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.

Well the real answer is to reduce consumption. It can and should be done without sacrificing comfort. This is a very uphill battle against systems that are interested in distracting you by turning your attention towards fads (recycling, electrification, carbon capture) when in reality we need degrowth and permaculture. (Please read this thread a bit more, including my replies, before you tell me what I think degrowth means. I'm only using it to mean "less [economic] growth")

In a bit more detail:

How about less cars? More effective public transit is good for people and the climate.

Let's do away with golf lawns and pools for every house... Perhaps architecture can be adapted to suit the specific location instead of stamping the same stock photo "American house with garage that can fit 4 cars." Look at passive cooling and stuff. [Again, I'm talking about redefining comfort. Is a personal pool and large car and trimmed lawn really, honestly, what makes you comfortable? Or is it more a product of culture and advertising? You're absolutely free to believe either way, and I don't want anyone to force you to do anything.]

And honestly, we need to consoom less. Devices should not have a lifecycle of one year. You and I don't really need all these gadgets and trinkets, either. Let's stop buying random things

If you think this is a distraction or that it won't work because we can't get everyone to agree: Degrowth and permaculture requires honestly no critical mass. You can choose to buy things that last longer, and use them a bit more. Learn to fix things, etc. These are all nothing but straight benefits to you (more money in your pocket, skills that can make you more valuable in the current system, more time available now that you aren't swiping short form videos all day).

> How about less cars? More effective public transit is good for people and the climate

Well, I'm about to renew the annual rail passes (which cover our entire local region) for two of our children, but this approach only works because we happen to live 5 mins walk from a local station and their school is 10 mins walk from another station, on the same line.

Good luck persuading people who don't have the benefit of such "lucky geography" to do the same :/

I feel like I'm doing a good job of, if not persuading people, at least putting the idea in people's heads by talking about it. Being optimistic is our best bet :)

The trouble with "more effective public transit" is that it's really not about having more transit, it's about having higher density housing construction so there are more areas that you can run a subway or a bus and have it full of passengers.

In cities this means you have to fight with property owners who want to keep housing costs high by limiting supply. And even if you win it will be years before the necessary amount of new housing is built to even start talking about new mass transit lines, whereas we need to do something now.

And in rural areas it's just not going to happen at all. The farmer is always going to have a truck. But it could be an electric truck.

> The farmer is always going to have a truck. But it could be an electric truck.

Farm trucks are a pathological case for electrification. They often have fairly extreme range requirements under adverse weather conditions and heavy loads. They spend much of their time far from the electrical grid, never mind a proper charging station. In some regions they have to account for being too far from a normal gas station, which is one of the reason you can buy barrels of fuel to bring with you or an extended tank.

But it doesn't matter because there aren't that many of them. Certainly not something we need to optimize for.