this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
66 points (89.3% liked)
Futurology
1812 readers
184 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We aren’t going to make it. It’s too late.
If the most effective policies are price-based, then that's a good sign for all the investment of the last few years paying off when green solutions are cheaper than the dirtier solutions.
EVs are starting to be cheaper than similar trim levels and features, especially when accounting for total cost of ownership. Now that EVs are hitting the used market in volume, it'll just accelerate adoption, and we might start to see EVs run away with a permanent cost advantage.
Same with electric generation picking up a higher percentage in solar and wind, lots of developments in storage and demand shifting, especially price-based incentives there.
At that point, if consumers and corporations are as cost sensitive as this study suggests, we'll be seeing lots of improvement over the next decade or two.
And show me the math that EV's are a better solution.
Like a spreadsheet listing all the details.
Right off the bat, during charging, 20% of the energy is lost as heat (on average), and there's a similar loss during use. So lots more electricity has to be generated to use a battery.
This is never discussed.
EV's are a distraction from much larger consumers. One elephant in the room: shipping. We're shipping food around the world - surely growing locally (especially in the US) makes a lot more sense. With greenhouses, lots of the country could have the 4 growing seasons of California, without the trucks going all over the place. Why am I getting grapes from Chile, surely even CA grapes would cost less to get to me? They still have to come to me on the same trucks from California. What bizarre legal framework makes Chilean grapes, shipped thousands of miles, more profitable for the power brokers (because that's why it happens)?
Hell, anywhere east of the Mississippi could easily do this (I grew up around greenhouses there. Plenty of water and sunshine). Shit just grows on it's own from Iowa to Manhatten, Boston to Disney World.
Just look at the container ships going back and forth to China every damn day. Again, surely it would make more sense to manufacture at least regionally, but again, power brokers have manipulated laws and regulations so they can increase their control by pushing manufacturing overseas to "developing" countries, with minimal safety and labor regs.
This feels so true at this point..