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> Would I like an electric car? Probably, but the economics don’t work for us. 15 years ago I estimated gas would need to be above $5/gallon for years to justify the cost of a hybrid, let alone a full EV. We got close to that in the last year, but now fuel is back around $3.50 and once again the economics don’t work.

How much is electricity there?

A few months ago I did the math [1] for all US states and DC comparing a Chevy Bolt charged at home via a normal residential circuit at 8 A to a Kia Forte driven on the highway (39 mpg).

My result was that the Bolt would cost less per mile in electricity than a Forte would in gas if G/E > 9.4, where G is the cost of gas in dollars/gallon and E is the cost of electricity in dollars/kWh.

If gas is $3/gallon, the Bolt would win if electricity is less than $0.319/kWh. If gas gets down to $2/gallon, Bolt wins in places where electricity is less than $21.3/kWh.

Going the other way, here's a table of how low gas has to be for the Forte to win for a given cost of electricity:

   E     Max G for Forte to win
  $0.15 $1.41
  $0.20 $1.88
  $0.25 $2.35
  $0.30 $2.82
  $0.35 $3.29
  $0.40 $3.76

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978950

The economics have certainly changed since we last looked (early 2010s). Not enough for me to sell my working cars, however.

Then don't do it and then there is no issue with a lack of workers either.

My point was that the lack of workers is not the problem because the article seems to suggest that.

>We put solar panels on our roof not because we love the environment or civilization or are worried about saving the planet but because it ultimately would save us money on utilities.

Who is "we"? There are plenty of people who make conscious choices to make the world a better place, because it feels good to help others and see a happier healthier society. This includes possibly futile personal choices like driving and flying less, consuming less, etc. Not everyone sees the world purely through such an economic lens.

Did the capitalist market incentivize the Civil Rights movement, for example?

We is my family with me as one of the primary decision makers.

Show me a significant percentage of the population that would throw down five figures or more for an amorphous concept of “its better for the world” without any specific benefit to themselves. The civil rights movement and even local environmentalism is definable and it’s obvious to see how capital impacts outcomes that people want.

The micro-optimization of me using switching to electric stove does not register on any discernible metric and makes my own life worse. The same would be true if every household in the country did the same thing. It would reduce emitted CO² by 0.025% for significant one time and ongoing cost. Every household.

I would argue the market did decide to support the Civil Rights movement and there was obvious benefit for minimal cost to most. Civil Rights was a bottom up movement. Electrification is extremely top down at the moment.

>The micro-optimization of me using switching to electric stove does not register on any discernible metric

Switching from a gas stove? It absolutely does register, much more so in your household air quality but also it helps deprecate fossil fuel infrastructure which can have a big effect everywhere.

Gas infrastructure is notoriously leaky. A few houses switching away from gas stoves may not do much, but a neighborhood switching would cause a bunch of pipes to be shut off and emptied, reducing baseline direct methane emissions into the atmosphere, which have an outsize effect on climate change compared to the CO2 emitted by burning of the methane in a stove. First a household, then a neighborhood, then a town, etc. and eventually all those leaky pipes get shut off.

The long-tail effects of small optimizations like that can be surprisingly significant, rarely linear, and often non-obvious.

>I would argue the market did decide to support the Civil Rights movement and there was obvious benefit for minimal cost to most. Civil Rights was a bottom up movement.

Yes, it was definitely a bottom-up movement, resisted by the market and political establishment vehemently, until the cost of protest and other disruption made resistance no longer viable.

Similarly, big players in the fossil fuel industry are still fighting any attempts at change. We can work to hold them accountable via institutions while still trying to make small changes on a personal level.