Comment by lumb63 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumb63 | Hacker News Reader

Some of what the author says is accurate. Carbon offset credits are bunk. Industrial agriculture is harmful. There are environmental issues to a lot of the “greening” practices. There are issues around how equitably the climate change revolution is going to impact different demographics.

Some of what the author says is false. Consumer choices do make a difference. I work in climate tech and the product my company produces monitors electricity usage in the home. The average user reduces their home electricity usage by 7% in the first month, solely due to becoming aware of what they are using. Residential electricity usage is something like 45% of electricity usage here in the states, I believe. That’s huge progress due to consumer choice.

Electric vehicles are progress. There are companies developing new ways to extract lithium that do not destroy the environment as much as brining does. As where ICEs inherently must pollute (good luck having combustion without emitting CO2), electric power has the ability to become renewable and green. Oil companies are a hundred years ahead and have governments in their pockets, subsidies, and well-established infrastructure in place already. If renewable energy were in that position, there would be no contest in what was more eco-friendly.

Calling for “reparative justice” is another fear-mongering, divide-and-conquer strategy. The proper path forward IMO is capturing externalities so they can be incorporated into the existing economic framework. That’s what drives behavior of companies. I’m talking about putting a price on carbon. I’m talking about taxing land use at different rates for agricultural operations based on the type of agriculture being done. Imagine how quickly companies would change their behaviors if they had to pay the full price of what their fossil fuel usage or monoculture farming costs us collectively.

> The proper path forward IMO is capturing externalities so they can be incorporated into the existing economic framework.

I totally agree! No way China should be able to have price advantages due to lack of manufacturing pollution control. And Mexico makes engine blocks for the north because of the difficulty of getting environmental approval for foundries in the north.

Pollution parity import tariffs will level the playing field and allow low-polluting factories to compete with the high polluting areas that are harming everyone.

> change their behaviors if they had to pay the full price

The imported igadgets and solar panels and baby rockers will be more expensive. If we manufacture at home we can even reduce usage of energy for transporting things from China.

That is the only way forward. The only problem is the Fed fighting a “war” with inflation. If they would just accept inflation as the necessary evil and impose tariffs on every polluting import, both the economy and citizens of the West would be much better off. Many more jobs would be created and and the competition for labor would keep driving compensation. After 10 years just denominate the dollar and all problems solved.

> The proper path forward IMO is capturing externalities so they can be incorporated into the existing economic framework.

C.f. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

in which there is an extended discussion of the way that meat production has become dramatically more efficient over the last 30 years but the low price that supposedly reflects this can more accurately be said to be due to new externalities that the industry created (and does not charge the consumer for at the transaction point).

Klein does a good opening monologue about the importance of prices in a capitalist economy, and that while low prices are typically a good thing, they must reflect the true cost of the thing being paid for.

> I work in climate tech and the product my company produces monitors electricity usage in the home. The average user reduces their home electricity usage by 7% in the first month, solely due to becoming aware of what they are using.

What product is that? I'd like to learn more

“Electric vehicles are progress… has the potential to become renewable”

How do you contradict yourself so quickly and not see it?

Our electric cars aren’t using “renewable energy” (what a shifty term). They’re using oil being converted to electric energy (at a cost of losing some of the efficiency)

Maybe someday these cars will use energy purely generated from the sun or wind, but given the volume of cars in the planet Im suspicious we’ll ever generate that much. This ignores a growing population where each year we collectively consume more and more

Fusion would be a way to do it, or even fission, but for some reason we can’t consider fission and we don’t put nearly enough money into researching fusion

Where I live the great majority of electricity generation is renewable. Switching from internal combustion to EV is absolutely a net positive.

And where you live is no doubt a minority use case for the global situation. Right?

Almost nobody generates electricity from oil in significant quantities.

OP probably meant fossil fuels in general (gas/oil/coal).

All 3 have very different impact on CO2 emissions.

Even in Poland - the coal capital of Europe - EVs lifetime co2 emissions are now lower than ICEs.

> They’re using oil being converted to electric energy

Classic conservative talking point. The next bit after this is "let's do nothing, gas burning cars are the future!". Anyone who actually wants to think for real about what the energy usage of an electric vehicle in their area is can refer to the EPA's Power Profiler: https://www.epa.gov/egrid/power-profiler#/

If you're in California, about half is gas. The other half is primarily nuclear, solar, wind and hydro. Transmission losses from power plant to home, and home to charged battery, are 10-20%; but then, electric drivetrains lose much less to efficiency than gas drivetrains. At the end of the day, emissions from driving an electric are better pretty much anywhere in the world; and in most places, massively better.

I think saying that electric "has the potential to become renewable" is quite reasonable. It'll certainly take a lot of time and isn't a certainty, but the generation mix is probably, all in all, an easier problem than the emissions from manufacturing batteries.

This is wrong on so many levels. Just adding regenerative braking and using a larger, more efficient steam turbine pays for the extra embodied CO2 in an EV in about 200 charges (out of 5000 or so an LFP battery lasts). After that the EV is producing under half the emissions even running on pure coal burnt in a subcritical plant delivered over an inefficient third world grid.

As of 7 months ago 13% of annual world electricity generation over the preceding year was wind and solar (and this goes up several percent a year), a little under 10% is nuclear and 15% is hydro. Along with minor renewable resources like landfill gas (distinct from wood biomass which should not be included) fossil fuels are under 60%.

Anyone in Brazil or Norway or one of many othernplaces has about two orders of magnitude less marginal emissions.

The amount of sunlight that hits a car over an average december day in Ireland could move it further than 80% of people drive. It's not yet possible to gather most of it, but in 80% of the world >90% of grid powered charging by covering one of the places the car parks on the regular with PV and buffering a day's power in a battery 10% the size of the car's.

> How do you contradict yourself so quickly and not see it?

where is the contradiction? yes, switching to an electric car when its oil converted to electricity isn't much better but it still represents progress because it creates incentive for an electrical supply chain that can take inputs from things other than oil. The idea is that it creates an opening for renewables to take a foothold where ice presented a blockade.

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