Comment by jsingleton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsingleton | Hacker News Reader

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You can do a lot in your own life that will also save you money. I won't go into too much detail because, as you note, this has a small effect unless lots of people do it. But some simple ideas that are cheap and boring.

- Eat less meat or cut it out fully (or at least not every day)

- Fly less and use long distance trains where you can

- Insulate your property to reduce energy use

- Ride a bicycle and take public transport rather than drive (or get an EV)

- Install solar power / battery storage / heat pumps

- Switch energy supplier to a green provider

However, to be effective beyond that you need to do things that scale and have a multiplying effect or bootstrap/kickstart a virtuous circle. This should be a familiar principle for the startup crowd on HN. Some simple ideas:

- Write about your experiences in green living online

- Get a job in a green industry (lots of them need developers)

- Help others get jobs in green industries

- Invest in green companies (crowd funding etc.)

- Divest from fossil fuel (pension choices etc.)

- Join a community group and donate your time / skills

For example, I help run a community group called Cleanweb UK and we have a free jobs site (https://cleanwebjobs.com) that tries to get tech workers into jobs that help fight climate change. Friends of the Earth often run hackathons.

You could also make tools to help people who are trying to reduce their carbon impact. For example, I built https://shutdownscanner.com to help office managers measure how many computers are left on when not in use. There are many opportunities to build tools that assist in demand shifting and other green data based systems.

As far as I'm aware flying generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than any either trains, cars or buses over long distances. (At least in the US, where our rail infrastructure is freight-centric and diesel powered.) The argument against flying is that the greenhouse gas emissions end up high up, which could contribute to the greenhouse gas effect. However, long distance passenger trains in the US reduce the freight capacity of railroads, and the railroad is vastly more efficient than tractor-trailers when it comes to freight transport. This holds true even if the freight is transported in the relatively-un-aerodynamic intermodal container.

A solo ride in a car could be worse than a full plane on a cross country trip. But a train or bus is typically(there may be some edge cases) going to be much better than an airplane.

Also, long distance passenger trains absolutely do not reduce freight transport. They lease the the use of the tracks which provides additional income to the freight carriers and the freight carriers have right of way at all times on the tracks. On top of that the Northeast Coast(Washington, DC and north) lines in the US are electric.

Did you just randomly make this stuff up? It is completely false information.

>Did you just randomly make this stuff up? It is completely false information.

You are the one who is misinformed. Railroad operators are required to give access to Amtrak as part of a deal that allowed them to cancel long-distance passenger service. They would much rather not give access to Amtrak in the first place. Furthermore Amtrak is supposed to have priority over freight trains, however Amtrak is at the mercy of the dispatchers of the railroad whose lines they are travelling over.

The Northeast corridor is completely owned by Amtrak. Outside of that area, there are no electrified long distance passenger services in the United States. Outside of the Northeast corridor, flying is a much greener option than taking a train.

> The Northeast corridor is completely owned by Amtrak.

To quote the Boston Globe "Under an agreement signed in 2003, Amtrak has used, maintained, and dispatched trains on the Attleboro line — the MBTA tracks between Boston and the Rhode Island line — for free."[0]

[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/18/mbta-seek-penal...

Seriously, stop it. You are just making stuff up. Why are you doing that?

Whether the Northeast corridor is entirely or primarily owned by Amtrak is inconsequential.

The MBTA is a transit line. It's also in the Northeast Corridor, which, as I've already established, is quite different than the majority of the country. I assume you are from the northeast, so I understand your confusion regarding the status of Amtrak in the rest of the nation. In the majority of the country, Amtrak travels on rails owned by the railroads, and the railroads are very much not fond of passenger rail. They are forced to provide access to Amtrak as part of the agreement that allowed them to discontinue revenue passenger service. The railroads were obligated to provide revenue passenger service as part of a bail out in teh early 20th century.

I read your link and it literally has no bearing on anything I just said, because of the aforementioned fact that it is in the Northeast Corridor. Furthermore the agreement was signed in 2003, which has nothing to do with anything I am talking about. Third, the Northeast sucks for rail freight because the loading gauge is so small compared to the rest of the country, and population density is higher, so passenger rail is comparatively better there than elsewhere.

Your superior knowledge on the subject is merely illusory. I suggest you do some research into the history of passenger rail in the United States. I'm sure you are intelligent, but your attitude sucks. Here's some stuff to get you going:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railroads_eligible_to_...

http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/-hiltonamtrack... (warning, pdf)

Railroads took Amtrak to court over passenger rail scheduling (this article also gives a bit of a rundown of the conflict):

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060008220

This is like saying that you can help avoid another financial meltdown like 2008 by not taking out mortgages on homes you can't afford... And by divesting from AIG.

While in some sense, this is technically correct, it does not actually address the problem.

Much as with the financial crisis, what we have here is a case of the 80/20 rule - or rather, the 99.99980/0.00020 rule. 0.00020% of the people have almost all the power to combat global warming. (They aren't using it.)

> - Insulate your property to reduce energy use

I'm evaluating how to improve this small, isolated facet. Foamed glass blocks and sheets are really great insulation, but are currently prohibitively expensive for working and middle class to acquire in massive quantities (sufficient to reach and even exceed PassivHaus standards). However, if one is willing to accept lower efficiency end-product (made up for with thicker walls), extremely long, labor-intensive manufacturing times, and gradually add to insulation over years, it looks like it is feasible to build a backyard concentrated solar power kiln (only about 1,300 degrees C required, so not too many heliostats) and make one's own foamed glass insulation.

A minor benefit is the process requires a small amount of carbon, so while coal dust is usually specified, it might be possible to turn this process into a very minor carbon sink using other sources of solar-thermal-powered manufactured carbon.

You also need a machine that crushes glass into chunks, and can also crush into a powdery form called cullet. Make those solar electric-powered, and you have a process that can easily last a generation or two, making highly useful insulation the entire time there is plentiful sunshine out of your neighborhood's glass waste stream.

Aesthetically though, this kind of insulating is a difficult sell to mainstream developed world sensibilities: you need 2-3 feet thick walls and ceilings filled with this insulation, and about 10 feet in the sub-slab or pier foundation, to reach the American equivalent of R-90 all-around, for example. PassivHaus requires a lot less, but they are evaluating on net economic benefit across 30 years max while I don't mind a multi-generation payback if the result is an energy footprint that is in the single digit percentages of even "green" houses today.

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