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Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

That’s the worst part of the AI race and “clean” electric cars. Behind the scenes the destruction they cause is more than you can imagine.

We think electric cars and GPUs are pushing us ahead. But in reality we are driving the wedge in deeper.

I’m afraid where we end up is like James Hansen said about fossil fuels, but relevant in general, with a "different, practically uninhabitable planet" by triggering a "low-end runaway greenhouse effect."

The only way to actually stop the destruction is if we slow down mining and learn to do more with what we have already mined. To make what we already consumed reusable and stop mining altogether if possible. For fossil fuels, and the rare earth minerals destroying fresh water and food supplies and air quality.

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Electric cars are helping, but maybe not as much one can be lead to believe. The biggest danger about them is possibly that people may believe they are a big step forward. They are an important but rather small step forward.

Electric cars will reduce demand for gasoline. Some people say this won't affect how much oil is pumped out of the ground, because we still need the other fractions.

That's not exactly the case though - gasoline is effectively now subsidizing the heavier fractions. When that changes, heavier fractions will also be more expensive.

How that will affect demand for crude, I'm not equipped to tell.

The most interesting things about electric cars may be if they transform how our grid works, from baseload to (much more) spot-market.

I thought the fractions were relatively straightforward to convert to balance demand? I don't really have good intuition for the economics of it though.

Technology wise, sure. But I can imagine it could take a lot of effort to convert all refineries. And I think it’s much easier to crack heavier fractions than to combine lighter hydrocarbons to heavier?

If I understand correctly, we want more gasoline than the natural fraction in petroleum. So refineries "crack" longer molecules to create shorter ones, increasing the amount of gasoline.

I'm not sure if that's the gasoline subsidizing the heavier fractions. It might be the other way around. There would be more heavier fractions available if we didn't crack them, and therefore they'd be cheaper.

That still requires changes to the refineries, but even so, when the cracking is eventually turned off, the same mechanism remains.

Is this satire? With the username, I’m unsure. I don’t know why anyone would mention GPUs and AI in the same context as electric vehicles.

Mining isn’t a huge source of greenhouse emissions. It’s not good for the local environment, but it’s necessary. Recycling and reuse is also a grand idea, you’re right about that. Except for plastics, which never made sense.

Electric cars are unequivocally a good thing. Every electric car takes a fossil fuel guzzling car off the road. Once a family has an electric car they tend to use it whenever possible, making the effect even more pronounced. Some people float the ridiculous argument that they emit more greenhouse gases in manufacturing and mining than they save over their lifetime. Firstly, gasoline cars also cost energy to manufacture and gasoline also takes energy to extract and refine and transport. Secondly, electric cars break even within the first few years of use. Even in todays world where the electric grid still has a lot of fossil fuel generation.

Not sure they are unequivocally good — maybe if we had the option between electric cars, and no cars, no cars might be preferable. But that is not the world we live in. Among the options we actually have, electric cars seem to be one of the least bad picks.

Exactly.

That’s not the world you used or chose to live.

In 30 years we are going to look back at all the "unequivocally good" electric family cars and wish we'd used the materials and energy on civilizational resilience, not to temporarily extend the unsustainable habits of the planet's richest minority

Electric vehicles can be a good thing if we also dramatically reduce our consumption of transportation and bring our political systems, lifestyles and economies in harmony with planetary boundaries. Without a corresponding sea change in expectations and way of life, they just dig us deeper into the energy trap.

You act like cars are a luxury good used for joy riding. Transportation is necessary. I’m all for mass transit, and making cities more walkable and friendly to cycling. That’s complementary.

But cars are still necessary, and that’s not about to change.

Electric cars are a luxury good. The people buying new EVs are not the same people struggling to break even with 2 jobs. Many of the people struggling to break even are putting extra miles on their older ICE vehicles to deliver meals or groceries to the Tesla owners.

We need to make cars less necessary for life. It's not an easy task, but it's a question of priorities. Do we care more about convenience in the near term, or prospects for life in the long term?

Plus, if you already have an older ICE car that works perfectly fine, isn't it better to keep driving it (in terms of carbon emission and other environmental impacts from mining, production, distribution and disposal), than to swap it with a new electric one?

Yes, but is that a problem? Usually you sell your ICE, you don’t trash it when you buy an EV.)

Yes if we want to reduce total consumption of polluting resources. Depends on each person's circumstance, if you need to drive then it's better to keep using your old car but use it as little as possible and look for opportunities to replace trips with walking, cycling, public transport, etc. Rather than buying a new EV but still driving everywhere even for short trips.

I mean, is it more of a problem than trashing an ICE car when buying a new ICE car? It's better to use an old ICE than buying a new ICE car, too.

I think so from the bottom of my heart and try to live by it.

No, because you don’t scrap it, you sell it. That reduces the demand for new cars.

Like I said, both are necessary and complementary. Electric vehicles don’t suddenly make alternative transportation a bad idea.

Also there’s budget electric cars, and even Uber drivers purchase them. While I agree that they’re not that affordable yet, they’re not a luxury good either (although some models definitely are.)

> In 30 years we are going to look back at all the "unequivocally good" electric family cars and wish we'd used the materials and energy on civilizational resilience, not to temporarily extend the unsustainable habits of the planet's richest minority

EVs are key to “civilizational resilience”, when combined with the sharp increase in solar and renewable energy that we’re also going through.

Fantasizing about telling all of society to stop going places isn’t realistic. The future doesn’t have to be miserable to also be sustainable.

Sustainable food production is key. Fresh water availability is key. Electric cars are a necessity for no one. EVs and renewable energy sources are being sold to us as a comprehensive solution when they are just a small part of any realistic approach to the ecological challenges we face.

I think EVs can have beneficial second order effects. I’ll take some progress over no progress.

(But currently we aren’t even slowing down the coming “train crash”, we are merely decreasing the acceleration into the wall of food shortages and other horrors.)

Agreed. The problem is it's too easy to look at electrification efforts, pat ourselves on the back, and stop there.

This is so naive, I don’t know where to start.

Fresh water is not that big of a deal, it’s plentiful and cheap in most places. Desalination works really well, look at Israel.

Cars are required for most people to live their lives and make a living. I don’t know how you expect we’ll just magically do without.

This is so naive I don't know where to start.

> Fresh water is not that big of a deal, it’s plentiful and cheap in most places. Desalination works really well, look at Israel.

Half of the United States is in a more or less permanent water crisis which will get worse every passing year if we don't dramatically change use patterns. Not to mention the rest of the world. Desalination works, but it's energy- and materials-hungry. Energy is not getting any more abundant unless we have a breakthrough massively raising the sinking cap on civilizational EROI, e.g. fusion.

> Cars are required for most people to live their lives and make a living. I don’t know how you expect we’ll just magically do without.

Cars have been around for a little over a century. Somehow we managed before that. Even now, there are only 1.5 billion cars on the planet. Most human beings alive today do not have access to a car. I wonder how they do it?

Speaking as someone who grew up in Houston and then moved to France - a society that depends on cars as the only method of transportation is, at least in my opinion, much more miserable than one that can be lived in car-free.

You're right that a sustainable future doesn't have to miserable.

The US has painted itself into a corner here. When you put yourself in a few trillion dollars of infrastructure debt building around 'cars are king'. What is going to be miserable is attempting to service that debt while moving to a more manageable society.

> Mining isn’t a huge source of greenhouse emissions.

Heh ??! Mining is a huge source of GHG, especially if you count scope 3 (you should): https://www.mining-technology.com/features/cop26-scope3-net-...

> Within mining, scope 1 and 2 emissions account for 4%-7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This rises to 28% of global emissions however when accounting for scope 3

Scope three isn’t mining. Calling it mining is really playing fast and loose with words.

Smelting and processing of raw materials is a big source of GHG.

Most of scope 2 and 3 emissions go away if you decarbonize the electric grid though.

> Scope three isn’t mining

Absolutely, but that’s not what I said neither the article I link. Is talks about the emissions of mining itself and the scopes associated of that activity. It’s not mining within another activity scope.

The conclusion is basically : scope 1 and 2 emissions of mining itself is quite small compare to its scope 3 emissions. The reason is mining activity uses a HUGE quantity of steel which -in this context- produce a lot of GHG.

> Most of scope 2 and 3 emissions go away if you decarbonize the electric grid though.

I guess you talk about derived goods “we” consume away from the mines… so your assomption of scope 2 is true but as stated in the article a linked, the mining part of our scope 3 will largely more benefit of decarbonizing the steel industry (the grid won’t have much effect). But guess what ? That’s (very) expensive and the only ones that cares are some smart Norwegians.

EVs, while undeniably more efficient, seem very good at abstracting the costs away from the end user. Pair this with autonomy that reduces friction but has its own associated costs and I'm afraid that the increase in use will eclipse the gains in efficiency, leading to a Jevon's Paradox where the overall consumption increases.

The costs of cars and oil are already thoroughly abstracted away.

> abstracting the costs away from the end user.

The vast majority of costs are already abstracted away. When you drive to work, do you think about the massive environmental cost of all the concrete and steel that went into building the roads and bridges that you drive over?

Yet those costs, which nobody talks about, are of similar scale to the environmental costs of all cars.

I think that goes to the parent's point: making the individual cars more efficient is not going to make a difference in the big picture. For one, the increase in efficiency has really already been met by an increase in power and performance - even the humble Prius has made an effort at faster 0-60, not to mention the sub-3-second super-SUVs.

But if driving a car is cheaper (and more fun) then we are doomed to dedicate more land to asphalt, and all the hidden costs thereof.

This is why every serious plan for reducing transportation emissions also includes a significant decrease in Vehicle Miles Traveled. It’s not enough to keep driving everywhere, but in electric cars instead.

Jevons paradox doesn't make sense in the context of purely competitive products. If it were, the effect would be expected to be the same for gas powered cars unless they were somehow prohibitively more expensive, which they are not.

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