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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Get rid of your car?

A bit drastic. Avoiding driving on days when air quality is bad would also do.

That's every day in much of the world. I lived in Southeast Asia for 8 years and 9/10 days the air was unhealthy.

I recently bought an air purifier for my house and it's constantly red when used in living room that has outside windows. In other words, air quality around my house is constantly bad. By the end i moved it to an isolated room where at least we can enjoy clean air there.

Maybe consider a boxfan+furnace filter for the living room - if air quality is always bad you don't really need the sensor switching

What city? It is too generic to say "Southeast Asia". Most of it is rural. And what is meant by "unhealthy"? What measurements? I cannot believe that 90% of days were unhealthy. Why? Rainy season is never polluted -- I know from experience in Hongkong and Singapore. Once a day or more, you get a huge downpour that takes most pollution out of the air. (This is partly why Seattle fairs very well in clean air measurements... it rains so damn much. Scottish cities, too.)

Seattle's air pollution quality is so low because there's a vast ocean separating the Seattleites from the manufacturing that supplies it with new phones, appliances, furniture, clothing, building materials and just about everything from the source of the pollution.

Rain is nice, but that has very little to do with it.

The growth in moat of these countries is up so much they cant burn enough coal to keep from brown outs.

Outsourced pollution.

If you need data, just peak at a global air pollution map. Dive into the historical metrics.

Not being sarcastic, what level of effort are we talking about valuating clean local air at? Only actions that cause no inconvenience? Using monetary value of pollution related production vs health care costs?

It would be not that inconvenient to not drive for local trips but very inconvenient for longer trips? Or vice versa depending on where you live

I'm an environmentalist, and I agreed with a recommendation for the 2 stroke engine thing... but when I saw someone say 'quit smoking', it made me realize how small fries I am.

People are cooking over coal/wood around the world, that is far far far worse than everything I've read(and that doesnt include industrial pollution). (Although 2 stroke engines and their byproducts are cancer causing, so... that is still valid)

There are still areas in the USA that heat their homes with wood. I live near one, luckily just far enough away that I'm not sitting in the haze of smoke. I don't know how anyone can live in this town in the winter.

As for 2-storkes, I can't stand them, but they are still a necessary evil in many situations. I have gas and electric chainsaw. The electric doesn't compare in power and capability - but it is also my favorite, so I use it when I can. I love not smelling like 2-stroke exhaust, the electric always "starts" too. Then a larger tree dies or a dozen blow down at once and I have to break out the gas saw...

In my neighborhood, if we got to the point where there was a car in every garage instead of 2-4 cars per house, we'd be doing great.

(Also, if it stays in the garage most of the time, it doesn't really harm anyone. I think that's only common for retired people, though?)

I don't know how to price it. Most people don't really think about it that way.

Start with the lowest hanging fruit. I’ve converted all of my lawn equipment to electric. I won’t be converting my stove or furnace anytime soon since they are both less than four years old. We became a one car family and have not had any significant problems with it.

Our next vehicle will be a full electric but that will probably be another 3-5 years unless we opt to be a one ICE, one electric car family sooner.

Quite a few cars these days are electric, some of which may even be charged to a high degree by PV.

And people who drive generally have a legitimate need for one.

"Make your next car an EV" would be a better statement.

A decent amount of PM comes from tires and brake pads...

"The free vegan snacks aren't gluten free, the bastards!". Seriously, it seems that any time there is any improvement made people complain about it more than the prior much worse state.

Yeah, I see I'm being severely downvoted to the point of (dead) for speaking to the benefit of EVs in a thread about air pollution..?

As a somewhat serious cyclist (I have 4 bikes - two for the road, two for MTB), I know which kind of car I would rather ride behind. (I have gone through a number of respro filters over the years..)

I think especially in cities, people don't like the idea of replacing one problem with another.

Sure, ICE cars cause more air pollution than EVs. But things like public transit tend to create even less, since there's not a need to have one vehicle per person.

Since public transit makes so much sense in dense cities compared to EVs, I think a lot of the frustration and down votes you face are due to that issue: why replace one known evil with another, when we have much better options available??

Thanks; good response.

Yes you got to push alternatives.

But at the same time, at least 90% of the cars - and near 100% of buses - that are still going to be sold (no matter how one might wish for new cars not to be needed) should be _electric_ ones.

I live in a sprawled out city (Melbourne, AUS), where, especially if you have kids, a car is close to a darned necessity. So those cars are still going to be sold, and far too many of them are dirty gas guzzlers.

I like to walk and ride as much as possible, but after making the move to an EV myself (near 100% solar powered for half the year, then coal the other half - still way better than oil if you look at the whole CO² emission chain) it's amazing how sensitive I've gotten to petrol and diesel fumes.

We have one electric bus in my area. Absolutely awesome to see this first step. Yet a significant number of our trains are still using diesel - their fumes on that (Spencer Street) main connecting station are ridiculously toxic. There's just so much work to do..

Why do you assume that public transit produces substantially less particulate emissions than EVs? I'm sure you've smelled ICE busses before, but even if you upgrade those to electric, Electric busses are very heavy, leading to an outsized impact on road/tire/break wear: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35780985/

Subways have wear-related particulate emissions too, with the added disadvantage of them being less easy to vent: https://nyulangone.org/news/pre-covid-19-subway-air-polluted...

Specifically, the EV should probably be a cargo bike. A bucket bike can replace something like 85% of car journeys (commutes, groceries, kids to school, etc) with way lower cost, upkeep cost, and emissions, and particulates than a car. Pretty much every family should have one (and rent a car for long distance stuff).

I find a trailer to be more convenient than a cargo bike. Most of the time I don’t need it at all and when I need more capacity than it offers I recht a cargo bike.

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