 5y ago
Not always using a clothes dryer is fine and good advice. But not using an electric kettle and replacing it with heating water on a gas stove is so beyond absurd I'm shocked how they even came to this conclusion since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. And a kettle is so low impact anyway. It uses a high amount of power for a very short time and spends almost all of its life turned off. The faster you heat the water the less waste there is as it cools during the heat process.
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  > since gas stoves are less efficient and much worse for the environment than a kettle. It is not obvious at all and requires calculations. When you use electric kettle you use energy which was obtained mostly from coal and gas (60% of it in the US) and efficiency of the conversion is less than about 40% on average (limited by efficiency of a steam turbine). Then about 8% of this power is lost during transportation/distribution. When gas is burned in a gas stove 100% of its energy converted to heat. The only problem - some fraction of this energy heats a room instead of a kettle. But it is not bad if you had to heat room anyway (where I live 8-10 months out of 12 I'd prefer indoor temperature to be higher then it is). I expect this loss to be smaller than 50%, but I've not found credible numbers for this. Efficiency for an oven may be low because it measurably heats a kitchen, but ovens is another story.

pomian 5y ago

Some things you can't recreate. But vacuum cleaners, refrigeration, freezers, coffee machines, kettles, dishwashers, and even driers, are all possible and available. Not sure about a microwave, but normal heating elements are there.

ciconia 5y ago

I think it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Supposing a future with 0 to low fossil energy usage, we'll all need to adjust. If you want governments to do whatever needs to be done to limit climate change, you also need to be willing to "pay the price" in the form of reduced material comfort. Besides, there are quite a few people (a big chunk of the world population actually) living today without dish washers, without microwaves and without coffee machines.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> If you want governments to do whatever needs to be done to limit climate change, you also need to be willing to "pay the price" in the form of reduced material comfort. Which is why nothing significant has been done, nor will it.

agumonkey 5y ago

For some it's stupid for some it's less clear. Instead of driving to the gym and bike 1h you may commute by bike (with enough safe paths its pretty nice, not perfect but pretty nice and health improvements come very rapidly as a bonus).