3 ms·

Some of what I view as core problem with approaching this issue is simply how easy it is to do the maths and say "but this is only a small impact in the greater

Some of what I view as core problem with approaching this issue is simply how easy it is to do the maths and say "but this is only a small impact in the greater problem". - Air travel could be banned and we're still hosed - All the cars could go electric and we're still hosed - Kill all the cattle and we're still hosed etc etc. It really is freerider/tragedy of the commons situation, lot of finger pointing and a lot of rational self interest. In the end I can only view this as unfettered good news, assuming we can scale it out

myshpa 3y ago
Our society is an extremely complex system. We're consuming and polluting more than the environment can handle (overshoot). Our economy, consumption and pollution is growing exponentially, in a finite environment (one planet). It would be naive that in this point one single solution would solve our problems forever. In fact, we should repair as many things as possible in one go, to get to the equilibrium as soon as possible. Few things that could get us on the right track: - remove the drivers of the exponential growth (reform the financial system, degrowth, ubi) - speed up the transition to renewables (while we have fossil fuels, peak oil is not far away) - stop polluting everything (plastics, pfas, pesticides/herbicides ...) - reform agriculture (leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss, overfishing) - plant based diets (animal ag. is 80+% of all agriculture, free an area the size of both Americas) - reforest/rewild freed pastures to restore forests, biodiversity and water cycle (no monocultures, multi level canopies, no harvesting, old growth) - by reforesting animal. ag. lands alone we could store enough carbon to cause new little ice age and reverse the warming - reform / automate plant agriculture - repair soils, stop pesticides/herbicides (insects, pollinators)
- mchanson 3y ago
  I’m up for making this person dictator of earth. Wish we could just do these things. It’s too bad, sometimes, that it’s so hard to generate political will and societal action.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> - All the cars could go electric and we're still hosed I'm kind of amazed to learn that cars are only ~12% of GHG emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector But we are on a good path... The US, the EU, and China are all likely to have only ~30% of electricity coming from fossil fuels in 10 years, and only ~21% in 15 years, and only ~10% in 20 years. In 20 years, it's likely less than 50% of cars on the road will be ICE. ~72% of GHG is energy. That number could easily be cut by ~50% in 20 years.
- Ntrails 3y ago
  > I'm kind of amazed to learn that cars are only ~12% of GHG emissions Yep. I am also very unclear that some of the sticks being wielded towards replacing existing ICE stock with new electric cars make sense. Sure my 7 year old petrol car is polluting, but building a brand new electric car to replace it is pretty horrible for the environment too?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    The average ICE car uses ~4.6T CO2 per year (in gasoline). The average electric car costs about ~9T CO2 to build. Electricity in the US & the EU is currently ~60% fossil fuels. Electric cars get >2x MPGe of the average ICE car. So if you say the average car drives ~15k miles to produce ~4.6T CO2. The average electric car driven on ~100% fossil fuels for the same amount of miles would generate less than ~2.3T CO2. Since it's only 60% fossil fuels, it's ~60% of that = ~1.38T CO2. Payoff is in about 3.33 years. In ~20 years, when we get to ~10-15% of electricity coming from fossil fuel, the payoff would be only 2.2 years. Sure, if you're driving a Toyota Prius now, and only putting on ~5k miles per year - you should probably just keep it til it falls apart. Until we get to like <30% of electricity coming from fossil fuels - I'm not sure we should be encouraging people to needlessly upgrade their car to electric (unless they're getting like 12 miles to the gallon and driving 30k+ miles per year). But, ideally, everyone would be thinking about getting at least a PHEV for their next car when they do upgrade.

myshpa 3y ago

Our society is an extremely complex system. We're consuming and polluting more than the environment can handle (overshoot). Our economy, consumption and pollution is growing exponentially, in a finite environment (one planet). It would be naive that in this point one single solution would solve our problems forever. In fact, we should repair as many things as possible in one go, to get to the equilibrium as soon as possible. Few things that could get us on the right track: - remove the drivers of the exponential growth (reform the financial system, degrowth, ubi) - speed up the transition to renewables (while we have fossil fuels, peak oil is not far away) - stop polluting everything (plastics, pfas, pesticides/herbicides ...) - reform agriculture (leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss, overfishing) - plant based diets (animal ag. is 80+% of all agriculture, free an area the size of both Americas) - reforest/rewild freed pastures to restore forests, biodiversity and water cycle (no monocultures, multi level canopies, no harvesting, old growth) - by reforesting animal. ag. lands alone we could store enough carbon to cause new little ice age and reverse the warming - reform / automate plant agriculture - repair soils, stop pesticides/herbicides (insects, pollinators)

mchanson 3y ago
I’m up for making this person dictator of earth. Wish we could just do these things. It’s too bad, sometimes, that it’s so hard to generate political will and societal action.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> - All the cars could go electric and we're still hosed I'm kind of amazed to learn that cars are only ~12% of GHG emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector But we are on a good path... The US, the EU, and China are all likely to have only ~30% of electricity coming from fossil fuels in 10 years, and only ~21% in 15 years, and only ~10% in 20 years. In 20 years, it's likely less than 50% of cars on the road will be ICE. ~72% of GHG is energy. That number could easily be cut by ~50% in 20 years.

Ntrails 3y ago
> I'm kind of amazed to learn that cars are only ~12% of GHG emissions Yep. I am also very unclear that some of the sticks being wielded towards replacing existing ICE stock with new electric cars make sense. Sure my 7 year old petrol car is polluting, but building a brand new electric car to replace it is pretty horrible for the environment too?
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  The average ICE car uses ~4.6T CO2 per year (in gasoline). The average electric car costs about ~9T CO2 to build. Electricity in the US & the EU is currently ~60% fossil fuels. Electric cars get >2x MPGe of the average ICE car. So if you say the average car drives ~15k miles to produce ~4.6T CO2. The average electric car driven on ~100% fossil fuels for the same amount of miles would generate less than ~2.3T CO2. Since it's only 60% fossil fuels, it's ~60% of that = ~1.38T CO2. Payoff is in about 3.33 years. In ~20 years, when we get to ~10-15% of electricity coming from fossil fuel, the payoff would be only 2.2 years. Sure, if you're driving a Toyota Prius now, and only putting on ~5k miles per year - you should probably just keep it til it falls apart. Until we get to like <30% of electricity coming from fossil fuels - I'm not sure we should be encouraging people to needlessly upgrade their car to electric (unless they're getting like 12 miles to the gallon and driving 30k+ miles per year). But, ideally, everyone would be thinking about getting at least a PHEV for their next car when they do upgrade.