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Comment by LUmBULtERA | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I disagree with anything in the article. However, I'd weary that many people extrapolate the conclusions to mean that the average person shouldn't do anything differently. For many many people in the world (not all yet), their ROI is positive for most household and transportation electrification projects. That is, they not only help the environment by switching to electric appliances and cars rather than fossil fuel, but they also can help out their own pocketbooks. New EVs are on the more expensive side of this, but electric bikes and other forms of electric transportation is much more affordable up front.

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>electric bikes

Its not safe to cycle for practical purposes in my city.

The city make gestures like painting a few road shoulders green and nature trails for exercise. This does not get me to work, daycare, the dentist, etc.

Generally in America, bikes are more of a novelty than transportation.

Ok. My comment wasn't even promoting e-bikes over electric cars. I have an electric car. I use it daily and use it to get me around more than my ebike. But if someone lives somewhere in the world off of a much tinier budget and they can use something like a bike/motorcycle/cart that is electric powered over a much dirtier gas engine, then that's something they should consider.

If you want to set transit folks' hair on fire, show how many E-bikes the government could buy for the cost of a transit project. Then, apply that number to the population that would be served by by that transit system.

I see what you mean, but also:

If you want to set e-bikes folks' hair on fire, show how many shoes the government could buy for the cost of an e-bike distribution program. Then, apply that number to the population that would be served by those e-bikes.

I’m with you on the collective effect of small efforts, but it’s a difficult ask to motivate when one persons excess personal environmental contamination (say, through private jet ownership) offsets an entire nations efforts of using paper instead of plastic straws, for instance.

It’s like everyone shares the pool, and everyone gets out and goes to the bathroom to defecate. But not this one guy, he “doesn’t have time” to get out and shit, so he just shits over in the corner of the pool.

It’s still better that most people use the bathroom, but it’s pretty demotivating to some people to see that guy celebrated for his achievements while he’s shitting in everyone’s pool. Hopefully his contributions to society are ambitious enough from a humanitarian and humanist perspective to make it worth it to most people.

This perspective is why I try really hard to avoid shitting in the pool, as well as only pursuing goals that I believe can have a genuine and sustainable improvement, no matter how small, on the quality of life of most everyone on the planet-either directly or indirectly.

Yeah, basically this. No one should be expected to reduce how much they drive their car when there are people out there using personal jets to commute and mega yachts to vacation on

Average people should not be asked to reduce their consumption so that rich people can continue getting away with their excess

But I'd argue two points here. First, the average American household spends approximately $5k a year on gasoline [0]. That's still quite a lot of gasoline burned up. Add to that another ~$1k of natural gas the average household is burning up every year. I don't really call that small consumption. On a worldwide scale, each of these American households is burning up way more fossil fuels than the bottom 50%+. THEY ARE the rich of the world. But my second point is that switching to an EV and heat pumps (HVAC, dryers, water heaters) and induction (or electric) stoves are actually an improvement over their fossil fuel burning counterparts, either by ROI, function, or most likely, both.

I'm not suggesting anyone drive less even. Just switch to superior electrified products (and support renewable electricity+batteries as appropriate).

[0] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-do-peo....

> Just switch to superior electrified products (and support renewable electricity+batteries as appropriate)

"Just switch" as if that's an easy or affordable thing to do

I have to heat my house somehow, I'm not going to go cold during the winter to reduce how much carbon I use, and I can't afford to replace my gas heating with electric, replace all of the insulation and windows in my house to make heating more efficient, etc

If using less gas is a choice between "go broke" or "go cold", my choice is to use gas

At some point you'll need to replace your gas furnace anyway. Then yes, "just switch".

And if you're in the US and you can't afford much (which it sounds like you're implying), use the IRA funds!

[0] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-do-peo....

Absolutely on heat pumps and EVs. At least in most areas.

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