BC is one of those places where it is actually possible to leave a very low-carbon life, between a gentle climate and very low emissions electricity that is cheap enough to make it viable for thermal use as well. Dropping natural gas use in favour of an air source heat pump might be one of the few realistic measures you can take.
heat pumps are great in theory, but Iâm not replacing my furnace until it dies. we have a high-efficiency force-air furnace thatâs only 7 years old, newer low-E windows and a lifetime metal roof with 12" of insulation in the attic. my total utilities are $150/mo averaged over a year. Am not sure iâll ever move from this house
yeah, the payback on a heat pump wonât be great when you are dumping out 8 years or so of lifetime from a gas furnace.
I have the same line of thinking with electric cars. If you have a low emissions combustion engine car like I do, it makes no sense to upgrade that to electric for no reason given that the climate cost for producing that electric car is much higher than the emissions iâm releasing on my car over the next few years.
When I need to upgrade to my next car when this one fails me, I donât doubt that it will be electric and will absolutely pay more to ensure I do go electric, but that time isnât right now. Unfortunately the sort of people that can afford Teslas are the wealthy sort thinking theyâre saving the world by moving to electric from there 2 year old Audi and that there has been no negative by making that move.
Either upgrade to electric when you are forced to, or forgo cars altogether if that is realistic for your lifestyle.
Doesnât this line of thought often ignore the fact that the car you trade in doesnât disappear off the face of the earth? It goes onto the second-hand market, where it will more likely than not displace a car that requires repairs/overhaul that make it less economical to run, and therefore removing a more highly-polluting car from usage.
Furthermore, I think the embodied carbon in the manufacture of electric vehicles tends to get paid back quite early on, no?
Yeah, I think most of that is right, but thinking about those trade offs is still right, even if theyâre complicated to get right.
There is an irony in that electric cars seems more attractive to people like me who donât drive very much (I work from home and live in a walkable neighborhood so only have 35k miles on an 8 year old car). Yet itâs people like me who will struggle more to reach that break even point on emissions that heâs talking about. Yes there are second order effects as you describe, but they are harder to predict even if in aggregate you can be pretty sure the exchange is a less efficient car being taken off the road.
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That is why this world is fucked. Because we can lay onto policies etcâŚbut the reality is that, our daily lives, it will never reached a moment where collectively 7 billons human beings all agree to do enough for the world not to be fucked. You fly on a plane, you get asked to fuckingly whether you want to pay more to offset your carbon emissions. The right solution is not to fly, but can you afford not to? And if you choose to fly, can you afford to pay to offset those emissions? Then lets talk about electric cars. It has become the next shiny toy instead of being the essential being to saving the earth from the bad ass fuel cars. Its being priced not as an essential, its being priced as a luxury item, a âI am fucking coolâ toy. Almost like how in many places where governments ask you to be healthier and water in businesses are more expensive than a cola.
But electric cars arenât that. Our electrical generation has emissions that are too high now. Move personal transport emissions over from direct fuel use to indirect electrical generation, and the emissions go down - but by nowhere near the magnitude needed. We either reduce energy use, or produce zero emission energy. Everything else is just pointless rearrangement.
For example, an electrical car in Singapore does a little to reduce emissions. Electricity is natural gas, lower CO2 emissions per km than burning petrol, but not by an order of magnitude
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In terms of technology it will get better in terms of being better for the environment. And it made sense for a small place like Singapore because you will not travel alot in a day so getting an electric car probably would be enough for most people. But putting aside infrastructure and technology which will get better with time, a basic Tesla 3 would cost just slightly lesser than a Porsche Macan. So even if one day electric cars become better technology wiseâŚit will only be available to well off people.
Without watching the video, I just wanted to mention a pet peeve of mine.
Fox âNewsâ and its ilk have completely destroyed journalism but making their âjournalistsâ the centrepiece of whatever âreportingâ they do, and itâs getting infectious. Look how the journalist suddenly becomes the feature of this, in the headline. Iâm just surprised they havenât used âSkyâs Mark Austin DESTROYED leftie protestersâ as the headline.
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Sheâs quite hypocritical
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Having watched the video now, even though I fully sympathise with the cause, I feel she comes across as a child.
Sheâs 28, but I genuinely think 15 year old Greta Thunberg was much better spoken than her, and certainly sounded less like a lunatic.
I canât help but feel that sheâs the kind of person who, in another context, could quite well be hysterical over some far-right cause, that this is about her identity rather than about the actual cause itself.
Not sure why she was selected to go for this interview?
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Because bad spokespeople are easier to position as a reason the cause is not valid.
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Why would Just Stop Oil pick out a bad spokesperson if it makes them look bad in the publics eyes?
Maybe because itâs partly a self-selection thing rather than a true meritocratic world wide search for the right person? Maybe itâs partly group think, that a lot of the people who want to get involved are of the same mindset and gravitate towards this sort of person?
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Maybe sheâs the least crazy in a bunch of crazies 
Sadly we all know climate change is a massive problem no-one in power(political or financial) is willing to solve if it impacts their power or finances.
Itâll be interesting to see who signs up to this and if they actually adhere to it at all.
I think weâre assuming here that they are a formally organised group, whereas I canât seem to find any official indication of leadership, not spokespeople.
Cynically, Iâm wondering if Rumbelow was chosen by the media precisely because someone went looking for dirt on activists and found her. That said, her Twitter profile was started in August 2022âŚ
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