this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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You’re getting too anxious about what every little thing costs the environment. Yes, you’re right, there’s no silver bullet that makes anything magically sustainable, but there also doesn’t have to be.
Pay more attention to the overall environmental cost, or the change in environmental cost. Of course we’ll never get to zero, but it’s quite possible to get to a sustainable level. The big example is always an EV: sure, it costs the environment a little more to make an EV than an ICE car, but looking at overall costs, you’ve already made that up after only two typical years of driving on most places. And that will only get better as manufacturing gets more efficient and power production gets more green
Dude, come on. Looking at US electricity production, yes, natural gas is the biggest. But nuclear production is about the same as coal. And renewables are about the same as coal. And coal is dropping like a rock while most new electricity production is renewables. Nuclear and renewables together are pushing 40%. Despite short sightedness from some of our corporate politicians, it’s way more than a sliver
I fully expected all replies to miss the point. You can’t make more nuclear power without massive amounts of petroleum based energy and products.
But, again, it doesn’t matter, and isn’t worth arguing about. People don’t get it because why would they want to get it? It sucks to get it.
But so what? Yes, there are dependencies and initial costs to the environment. Petroleum based energy and products are integrated throughout our economy, effectively everything is dependent on fossil fuels. Everyone gets it.
Building out things like nuclear power or EVs only effect the operations and only of those specific industries/products. It’s only a start but these are examples of great places to start, where we can make a significant and highly visible difference.
There’s a very long tail of things to work on, for the foreseeable future, but you can’t balk at less than perfect. Do one thing on the list. Then do the next