4 ms·
Just curious, what does that $700 buy exactly? My power bill and gas for my car combined never exceed $200. I assume it's a cost of living difference?
by nsv 5y ago
Just curious, what does that $700 buy exactly? My power bill and gas for my car combined never exceed $200. I assume it's a cost of living difference?
- sokoloff 5y agoNot GP, but in a cold winter month in New England, I can easily be over $700 for combined electric and natural gas (not all of which is fossil fuel, of course; some is distribution, taxes, salaries of workers, capital recovery, etc). It’s a 1920s structural brick house with limited insulation, 1950s boiler converted to gas. My year-round average is just under $500/mo for the house and around $80/mo for our 25mpg Honda CR-V (other car is a LEAF). Retrofitting the house to modern insulation is not remotely cost-effective. (We’ve already done the low-hanging fruit.) Modern boiler conversion is on the schedule for next summer, but driven in large part by wanting to reclaim space in the basement. Economically, that project probably won’t pay for itself either (absent the value of the space reclaimed). Buying a 40 mpg car to replace our perfectly functional 25 mpg 2005 CR-V to save $30/mo in fuel is economically nonsensical as well. Fossil fuels are incredibly cheap and their cheapness makes them attractive to continue burning. As long as they stay cheap, people will continue to extract the surplus value from them.