Climate Change Tracker

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.

> As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives

Curb weight:

  Ford Taurus: 3917 lbs.
  BMW 330i: 3536 lbs.
  Tesla Model 3: 3862 lbs.

Is this supposed to be a massive difference?

> 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?

There is nothing prohibiting anybody from doing this. Make it cost effective and people will buy it. But those things are all theoretical or uneconomical right now, so until that changes we should carry on with the thing we know works.

> Curb weight: Ford Taurus: 3917 lbs / BMW 330i: 3536 lbs / Tesla Model 3: 3862 lbs.

We have a small car (that transports four adults in comfort) that weighs almost exactly half what the Taurus does. It's also really easy to park!

> There is nothing prohibiting anybody from doing this. Make it cost effective and people will buy it

Perhaps instead of trying to ban new ICE vehicles, the taxes should be gradually raised on diesel and petrol to include an additional levy which covers whatever mitigation strategy is appropriate to deal with the emissions.

> We have a small car (that transports four adults in comfort) that weighs almost exactly half what the Taurus does. It's also really easy to park!

These vehicles were chosen because they are approximately the same size as the Model 3. You can make whatever kind of vehicle in whatever size you want. There are electric bikes that weigh 40 pounds.

> Perhaps instead of trying to ban new ICE vehicles, the taxes should be gradually raised on diesel and petrol to include an additional levy which covers whatever mitigation strategy is appropriate to deal with the emissions.

Raising energy costs before the existing infrastructure is replaced would be catastrophic, because replacing everything overnight is impossible and in the meantime the poor would go bankrupt and the middle class would become poor. The only sensible way to implement a carbon tax is to refund all of the money to the population.

But that's also all you need to do, because then people would have a monetary incentive to avoid the tax by reducing emissions in whatever way they find most efficient.