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> I feel environmental regulation is going the same path. There is a lot of resistance against improving things just because. Well no not just because. I reall

> I feel environmental regulation is going the same path. There is a lot of resistance against improving things just because. Well no not just because. I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting. In Holland everyone has to move away from natural gas meaning everyone has to buy hugely expensive heat pumps and insulate their houses more to deal with the lower heat output. ICEs are getting banned from city centers so you need to buy an EV which is messy to charge if you live in a flat, we have to drag all our empty plastic bottles back to the shop now and can't even crush them to save bag space. New environmentally friendly paints scratch much easier. Lead free solder causes solder joints to break earlier meaning more frequent purchases. Plastic bottles now have their caps attached in an awkward way. Prices are constantly rising due to environment levies making it more expensive for citizens but companies are still raking it in and producing stuff they know it's harmful like PFAS. Housing is super expensive because environmental impact reviews limit the amount of new construction and the government put even more on hold due to too much nitrogen compounds. All these things are just expensive and more hassle and I can imagine people are getting a bit frustrated. It's like it's never enough. It's with good reason sure but I can understand people feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. I personally don't even own or need a car and I live somewhere now where I don't really need heating and we can still just dump our bottles in the plastic bin in the street here. So I'm pretty ok with everything. But yeah I feel people's pain.

afh1 2y ago
None of it matters when China is burning coal like crazy and 99% of all ocean plastic comes from Asia.[1] Europe is mostly costly virtue signaling. [1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...
- cherryteastain 2y ago
  Measures like ICE bans still improve the local air quality.
  - afh1 2y ago
    True. All of the measures mentioned have local benefits, with a price tag attached. Global impact is less clear cut.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Not much. Banning old ICE cars does but modern ICE cars does not pollute that much more than electric. A lot of the pollution comes from the tyres.
- choult 2y ago
  If everyone keeps using everyone else's use of fossil fuels as a justification for their own, then no progress will ever be made.
  - afh1 2y ago
    When your waste is irrelevant vs that of your neighbor, paying a high price to do your insignificant part is simply inefficient. If people really cared about a global impact, the approach would need to be radically different.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      If you reduce your waste, you have the high ground to use as leverage to coninve others. It's not a hard concept
- xethos 2y ago
  Your six year old source itself states that in 2017, China stopped the import of foreign garbage. Meaning plastic pollution will have dropped in the six years since your source was published. More importantly though, it wasn't even necessarily China's waste. Rich, Western nations like the one you're (likely) commenting from have sent their plastic waste to China, where it ends up in the sea. And you use that for justification that "using less plastic doesn't matter", and that it's "mostly virtue signaling".
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Nah, it is mostly local plastic from what I can tell. And I come from a country which is a net importer of waste, not exporter. And China is not the issue, it is mostly the Phillipines. We cannot solve this other than by payibg for and forcing a couple of countries to solve their issue. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
- __m 2y ago
  Yeah let’s not compare per capita or historic responsibility, or their huge investments in renewable energy, I don’t want to lower my first world lifestyle.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Per capita plastic pollution is highest in a handful of Asian countries, but for CO2 you have a point. Plastic pollution is caused by just a couple of countries.
  - hellgas00 2y ago
    On a per capita basis China emits more CO2 than Europeans.
    - defrost 2y ago
      The EU-27 and China are currenty ballpark; the EU has made a solid effort to come down overthe decades, China has risen by virtue of being the worlds largest trading source .. the argument can be made that western countries have outsourced the CO2 of much of their production to China. All that aside, for those that want figures: EU-27: https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per-cap-by-country-eu/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per... China: https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per-capita-in-china https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per...
- otherme123 2y ago
  It's not virtue signaling. Europe acknowledges that we are already good enough to keep basing our growth in fossils. But developing countries deserve some slack with fossil usage while they converge. Indirectly, by requiring cleaner cars for example, there's a push toward China designing clean engines if they want to sell in Europe. In fact China is already selling a decent amount of cars in Europe.
robomartin 2y ago
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- robomartin 2y ago
  For once I would love to see those downvoting pushback against the cult of planet-saving to present an argument against the facts as presented. Take that chart and explain how erasing 14% or even 50% of emissions can save the planet. Then explain how heat pumps or banning ICE vehicles --which is insignificant when compared to erasing massive modern civilizations-- is superior to erasing entire regions of the planet. You might not like what I said. That does not make it wrong.
  - usrusr 2y ago
    Even if tomorrow a giant space-maid robot came by and stole much of our atmospheric CO2 we'd have to eventually make do without fossil fuels. Because if we continue they'd all be oxidized to the lowest energy state (CO2) one day. Giant space-maid or not. Is it that terrible to start a little earlier? Inconvenient, sure, I'll give you that. Massively inconvenient.
  - panstromek 2y ago
    You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense.
    - robomartin 2y ago
      > You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense. No. I am telling you that there is no way we can solve it. Doing so requires violating the laws of physics and science in general. That's what does not make sense. What is clearer proof of the fallacy than knowing precisely how our planet behaves without humanity on it? We know this. Accurately. It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change. I've seen politicians claim we can fix it in 20 to 50 years. Does anyone challenge this nonsense when uttered? No, of course not. They are claiming we can accelerate a planetary scale problem by a factor of ONE THOUSAND or more and nobody bothers to ask "How?" or "Where is the energy going to come from?" or "How much additional pollution and damage will the proposed process generate?" or "Are you insane?". We desperately need to start talking about reality and leave these fantasies behind.
skrebbel 2y ago
> I personally don't even own or need a car This is likely due to similar "annoying" regulation in the past, eg making space for bike lanes, investing in public transit and giving it more space than cars, and so on. These all have been protested using the same kind of vibes as how you're now protesting EVs and attached bottle caps. "We can't even park by the C&A anymore! Ridiculous! Will this madness ever end?" What I'm trying to say is, when you say "boo climate policy", I read "boo progress". Is progress sometimes annoying? Sure! Is some of it ill-advised? Yeah also. (Or incorrectly billed as progress even). Is it then a better idea to just not solve problems and keep everything that's bad now, bad forever? No! It isn't! It's a completely show stopper argument. Usually with things like these, the annoyances are now, and the payoff is in the future. This holds for environmental policy just as much as bike lanes.
- briandear 2y ago
  What’s the exact, quantifiable payoff of tethered bottle caps? And how many degrees will the earth cool down if everyone switched to EVs? The truth is that everything related to “carbon” has no quantifiable value. It’s like tithing at a church with the hope that God smiles upon you. How many tons reduction of CO2 results in a movement of the temperature? Let’s be precise because if we are making policy on this, the public has a right to know the exact benefit. And is the cost of that less expensive than the cost of not doing it? What exactly is the cost of not doing it? I’ve been hearing for 20+ years how we are just ten years away from disaster. 10 years is just long enough that it’s a few election cycles — so the politicians pushing this nonsense are rarely accountable for being continually wrong. Nothing in Al Gore’s movie came true. Ice caps were supposed to be done by now. They aren’t. So why are we still following that religion? It’s like a modernized version of a doomsday cult: “repent or rising seas will destroy the cities with the wrath of a vengeful Climate God.” Are we allowed to question any of this? Shouldn’t someone be following the money to see who is getting rich off of this and who is enacting the policies that make those people rich? Without those numbers, how can we determine if something is “progress?” We should be focused on real pollution: chemicals in the air and water, plastics in the ocean. CO2 isn’t a poison, nor a carcinogen, nor a toxin. Why doesn’t the environmental movement unite behind banning high fructose corn syrup? Obesity in the U.S. is killing more people than climate change ever will.
dylan604 2y ago
> insulate their houses more regardless of your heating source, this is a good thing. less wood/gas burned, less electricity used. I see no downside in that. Strange argument to try to make your case.
- deleted 2y ago
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- switch007 2y ago
  Can cause issues in older properties designed to breath plus got to be careful with air flow (even more expense for MHVW…)
- 9x39 2y ago
  You might not see a downside if it's not your house to renovate. The problem is major home infra like heat pumps and retrofit work like extra insulation can be tremendously expensive. In the US alone, switching my gas furnace to heat pumps would easily cost $25k to match the BTU output, and that's without doing any additional insulation. Sure, being efficient sounds great, but constraints of the real world are often unforgiving and need lots of material and labor to make change, both of which are increasing in price.
  - danmaz74 2y ago
    on the other hand, with better insulation you don't need the same BTU output
    - 9x39 2y ago
      That would make sense at first glance, but I was talking to my HVAC contractor and they warned me not to make that assumption. It's not easy to compare gas furnace BTUs to heat pump BTUs for both physics and issues specific to my home (and probably most homes not made in the last decade or so). It gets to -10F most winters here, but heat pumps struggle as it dips below freezing, while a gas furnace doesn't. What does that mean for heat in the colder parts of the year? Will I struggle to maintain 68F even if the BTUs are the same? This ties into my home design as well: Can I even substantially change my home's r-value the way it's built? I couldn't afford a new home when I bought my house, so I live in older housing stock - 1949, made heavily of cinder blocks with plaster and stucco around them. It didn't have ducting when built, and that was partially retrofitted in using a central furnace with limited air ducts to push heat clumsily from the center of the house into a few primary rooms using a California plenum to pull air from the foundation, connected to certain rooms through floor registers. There's no good way to fix any of these compromises short of ripping half the home apart, or just building a new one, so the least bad compromise is usually an over-specced central forced air solution. Do I get a central heat pump and air handler system with 100k peak BTUs? Do I get several mini-split units, each adding up to 100k BTUs? Do I overbuild on BTUs if I go mini-splits or multi-head? How will multiple smaller heat pumps work in winter as it freezes? Will insulating change that? I can't insulate my foundation more than the earth already does. I guess I could rip out all my plaster walls and put in drywall and high r-value insulation behind them, but at that point, maybe a new house would be more worth the effort. I think these kind of problems are endemic to the older housing stock and they're devilishly expensive to fix. Keep in mind - I have heat now. While my furnace will eventually depreciate to the point it needs replacement, to do all of this for no added functionality would be to take a new car's worth of value and gamble I might save a little on energy costs over the next 15 years. It's a dead-weight loss for me - I'm not going to recoup that on a house sale. It's not my 'forever' home, so I'm probably not going to stay more than 5 more years. (US national tenure seems to be 10-13 years.)
rqtwteye 2y ago
I am sure we can do better and revisit some misguided regulations. But in general environmental regulation is probably one of the biggest success stories of the last 60 years. I grew up when rivers were green or blue some days, the rivers were dead with an occasional dead fish floating by, going into the water was a serious health risk. The switch to EV is painful, but once people experience clean air in cities again, there is no way anybody will want to go back. I was in Mumbai a few years ago and after two days when I blew my days a pile of black stuff came down and I was short breathed. People complained about unleaded gas and catalytic filters when they introduced. Auto companies told us the world would go under. Seems ignoring them was correct and things worked out for the better
- smm11 2y ago
  Not related, but when Bell was broken up in the early-80s I had a grandmother who said the world was ending. Seems that break-up improved things, at least for a while.
- briandear 2y ago
  The problem is that regulations needn’t be all or nothing. Don’t throw stuff in rivers. Ok. Teathered bottle cap. Dumb. Then there is the whole scam of recycling: https://youtu.be/NLkfpjJoNkA https://youtu.be/NLkfpjJoNkA
  - peterlada 2y ago
    Ok. But also: Earth biosphere is collapsing. Your complaint re: bottle cap: I stopped seeing caps in gutters. Your complaint re: recycling scam: a non-scam way of doing is how Netherlands does it and it imports(!) trash because it's profitable. Plastic straws can be made out of compostable plastic. And the fucking plutocracy could stop flying everywhere every day.
    - dingaling 2y ago
      > I stopped seeing caps in gutters. Do you think that people who were inclined to discard bottle caps were correctly binning their bottles? No, they were also throwing down their bottles which were more easily carried away by the rain and wind. Now, both the cap and the bottle are being washed into rivers instead of the caps being left behind. Net improvement: zero. It's a classic example of survivorship bias. It's like the headline that bottle caps were the third most common litter on beaches - because bottles, sandwiches wrappers and crisp packets had been washed out to sea.
andrepd 2y ago
>ICEs are getting banned from city centers so you need to buy an EV Why on earth you need to buy a car on a country with one of the best rail infrastructures in the world and the best bike infrastructure in the world, is beyond me. So, correction: they are banning cars from city centres, not just ICEs. As very well they should.
- briandear 2y ago
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  - andrepd 2y ago
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    - wkat4242 2y ago
      I was talking about Holland but I don't live there anymore, luckily. Where I live there's not so many problems. But in Holland it's given rise to the extreme right parties. I don't do bikes though. Only public transport and walking. Bikes aren't for me.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Barcelona has amazing public transport though. As long as you live within the service area of Hospitalet through Badalona. Outside of that it sucks yeah. Agreed. And yeah Montmeló is really hard to get to. I can imagine though as most people visiting the circuit are car enthusiasts.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  Do you live in the Netherlands? Because if you would, you find out that yes, there are many trains per day between the important cities. Not very efficient if you happen to live outside the main lines. The number or tracks are limited and accidents are frequent in the winter. So trains get delayed or cancelled. Not fun when you really can't miss getting to the destination on time - say from Den Haag to Schiphol. Its all fun and games when things work out, but they don't all the time. And not to mention its really really hard to return from shopping at Ikea by train. Biking, sure, fun, but not so autumn/winter/spring, especially in the areas close to the North Sea. The humidity and the wind makes the cold not very tolerable. I could go one for a while.
deergomoo 2y ago
> I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting I recognise it's a silly, tiny, small-minded thing to get hung up on, but it irritates me to no end that if I stop at McDonalds to grab a milkshake I've gotta drink it through a shitty cardboard straw that disintegrates half way through, while celebrities are flying around in private jets unimpeded.
- mcphage 2y ago
  If you wanted to discredit the environmental movement, I couldn’t think of a better way than forcing everyone to switch to paper straws. And as far as I’m aware, most places it wasn’t forced, it was voluntary.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    It's voluntary because it is cheap to do and looks better on your SDG checklist compared to addressing much more difficult goals.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It was forced in the EU.
    - orwin 2y ago
      Plastic straws were outlawed, paper straw weren't pushed. The bars I go to give wooden straws, I think that's pretty nice.
      - synecdoche 2y ago
        Lucky you
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Oh. I'm starting to see a pattern here now. It's the same thing like with GDPR - the market chooses to interpret the law in the most profitable way, which turns out to be one that's nominally compliant but defeats the purpose of the law and make things worse for the customers. Why? Because a Big Law forced down by the Clueless Bureaucrats in the Great Soviet^WEuropean Union is something people are already primed to blame, making it a perfect scapegoat - the company can choose the absolute shittiest way to comply (onerous cookie banners and questionably legal consent forms, paper straws that disintegrate when you look at them), and rake in the profits, as customers won't question this choice (many won't even think there was a choice!) - they'll just assume it's the Eurocrats fucking up things for everyone because $reasons. Now I wonder where else this is already happening, too. I now realize that talking about malicious compliance with respect to GDPR was mishandling the Hanlon's Handgun. No, it's not stupidity, but it's also not malice (promoted by systemic incentives) in the sense of CEOs of the world hoping they can frustrate EU citizens into eventually voting the law away. It's simpler, more basic form of malice - it's companies knowing they can ignore what customers want or like and go straight for most profitable, no matter how frustrating or abusive, as the EU will take the blame by default, and it's so, so big, it'll take infinite amounts of it.
kevingadd 2y ago
Saying you don't want more insulation and heat pumps is weird. You like higher utility bills? I get that the up front investment for it is unpleasant, but the remedy to that is government subsidies to encourage homeowners to upgrade.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  You're assuming the person who complained has high gas bills. Gas produces much more useful energy than a heat pump can. And the installation is much more simpler and space efficient. If heat-pumps would be at least as good most likely they would be more successful on their own and there would be no need to be forced onto people by the government because "think of the environment".
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yeah that's the thing. I pay about 20€ in gas per month. No way I will ever ever make back that investment. But if I still lived in Holland I'd pay more, true. Not so much more though because I've never had the heading on very high.
  - tomatocracy 2y ago
    Yes. I think a good example of this is the attempt to force everyone to use CFLs c20 years ago for light. Huge step backwards in quality of light, plus for many use cases they had a higher lifetime cost and shorter lifespan. Then decent LED bulbs came along and noone needed to force anyone to do anything because the product works as a drop in replacement with lower lifetime costs in almost all relevant use cases.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I could replace my gas furnace with a heat pump, sure, but my utility bills would go up, not down. Gas is much cheaper than electricity here.
sho_hn 2y ago
What's sad is that the last time that people experienced significant restrictions and inconvenience - during Covid-19 lockdowns - it did move the environmental needle, but still not enough to make the 1.5C goal. So just imagine the vast gulf between the annoyances you listed and what it might take.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  I know. That's why it's not going to happen and why it didn't happen. I consider climate change a fait accompli.
- synecdoche 2y ago
  To what cost? Societies are still reeling from the consequences, for who knows how long.
  - underlipton 2y ago
    Most of the "cost" (at least in the West) can be attributed to people dragging their feet on adapting to remote set-ups and the efficiencies they bring. Businessmen didn't want to do business remotely, teachers didn't want to teach remotely, event planners didn't want to do virtual events; so, they sabotaged the shift. Too bad for the collateral damage of anyone who was underserved during this period, and the environment, and everyone who benefited from their newfound accessibility.
OfficeChad 2y ago
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CalRobert 2y ago
"Well no not just because. I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting. In Holland everyone has to move away from natural gas meaning everyone has to buy hugely expensive heat pumps and insulate their houses more to deal with the lower heat output." To be fair, they're heavily subsidized and many houses can do this for under 5k. And really, insulating the frankly awful housing stock isn't a bad thing. Disclaimer: I work for a heat pump company. In city centres you don't need an EV, you need a bike. (I have two little kids and live in a car-focused Dutch town before anyone tells me that's impossible) Also, as someone who has two little kids who will rub their hands all over glasses and then stick their fingers in their mouths, I'm delighted to see lead paint falling out of use.
John23832 2y ago
> Well no not just because. I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting. In Holland everyone has to move away from natural gas meaning everyone has to buy hugely expensive heat pumps and insulate their houses more to deal with the lower heat output This is just a more contrived version of “because I don’t want to”. People were inconvenienced at the advent of seatbelts too. Removing children from the labor pool was tiring for everyone else. Arguably the only labor progressive change that didn’t inconvenience people was de-leading gasoline.

afh1 2y ago

None of it matters when China is burning coal like crazy and 99% of all ocean plastic comes from Asia.[1] Europe is mostly costly virtue signaling. [1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...

cherryteastain 2y ago
Measures like ICE bans still improve the local air quality.
- afh1 2y ago
  True. All of the measures mentioned have local benefits, with a price tag attached. Global impact is less clear cut.
- jeltz 2y ago
  Not much. Banning old ICE cars does but modern ICE cars does not pollute that much more than electric. A lot of the pollution comes from the tyres.
choult 2y ago
If everyone keeps using everyone else's use of fossil fuels as a justification for their own, then no progress will ever be made.
- afh1 2y ago
  When your waste is irrelevant vs that of your neighbor, paying a high price to do your insignificant part is simply inefficient. If people really cared about a global impact, the approach would need to be radically different.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    If you reduce your waste, you have the high ground to use as leverage to coninve others. It's not a hard concept
xethos 2y ago
Your six year old source itself states that in 2017, China stopped the import of foreign garbage. Meaning plastic pollution will have dropped in the six years since your source was published. More importantly though, it wasn't even necessarily China's waste. Rich, Western nations like the one you're (likely) commenting from have sent their plastic waste to China, where it ends up in the sea. And you use that for justification that "using less plastic doesn't matter", and that it's "mostly virtue signaling".
- jeltz 2y ago
  Nah, it is mostly local plastic from what I can tell. And I come from a country which is a net importer of waste, not exporter. And China is not the issue, it is mostly the Phillipines. We cannot solve this other than by payibg for and forcing a couple of countries to solve their issue. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
__m 2y ago
Yeah let’s not compare per capita or historic responsibility, or their huge investments in renewable energy, I don’t want to lower my first world lifestyle.
- jeltz 2y ago
  Per capita plastic pollution is highest in a handful of Asian countries, but for CO2 you have a point. Plastic pollution is caused by just a couple of countries.
- hellgas00 2y ago
  On a per capita basis China emits more CO2 than Europeans.
  - defrost 2y ago
    The EU-27 and China are currenty ballpark; the EU has made a solid effort to come down overthe decades, China has risen by virtue of being the worlds largest trading source .. the argument can be made that western countries have outsourced the CO2 of much of their production to China. All that aside, for those that want figures: EU-27: https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per-cap-by-country-eu/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per... China: https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per-capita-in-china https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per...
otherme123 2y ago
It's not virtue signaling. Europe acknowledges that we are already good enough to keep basing our growth in fossils. But developing countries deserve some slack with fossil usage while they converge. Indirectly, by requiring cleaner cars for example, there's a push toward China designing clean engines if they want to sell in Europe. In fact China is already selling a decent amount of cars in Europe.

robomartin 2y ago

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robomartin 2y ago
For once I would love to see those downvoting pushback against the cult of planet-saving to present an argument against the facts as presented. Take that chart and explain how erasing 14% or even 50% of emissions can save the planet. Then explain how heat pumps or banning ICE vehicles --which is insignificant when compared to erasing massive modern civilizations-- is superior to erasing entire regions of the planet. You might not like what I said. That does not make it wrong.
- usrusr 2y ago
  Even if tomorrow a giant space-maid robot came by and stole much of our atmospheric CO2 we'd have to eventually make do without fossil fuels. Because if we continue they'd all be oxidized to the lowest energy state (CO2) one day. Giant space-maid or not. Is it that terrible to start a little earlier? Inconvenient, sure, I'll give you that. Massively inconvenient.
- panstromek 2y ago
  You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense.
  - robomartin 2y ago
    > You're using facts about the magnitude of the problem to justify inaction towards solving it. That just doesn't make any sense. No. I am telling you that there is no way we can solve it. Doing so requires violating the laws of physics and science in general. That's what does not make sense. What is clearer proof of the fallacy than knowing precisely how our planet behaves without humanity on it? We know this. Accurately. It takes 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm change in atmospheric CO2. Nothing. Absolutely nothing we do can improve on this rate of change. I've seen politicians claim we can fix it in 20 to 50 years. Does anyone challenge this nonsense when uttered? No, of course not. They are claiming we can accelerate a planetary scale problem by a factor of ONE THOUSAND or more and nobody bothers to ask "How?" or "Where is the energy going to come from?" or "How much additional pollution and damage will the proposed process generate?" or "Are you insane?". We desperately need to start talking about reality and leave these fantasies behind.

skrebbel 2y ago

> I personally don't even own or need a car This is likely due to similar "annoying" regulation in the past, eg making space for bike lanes, investing in public transit and giving it more space than cars, and so on. These all have been protested using the same kind of vibes as how you're now protesting EVs and attached bottle caps. "We can't even park by the C&A anymore! Ridiculous! Will this madness ever end?" What I'm trying to say is, when you say "boo climate policy", I read "boo progress". Is progress sometimes annoying? Sure! Is some of it ill-advised? Yeah also. (Or incorrectly billed as progress even). Is it then a better idea to just not solve problems and keep everything that's bad now, bad forever? No! It isn't! It's a completely show stopper argument. Usually with things like these, the annoyances are now, and the payoff is in the future. This holds for environmental policy just as much as bike lanes.

briandear 2y ago
What’s the exact, quantifiable payoff of tethered bottle caps? And how many degrees will the earth cool down if everyone switched to EVs? The truth is that everything related to “carbon” has no quantifiable value. It’s like tithing at a church with the hope that God smiles upon you. How many tons reduction of CO2 results in a movement of the temperature? Let’s be precise because if we are making policy on this, the public has a right to know the exact benefit. And is the cost of that less expensive than the cost of not doing it? What exactly is the cost of not doing it? I’ve been hearing for 20+ years how we are just ten years away from disaster. 10 years is just long enough that it’s a few election cycles — so the politicians pushing this nonsense are rarely accountable for being continually wrong. Nothing in Al Gore’s movie came true. Ice caps were supposed to be done by now. They aren’t. So why are we still following that religion? It’s like a modernized version of a doomsday cult: “repent or rising seas will destroy the cities with the wrath of a vengeful Climate God.” Are we allowed to question any of this? Shouldn’t someone be following the money to see who is getting rich off of this and who is enacting the policies that make those people rich? Without those numbers, how can we determine if something is “progress?” We should be focused on real pollution: chemicals in the air and water, plastics in the ocean. CO2 isn’t a poison, nor a carcinogen, nor a toxin. Why doesn’t the environmental movement unite behind banning high fructose corn syrup? Obesity in the U.S. is killing more people than climate change ever will.

dylan604 2y ago

> insulate their houses more regardless of your heating source, this is a good thing. less wood/gas burned, less electricity used. I see no downside in that. Strange argument to try to make your case.

deleted 2y ago
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switch007 2y ago
Can cause issues in older properties designed to breath plus got to be careful with air flow (even more expense for MHVW…)
9x39 2y ago
You might not see a downside if it's not your house to renovate. The problem is major home infra like heat pumps and retrofit work like extra insulation can be tremendously expensive. In the US alone, switching my gas furnace to heat pumps would easily cost $25k to match the BTU output, and that's without doing any additional insulation. Sure, being efficient sounds great, but constraints of the real world are often unforgiving and need lots of material and labor to make change, both of which are increasing in price.
- danmaz74 2y ago
  on the other hand, with better insulation you don't need the same BTU output
  - 9x39 2y ago
    That would make sense at first glance, but I was talking to my HVAC contractor and they warned me not to make that assumption. It's not easy to compare gas furnace BTUs to heat pump BTUs for both physics and issues specific to my home (and probably most homes not made in the last decade or so). It gets to -10F most winters here, but heat pumps struggle as it dips below freezing, while a gas furnace doesn't. What does that mean for heat in the colder parts of the year? Will I struggle to maintain 68F even if the BTUs are the same? This ties into my home design as well: Can I even substantially change my home's r-value the way it's built? I couldn't afford a new home when I bought my house, so I live in older housing stock - 1949, made heavily of cinder blocks with plaster and stucco around them. It didn't have ducting when built, and that was partially retrofitted in using a central furnace with limited air ducts to push heat clumsily from the center of the house into a few primary rooms using a California plenum to pull air from the foundation, connected to certain rooms through floor registers. There's no good way to fix any of these compromises short of ripping half the home apart, or just building a new one, so the least bad compromise is usually an over-specced central forced air solution. Do I get a central heat pump and air handler system with 100k peak BTUs? Do I get several mini-split units, each adding up to 100k BTUs? Do I overbuild on BTUs if I go mini-splits or multi-head? How will multiple smaller heat pumps work in winter as it freezes? Will insulating change that? I can't insulate my foundation more than the earth already does. I guess I could rip out all my plaster walls and put in drywall and high r-value insulation behind them, but at that point, maybe a new house would be more worth the effort. I think these kind of problems are endemic to the older housing stock and they're devilishly expensive to fix. Keep in mind - I have heat now. While my furnace will eventually depreciate to the point it needs replacement, to do all of this for no added functionality would be to take a new car's worth of value and gamble I might save a little on energy costs over the next 15 years. It's a dead-weight loss for me - I'm not going to recoup that on a house sale. It's not my 'forever' home, so I'm probably not going to stay more than 5 more years. (US national tenure seems to be 10-13 years.)

rqtwteye 2y ago

I am sure we can do better and revisit some misguided regulations. But in general environmental regulation is probably one of the biggest success stories of the last 60 years. I grew up when rivers were green or blue some days, the rivers were dead with an occasional dead fish floating by, going into the water was a serious health risk. The switch to EV is painful, but once people experience clean air in cities again, there is no way anybody will want to go back. I was in Mumbai a few years ago and after two days when I blew my days a pile of black stuff came down and I was short breathed. People complained about unleaded gas and catalytic filters when they introduced. Auto companies told us the world would go under. Seems ignoring them was correct and things worked out for the better

smm11 2y ago
Not related, but when Bell was broken up in the early-80s I had a grandmother who said the world was ending. Seems that break-up improved things, at least for a while.
briandear 2y ago
The problem is that regulations needn’t be all or nothing. Don’t throw stuff in rivers. Ok. Teathered bottle cap. Dumb. Then there is the whole scam of recycling: https://youtu.be/NLkfpjJoNkA https://youtu.be/NLkfpjJoNkA
- peterlada 2y ago
  Ok. But also: Earth biosphere is collapsing. Your complaint re: bottle cap: I stopped seeing caps in gutters. Your complaint re: recycling scam: a non-scam way of doing is how Netherlands does it and it imports(!) trash because it's profitable. Plastic straws can be made out of compostable plastic. And the fucking plutocracy could stop flying everywhere every day.
  - dingaling 2y ago
    > I stopped seeing caps in gutters. Do you think that people who were inclined to discard bottle caps were correctly binning their bottles? No, they were also throwing down their bottles which were more easily carried away by the rain and wind. Now, both the cap and the bottle are being washed into rivers instead of the caps being left behind. Net improvement: zero. It's a classic example of survivorship bias. It's like the headline that bottle caps were the third most common litter on beaches - because bottles, sandwiches wrappers and crisp packets had been washed out to sea.

andrepd 2y ago

>ICEs are getting banned from city centers so you need to buy an EV Why on earth you need to buy a car on a country with one of the best rail infrastructures in the world and the best bike infrastructure in the world, is beyond me. So, correction: they are banning cars from city centres, not just ICEs. As very well they should.

briandear 2y ago
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- andrepd 2y ago
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  - wkat4242 2y ago
    I was talking about Holland but I don't live there anymore, luckily. Where I live there's not so many problems. But in Holland it's given rise to the extreme right parties. I don't do bikes though. Only public transport and walking. Bikes aren't for me.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Barcelona has amazing public transport though. As long as you live within the service area of Hospitalet through Badalona. Outside of that it sucks yeah. Agreed. And yeah Montmeló is really hard to get to. I can imagine though as most people visiting the circuit are car enthusiasts.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
Do you live in the Netherlands? Because if you would, you find out that yes, there are many trains per day between the important cities. Not very efficient if you happen to live outside the main lines. The number or tracks are limited and accidents are frequent in the winter. So trains get delayed or cancelled. Not fun when you really can't miss getting to the destination on time - say from Den Haag to Schiphol. Its all fun and games when things work out, but they don't all the time. And not to mention its really really hard to return from shopping at Ikea by train. Biking, sure, fun, but not so autumn/winter/spring, especially in the areas close to the North Sea. The humidity and the wind makes the cold not very tolerable. I could go one for a while.

deergomoo 2y ago

> I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting I recognise it's a silly, tiny, small-minded thing to get hung up on, but it irritates me to no end that if I stop at McDonalds to grab a milkshake I've gotta drink it through a shitty cardboard straw that disintegrates half way through, while celebrities are flying around in private jets unimpeded.

mcphage 2y ago
If you wanted to discredit the environmental movement, I couldn’t think of a better way than forcing everyone to switch to paper straws. And as far as I’m aware, most places it wasn’t forced, it was voluntary.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  It's voluntary because it is cheap to do and looks better on your SDG checklist compared to addressing much more difficult goals.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  It was forced in the EU.
  - orwin 2y ago
    Plastic straws were outlawed, paper straw weren't pushed. The bars I go to give wooden straws, I think that's pretty nice.
    - synecdoche 2y ago
      Lucky you
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Oh. I'm starting to see a pattern here now. It's the same thing like with GDPR - the market chooses to interpret the law in the most profitable way, which turns out to be one that's nominally compliant but defeats the purpose of the law and make things worse for the customers. Why? Because a Big Law forced down by the Clueless Bureaucrats in the Great Soviet^WEuropean Union is something people are already primed to blame, making it a perfect scapegoat - the company can choose the absolute shittiest way to comply (onerous cookie banners and questionably legal consent forms, paper straws that disintegrate when you look at them), and rake in the profits, as customers won't question this choice (many won't even think there was a choice!) - they'll just assume it's the Eurocrats fucking up things for everyone because $reasons. Now I wonder where else this is already happening, too. I now realize that talking about malicious compliance with respect to GDPR was mishandling the Hanlon's Handgun. No, it's not stupidity, but it's also not malice (promoted by systemic incentives) in the sense of CEOs of the world hoping they can frustrate EU citizens into eventually voting the law away. It's simpler, more basic form of malice - it's companies knowing they can ignore what customers want or like and go straight for most profitable, no matter how frustrating or abusive, as the EU will take the blame by default, and it's so, so big, it'll take infinite amounts of it.

kevingadd 2y ago

Saying you don't want more insulation and heat pumps is weird. You like higher utility bills? I get that the up front investment for it is unpleasant, but the remedy to that is government subsidies to encourage homeowners to upgrade.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago
You're assuming the person who complained has high gas bills. Gas produces much more useful energy than a heat pump can. And the installation is much more simpler and space efficient. If heat-pumps would be at least as good most likely they would be more successful on their own and there would be no need to be forced onto people by the government because "think of the environment".
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah that's the thing. I pay about 20€ in gas per month. No way I will ever ever make back that investment. But if I still lived in Holland I'd pay more, true. Not so much more though because I've never had the heading on very high.
- tomatocracy 2y ago
  Yes. I think a good example of this is the attempt to force everyone to use CFLs c20 years ago for light. Huge step backwards in quality of light, plus for many use cases they had a higher lifetime cost and shorter lifespan. Then decent LED bulbs came along and noone needed to force anyone to do anything because the product works as a drop in replacement with lower lifetime costs in almost all relevant use cases.
kelnos 2y ago
I could replace my gas furnace with a heat pump, sure, but my utility bills would go up, not down. Gas is much cheaper than electricity here.

sho_hn 2y ago

What's sad is that the last time that people experienced significant restrictions and inconvenience - during Covid-19 lockdowns - it did move the environmental needle, but still not enough to make the 1.5C goal. So just imagine the vast gulf between the annoyances you listed and what it might take.

wkat4242 2y ago
I know. That's why it's not going to happen and why it didn't happen. I consider climate change a fait accompli.
synecdoche 2y ago
To what cost? Societies are still reeling from the consequences, for who knows how long.
- underlipton 2y ago
  Most of the "cost" (at least in the West) can be attributed to people dragging their feet on adapting to remote set-ups and the efficiencies they bring. Businessmen didn't want to do business remotely, teachers didn't want to teach remotely, event planners didn't want to do virtual events; so, they sabotaged the shift. Too bad for the collateral damage of anyone who was underserved during this period, and the environment, and everyone who benefited from their newfound accessibility.

OfficeChad 2y ago

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CalRobert 2y ago

"Well no not just because. I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting. In Holland everyone has to move away from natural gas meaning everyone has to buy hugely expensive heat pumps and insulate their houses more to deal with the lower heat output." To be fair, they're heavily subsidized and many houses can do this for under 5k. And really, insulating the frankly awful housing stock isn't a bad thing. Disclaimer: I work for a heat pump company. In city centres you don't need an EV, you need a bike. (I have two little kids and live in a car-focused Dutch town before anyone tells me that's impossible) Also, as someone who has two little kids who will rub their hands all over glasses and then stick their fingers in their mouths, I'm delighted to see lead paint falling out of use.

John23832 2y ago

> Well no not just because. I really care about the environment but it is getting a bit exhausting. In Holland everyone has to move away from natural gas meaning everyone has to buy hugely expensive heat pumps and insulate their houses more to deal with the lower heat output This is just a more contrived version of “because I don’t want to”. People were inconvenienced at the advent of seatbelts too. Removing children from the labor pool was tiring for everyone else. Arguably the only labor progressive change that didn’t inconvenience people was de-leading gasoline.