Hacker News Reader

Comment by Harvey-Specter | Hacker News Reader

Really - you can't think of any solutions for heating and cooling houses without burning fossil fuels? Electric baseboard heaters have been a thing forever, just power those with solar or wind or nuclear and we're done. My air conditioner is already electric.

Drive an electric car, and buy renewable electricity.

View on HN

The problem I see though is that "drive an electric car" is interpreted all too often as "buy an electric car, and now that you're 'green', do not worry yourself about the fact that you change cars every two years and the footprint of your gas consumption is dwarfed by the footprint of actually making the cars pat self in back".

I don't think electric cars break down after two years. Maybe the battery may give problems after a while, but that should be replaceable.

I'm not implying they break down. I'm saying that people like to drive cars with "new car smell". I'm against unnecessary green-washed conspicuous consumption.

Changing cars every two years?

Here's a video I liked on the carbon costs associated w/ gas & electric cars. Check out video's sources for further reading.

https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM -- "Are Electric Cars Worse For The Environment? Myth Busted" -- Engineering Explained

Electric cars aren't worse for the environment. Consumerism is.

Indeed, buying a new electric cars like our grandfathers bought their Fords would be totally counterproductive. But I do not think we have to stop using cars to be quite sustainable - we just have to stop thinking there are only Teslas with their big battery and that everyone needs 500km of nonstop range. Speaking for my family: we currently still feel we need a 7-seat family car with a lot of range, but our second car will be replaced by an electric car with a small battery for sure, as we counted that on about 95% of the days, a 100km range will totally do. Smaller batteries make elektric cars a much more ecologic choice. And we as a society also have to stop thinking that cars have to be the big monsters they have become. We need new offerings, such as the Microlino or the Renault Twizzy.

"our second car"

Sorry, but I had to lol about that. Yeah alright, go green on your second car.

Most households have two cars, so I don't understand what you find funny about that.

Not really, no. Maybe in rural America. But in the rest of the world, it is not normal.

It's normal in suburban America and much of urban America as well, outside of the largest few cities. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it is normal here.

Fine - so I am laughing from across the pond, where it is not normal. Not in the cities.

In the cities in Europe, you don't really need a car, let alone two. From that perspective, pondering going green on a second car looks a bit funny.

That seems like a separate issue to me, the general consumerism around wanting a new car/phone/widget every year or two. For the time being though, I don't think that's necessarily a problem with electric cars. Sure, some people will sell their electric car and buy a new one every two years, but that creates a used electric car that someone who can't afford a new Tesla can buy, thus removing another ICE vehicle from the road. Of course in an ideal world we'd all drive our 1995 Honda Civics until they rust out from under us and THEN buy an electric car... but that's not realistic.

Renewable energy is not really a proven concept yet.

If it were so easy, people would already be doing it.

It's fine to work towards using more renewables, but you can't simply say "just use renewables, problems solved".

> Renewable energy is not really a proven concept yet.

What do you mean by this?

That it is not proven that you could replace all energy sources with renewable energy. Also the CO2 impact of "renewables" seems to be significant as well. So it is not a given that even with renewables, you would become CO2 neutral.

Not even mentioning other side effects (destruction of nature).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com