Comment by audunw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by audunw | Hacker News Reader

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Good points.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think the CO2 emissions associated with EVs matter at all. Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. To reach that goal, we need all vehicles to be pure BEVs (approximately.. some ICE on biofuels/e-fuel could work, but it’s not sustainable on a large scale), materials must be near 100% recycled, and whatever mining is done most be done with electric equipment. To get there, the hard requirement is that we need to mine a certain amount of battery materials and build a certain amount of EV infrastructure. Hybrids contribution to this is mainly that they have some batteries, so they drive battery development and material production. Plug-in hybrids help drive EV infrastructure to a small degree. But nothing is better than just going pure BEV. The small short term CO2 emission gains that might be had with hybrids could easily be outweighed by the long term increased emissions associated with delaying the progression to a 100% renewable 100% carbon neutral ecosystem. But I won’t fault anyone from buying hybrids. Pushing for a more aggressive transition needs to be a policy decision. If hybrid makes more sense than EV from economic or practical point for you then that’s what you should go for.

> Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%.

I don't think most people would want to live in the world where you've cut emissions by 100%.

Even making a bicycle emits some amount of emissions. Making a PV panel emits GHG emissions. Having a pet emits GHG emissions.

As the parent says, the goal is to have NET 0 emissions. Certainly some emissions will still occur but they need to be small enough to be offset by CO2 removal. Because it is almost always much easier to prevent emissions rather than remove CO2, preventing 100% emission from cars and their production is likely to be best path to NET 0.

Cutting emissions by 100% and being net zero are two different things. Emitting a bunch of GHG and then buying carbon offsets is radically different from never actually emitting GHG. And the parent never says "net", it says cut emissions 100%. You're reading words that aren't there.

If you wanted to cut emissions 100%, you would stop making cars. You would stop making busses. You would stop building roads. You would stop building trains. You would ground every plane. You would stop every boat. You would no longer have AC, you would no longer have refrigerators.

why? if you have power from other than fossil fuels, that power can be used to do anything that you would use fossil fuels for.

Fossil fuels aren't 100% of GHG emissions. It's a large percentage, yes, but not 100%. So sure, you've cut 90% or whatever, but not 100%. You're still probably using virgin plastics somewhere, still making concrete, still making asphalt, still making steel, still need refrigerants, etc.

Isn't the real goal negative emissions? We're well past safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

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