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447 points Brajeshwar | 2 comments | 03 Sep 23 14:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.544s | source
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alexchamberlain ◴[03 Sep 23 17:11 UTC] No.37372056[source]▶
I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

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1. itissid ◴[03 Sep 23 18:21 UTC] No.37372813[source]▶
When NYC turned manhattan's 14th street[1](a bidirectional wide traffic street) into bus only for rush hours with very strict rules for cars, car farers yelled and hollered and people warned of traffic snarl-ups up the wazoo. In reality none of that really materialized.

And In reality all of SOHO(Greenwich village, Chelsea, Fidi etc) the interior excluding the west side and east side high way could be 90% car free with high speed mass transit to bus/electric street cars you anywhere there could work much better. Cars move at not more than 20 MPH on most streets there any way now and are inefficient at transporting people.

People will realize they can just park outside manhattan in Brooklyn or Jersey City and just take a train in and just use car as a luxury instead of a necessity of transit to work the economics of the auto based economy will change. Cities and areas around them are high density once car use changes there it will change everywhere(LA I am looking at you).

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/brt/html/routes/14th-street.shtml

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2. gottorf ◴[03 Sep 23 20:02 UTC] No.37373901[source]▶
> And In reality all of SOHO(Greenwich village, Chelsea, Fidi etc) the interior excluding the west side and east side high way could be 90% car free with high speed mass transit to bus/electric street cars you anywhere there could work much better.

Are the high-density shops and restaurants that make those places such desirable places to be going to replenish their stock on mass transit? Or does that fall into your 10% exception?

How about vans for handicapped people? Do they also fall into the 10% exception?

What if it's just a miserably hot day in Manhattan, and you have a crying baby in a stroller and bags full of shopping, and you just want to catch a cab ride home this one time, damn it? Nobody said you had to have a baby and go shopping. Do you get a "necessity pass" then?

> just use car as a luxury instead of a necessity

Just price things accordingly and let people decide what's a luxury and what's a necessity to them. Categorical distinctions don't work very well because they're full of exceptions and ways to game the system, even without getting into the ethical question of who gets to decide what's a luxury and what isn't for everyone else.