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Comment by bni | Hacker News Reader

Doing something, I mean really doing something, requires changing our culture.

Future generations, if there are ones, will look back at this time and see that we have an oil burning culture. Everything we eat, where we live, fossil fuels have been used to produce and maintain it. If it only was cars that was the problem we would easily solve it.

To make a real change a Total War economy would have to be implemented, with the sole function of combating climate change. No-one wants to even start suggesting that because there would be so much inconvenience and angry people.

Since the effects are only a minor inconvenience yet, for people in the developed world, its much easier to do nothing. Some deny there is a problem, others acknowledge it, but put it on the back of their minds mostly (I'm in this category). The effect is the same. Politicians follow the path of least resistance, that is how they are elected.

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Doing something, I mean really doing something, requires changing our culture.

I'm not sure it's so dire as that. Taking the US as an example (numbers from https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...), the largest source of greenhouse gases is transportation at 29%. A real push to switch to electric cars could have a significant impact without significantly changing the way people live their lives. If presented correctly, people could see it as a net benefit: no longer going out of your way to find a gas/petrol station, you just plug in at home and have a full "tank" every morning.

The next largest source is electricity production (27%). Again, a major push towards green energy would benefit from strong leadership, but it wouldn't impact our culture very much. It makes little difference whether the electricity comes from a coal power station or solar power combined with grid storage as long as my TV turns on.

The next chunk is industry (22%). Most of this is actually for power generation again, so see electricity generation above.

Only now do we get to residential and commercial uses at 12% (mostly heating). Only here are we starting to impact the little people in a big way, and I would argue that even then, changing out my furnace for a heat pump is not going to have a big impact on how I live my life.

A real push to switch to electric cars already pushes certain types of people to drive bigger trucks and pollute more brazenly, e.g. "Rolling Coal" which I've witnessed first hand in my very liberal college town. Culture is very complicated and you will always get push back.

Furthermore, switching out the 200+ million cars in USA to electric vehicles is not going to help emissions because of the carbon footprint of newly manufactured vehicles.

The idea that providing each citizen with a personal 1000 pound supply of lithium ion will save the climate is bananas.

I agree that swapping out coal for wind and solar could be done without much change to culture but solar panel production isn't carbon free either, what we really need to do is use way, way less electricity per person, and its almost impossible to convince people to sacrifice for their future.

As far as my suggestions: cash-for-clunkers program except with lifetime public transit passes instead of cash. Melt down the ICE vehicles for their aluminum and build lots of trains. This would be justice for the 1920s-40s when all of our electric trains were melted down to build tanks and bombs.

For the haters that say trains don't work in USA, I refer you to the 1913 Illinois Interurban railway map [1] where you could pay a nickel to hop on a 20-60mph trolley to the next town over.

Use those same train lines to move mail and food from the farmland it passes through.

Stop eating imported food, stop sending food roundtrip to China for processing before shipping it back to the store [2]

Stop building houses that need to be heated and cooled artificially year round because they have no notion of solar gain or heat mass.

I could go on...but business as usual will keep destroying the environment that keeps us alive.

[1] https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/txu-oclc-64454...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26...

Why discount EVs if you’re listing energy efficient new housing stock?

EVs are not a car someone is getting who wasn’t otherwise getting a car. It’s not a question of “let’s build 100 million EVs” but rather, since we are building 100 million vehicles, as many of them as possible should be EVs.

Keep in mind that in order to achieve meaningful results it’s going to cost a lot of money. That means asking people to pay more, perhaps significantly more, for items, or in taxes, to cover that cost.

Increasing costs is not just a theoretical hand wavey “oh the rich will pay” effect. It’s a “pushing more people below the poverty line” kind of effect.

The idea that we should be using way less electricity per person is also I think missing the point entirely. Electricity per person is a good proxy for productivity which is a good proxy for wealth of a nation. Reducing energy use is putting the whole country on a diet, and shrinking GDP would cause more pain and suffering than climate change in the short term. The solution doesn’t lie in that approach.

In fact we should be using significantly more electricity per person, to offset the reduced amount of fossil fuel consumption.

Electricity generation & supply needs to get highly renewable and a lot cheaper. That is already the trend and we will get there over the next 20 years. Once the retail cost for generation and supply is reliably below $0.05/kWh you have effectively priced out most uses of fossil fuels. If electricity stays expense then I just heat my house with natural gas and keep driving my ICE vehicle.

Your “rolling coal” example is prescient, although perhaps not for the reason you think. These are people who have been asked to make basically zero personal sacrafice at all (maybe they chipped in $1.00 toward the EV tax credits) who still feel threatened by EVs. Rolling coal is not a strike against EVs it’s the perfect example of how important it is to find efficient solutions that don’t undercut members of our society, and why EVs are such a great solution.

"Reducing energy use is putting the whole country on a diet, and shrinking GDP would cause more pain and suffering than climate change in the short term."

this really seems to be the root of the matter. unfortunately the wording isn't completely clear.

are you saying that we'd have to accept some economic discomfort in the short term to mitigate some serious long term issues? that seems like a tradeoff worth discussing.

or are you saying that the consequences of economic contraction are so dire that we'd better just learn to deal with the environmental consequences. maybe we can find some market solutions (i.e. shifting to electricity) that reduce emissions somewhat without harming whats really important.

I didn't mean to imply that it would be cheap or easily or that we shouldn't push for cultural changes. I only meant to point out that there is a lot of low hanging fruit that does not require significant cultural changes.

I agree with most of this post, while I feel it may be hand-waving away from of the details.

For example,

>changing out my furnace for a heat pump is not going to have a big impact on how I live my life

A heat pump is a significant investment which would put the majority of American families into financial turmoil. There needs to be much larger government incentive for these units, for reducing this 12% of emissions to be viable.

They are more expensive to buy and set up but should save money in operating costs. So just offering special loans for heat pumps (low interest) could give them a huge boost.

Indeed, the heat pump is a significant investment. My point, however, is that you can start addressing 75-80% of CO2 emissions before you get to that point.

Edit: all of these things are expensive and require strong leadership, but strong leadership is what the original comment was talking about.

>Doing something, I mean really doing something, requires changing our culture.

It could have already started by respecting the Paris agreement.

In this regard, the US decision to go out of the agreement, to protect the american way of life etc, can be considered as belonging to the same category than crimes against humanity.

How can US people have tolerated this desision ? I mean, from my place, I didn't see a lot of protest.

Such a shame.

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