Hacker News Reader

Comment by tempworkac | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this means first-world nations will stop consuming, or will they continue to patronize the poorer countries?

View on HN

For sure they will push their citizens to drop their cars and buy brand new which are more ecological, to make the car industry go on. Throwaway things like washing machines that last 2 years are in the agenda too

I don't know what country you live in, but new cars in the U.S. aren't necessarily any more ecological. The SUV has been king and now the CUV ("crossover" UV) which is also a huge beast of a car.

Even if we switch from gas to electric, this only shifts the pollution to electric generators, which are... coal/natural gas/nuclear

Although renewables are trending up (21% in this random hit, more than I expected) https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

So without solving the electricity generation problem, a shift to full electrics is only a part of the puzzle.

An "irony" of this, is that China is a major consumer of "clean coal"

A random first hit on a search quack for "global coal consumption" on DDG:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-count...

note China is dark red.

Now, there's a small problem. One reason that China is using so much coal is... to supply all of the exports to other countries!

It might be said that your Amazon/etc purchases are shifting the coal usage from your country to China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com