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Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of this seems to be like that Ralph kid from The Simpsons; "I'm helping!" Well-intentioned? Absolutely. Actually helpful? Meh.

At one company I worked for someone suggested that we should all stop using metaphors linked to cars and internal combustion engines, to stop normalizing these things and help fight climate change. And look, I don't like this car-centric design; I don't even have a driving license. But how does this stop climate change? "I'm helping!"

This was shot down pretty hard by the CEO and pretty much everyone else by the way.

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Cars and the transportation sector are the primary consumers of oil. I think GP was saying, stop pointing at the oil company while you’re driving around in your car.

We should be pointing out the car centric transportation systems we have and work to fix them. We shouldn’t be encouraging things like suburban sprawl that increases car dependence. Reduce car usage, and you will reduce oil consumption.

Yes, that's true

But consumer vehicles are a tiny percentage of our actual overall consumption

Yes we can and should reduce our usage here, but it needs to be in addition to other much bigger and important changes (which don't get talked about enough)

Light-duty passenger vehicles are 15% of primary energy use. They are not a "tiny percentage", they are in fact the second-largest category (after manufacturing).

15% might not technically be "tiny", sure, but that means there's a remaining 85% of energy being used in other areas, which is large enough to still supports GP's sentiment/point, IMO.

Not sure where this idea comes from that cars are a “small percentage”, but here’s what I could find: “light-duty vehicles (cars, small trucks, vans, sport utility vehicles, and motorcycles) 54.2%” of energy usage in the transportation sector of the US. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/transportation-fuels

> ... energy usage in the transportation sector of the US.

Climate change isn't limited to one country.

Additionally, you're also mis-quoting your source. According to your link, only "about 28% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2021 was for transporting people and goods from one place to another". The 54.2% you're citing is the percentage of light-duty vehicles that make up that 28% of energy use. In other words, only ~15% of energy usage in the US is from light-duty vehicles.

The reason I highlighted the % of transportation that’s personal vehicles is to make it clear how much impact it has on the overall usage. 15% of total consumption is not a small percentage by any means, at least not by my estimation of small.

I don't think it's "tiny" as OP mentioned, sure, but to my mind (and as I mentioned in another comment), that leaves a remaining 85%. 85% is a portion that I'd be comfortable using the word "most" for - eg, most of the energy usage in this country comes from sources other than light-duty vehicles. I think that's the point OP was making, word choice (eg, "tiny") aside.

There’s a good opportunity for those other use cases as many of them are centrally located and so with investment that could be in the form of government subsidies (if they could every agree on anything) to upgrade factories and utilities, etc. And at 85% utilization, you’re correct that it’s a big opportunity.

That 15% is in the USA, a country that has largely shipped it's manufacturing overseas.

Globally it's estimated to be a smaller percentage overall, although it does seem that it still is closer to 10% according to this: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport/cars-and-vans

So yes, maybe it's not "tiny".

My point still stands, I think. We are focusing much more than 10-15% of our overall efforts on optimizing a slice that doesn't seem like it will contribute improvements relative to our efforts

> I think GP was saying, stop pointing at the oil company while you’re driving around in your car.

No, because it's not about passenger cars. How do you think the supermarket gets stocked? And how do you think the food gets grown? And how did that laptop you're using go from raw materials to the laptop?

Whether you like it or not, oil is needed for damn near everything. "Oil companies" really aren't the problem here; they're not forcing anyone to buy oil. The problem is the entire modern economy runs on oil in all sorts of ways, and actually changing that requires a much more wholistic solution than "zomg Microsoft does business with Big Oil!"

Seems like anyone living in society has no right to criticise things society consumes.

You logic is self defeating. Restricting supply of oil is exactly the right approach and will cause economy to move to alternatives

> Seems like anyone living in society has no right to criticise things society consumes.

I never said that. I said the efforts were misdirected.

I couldn't agree more. We should have high speed rails interconnecting the top 30 most populated cities in the US. There's no reason why we couldn't still build something like that.

We have something better than high speed rail connecting the 30 most populated cities - planes. We could save some on fuel by using rail, but the bigger advantage would be converting shorter trips (people AND freight) to rail.

That's counterintuitive to me but to be fair I've never actually looked at the numbers. Does rail really not save much in fuel relative to planes?

Trains would be easier to electrify than planes, assuming the electricity can be sourced cleanly.

What do you mean would be, India China Russia and most of Europe have nearly 100% electric trains

While most commuter trains in the US are electric, that’s not the case for cargo or long-haul passenger rail. So “would be” refers to the opportunity to electrify those lines. Many of the tracks in the US are not electrified today.

Decent amounts of short-haul US passenger rail is not electrified, those would be good places to start. Pacific Surfliner, Metrolink, Cascades, etc are all diesel powered and could be electrified for reasonable costs.

The feds should get ahead of it and declare a rail electrification standard so that as it builds out it's all compatible.

Electrifying a thousand miles of track in the middle of nowhere that sees one train a day is nowhere near as worthwhile as electrifying busy corridors.

It depends on what you compare it to.

Electric trains powered by solar and wind? Sure, saves 90% fuel compared to planes (the trains still have support, lubricant, etc that will use some fuel, but sure, assume 100%).

But globally it can't be more than about 12% of the total CO2 (see https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport ) - and that is GLOBAL, trains across the Atlantic are harder to build.

And that's only 12% of total CO2 from transportation - which itself is less than half of the world-wide emissions.

6% of world-wide would be noticeable, but that is only if every plane is replaced by an electric train. The trillions that even attempting some of that would cost could be better spent elsewhere, likely.

Try removing baseball and sports analogies, and the entire C-suite would be crippled forever.

Your last sentence uses a metaphor that promotes firearms or weapons of war. You should consider steering clear of that ;)

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