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Comment by brikym | Hacker News Reader

If the US wants to do something about energy they should stop the perverse tax incentives driving the proliferation of oversized vehicles which also happen to be unsafe for pedestrians due to the huge front ends. YouTuber FortNine even managed to fit his body inside the engine bay of one of these things. But nope, light bulbs it is! Straight out of the CIA field sabotage manual: "Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw." Think about that next time you're waiting for your restricted faucet to fill a bucket.

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> If the US wants to do something about energy they should stop the perverse tax incentives driving the proliferation of oversized vehicles which also happen to be unsafe for pedestrians due to the huge front ends.

Agreed 100%, for energy and especially urban livability concerns.

For energy in particular, an even more effective stroke will be to finally begin scaling back our empire; the US military carbon footprint is an absolute shame.

Exactly. Squeeze a few drops of energy efficiency out of consumers so that you can chalk up a win without having to try and fight the producers. Anyone care to break down the comparison of carbon reduction from this energy savings vs the carbon emissions from the world’s dirtiest 100 cargo ships?

Our Taylor Swifts Tour’s Jet pollution?

https://x.com/tvan123456/status/1782431987992555601?s=46

Wow I was waiting for it to end. This map is just the tip of the iceberg since the fans must have collectively travelled millions of miles to be at the events.

Even more energy intensive than oversized individual vehicles is spread out living, and it has to be by a multiple since spread out living has a knock on effect on all other aspects of life.

Apartments for everyone, and no detached single family homes would be far more energy saving than basically all other energy saving measures combined. Well, I guess except for reducing the population itself.

> Apartments for everyone, and no detached single family homes

You've described my hell.

> Well, I guess except for reducing the population itself.

Perhaps the population will decrease from the crime and depression of being crammed into a city where you can't see the stars at night, nor hear the wildlife by day, and there's no such thing as silence anymore.

The purpose of my comment is to point out that we all like consuming energy and carbon emissions, and that too much energy or carbon emissions is always consumed by someone else. So is a 5k sq ft lot too much to live on? A 10k sq ft lot? 20k?

In order of impact, reducing energy consumption/carbon emissions on individual level is

0) suicide 1) not having children 2) having a smaller earth surface area footprint 3) traveling less 4) buying less material things, including smaller vehicles in which to travel

At the end of the day, we can’t escape basic physics. Energy = mass * acceleration * distance. The less mass and the less distance you move the mass, the less energy you consume and hence less carbon emissions you produce.

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