A post EV era

[Just_a_fan]

As it relates. In California they would gaslight the constituency with save-water propaganda despite residential in home use accounting for 1-2% of water consumption, the balance being the obvious sectors of manufacturing, business, and agriculture. There was a period when people were so gaslit that restaurants would no longer serve tap water for free. Plastic grocery bags in some cities are taxes .1-.25 $ over a trivial amount of plastic--it is a plain tax revenue grab.
Paper straws meme was forced to similar aims; plastic straws represent perhaps .00005 - .0000005 % of global petrochemical use. Armchair estimate.

The more important question as it relates to this thread: What is the aim of a culture or politburo who behaves in this way? Lying, obfuscating, deceiving, or at least, neurotic overreaction.

It's simple psychology - if you want to get people to change long standing habits, you do it with small steps at first.

In the UK (and other countries) there has been an attempt to get people to eat more healthily by eating more fruit and vegetables. That's not a politburo thing, it's a simple way to improve the health of society in general and thus reduce health care costs. This plan resulted in the "5 a day" campaign - eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. The thing is that it's a first step and was set at 5 a day as it is seen as achievable without huge changes and effort on the part of the general populace.

Likewise, a move to reduce the use of plastic bags for taking groceries home from the supermarket. A small charge was added to each bag. The result? Lots of people now use reusable bags of various types and thus there are many fewer single use bags being thrown in to land fill. But it has an added benefit as it gets people thinking about other plastic waste - the problem of single-use plastics e.g. plastic wrappers on fruit or vegetables. Why are these things wrapped? They come with a wrapper in the form of skin that is there specifically to protect the fruit.

Sure, reducing these single use plastics won't save the planet, but it will help to reduce land fill - that's just a waste of land, after all - and it will reduce the amount of these plastics that find their way in to the environment where they can and do cause issues for wildlife. So simple changes, eased in with little nuisance to the public, will have a big effect in the medium to long term.

And once people get used to reducing waste in their own homes, they will support demands for reduced waste elsewhere. So you get a medium to long term effect on a wide range of pollution / wastage.

It's simple, really.

Now, some people will say that nothing needs to be done because there isn't a problem, but there is mounting evidence that there are lots of problems. And many of those problems can be solved by simple changes that really don't have a negative effect on people or how they go about their daily lives. Sure, some think "I don't care about anyone else's problems" but perhaps they should remember Niemöller. At some point even the individualists will need help and there may not be any forthcoming by then.

[vorticism]

Of maybe, just maybe, giving us a fighting chance at a future where we keep at least a decent chunk of our society intact, instead of one where everyone scrambles to latch on to their 'rightful excesses'al and many lose out in the process? Sure, not all measures will be effective and some may be counterproductive. I have strong doubts whether the increased energy usage for paper cup production weighs up to the avoided plastic waste and there are many more such examples. But perhaps such things are more due to a shortage of engineers and quantative skillsets in politics and legislation, that due to some conspiratorial population control scheme.

It's a question that comes up often in this context. Is it ignorance, or malice? Qualitatively it ends up not mattering, because the result is the same either way. The treatment for both the cause and effect remain the same. Hence why introducing left-right political framing only impedes the path to holding responsible the capital flight which caused the current level of carbon emissions. 'Rightful excesses' is a misnomer and insodoing you perpetuate the myth that all the West and White people generally are wealthy and thus hold some privileged burden as it relates to the carbon emissions of the parts of the world they did not vote to have their industrial IP sublet to.

As it relates. In California they would gaslight the constituency with save-water propaganda despite residential in home use accounting for 1-2% of water consumption, the balance being the obvious sectors of manufacturing, business, and agriculture. There was a period when people were so gaslit that restaurants would no longer serve tap water for free. Plastic grocery bags in some cities are taxes .1-.25 $ over a trivial amount of plastic--it is a plain tax revenue grab.
Paper straws meme was forced to similar aims; plastic straws represent perhaps .00005 - .0000005 % of global petrochemical use. Armchair estimate.

The more important question as it relates to this thread: What is the aim of a culture or politburo who behaves in this way? Lying, obfuscating, deceiving, or at least, neurotic overreaction.

It's simple psychology - if you want to get people to change long standing habits, you do it with small steps at first.

In the UK (and other countries) there has been an attempt to get people to eat more healthily by eating more fruit and vegetables. That's not a politburo thing, it's a simple way to improve the health of society in general and thus reduce health care costs. This plan resulted in the "5 a day" campaign - eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. The thing is that it's a first step and was set at 5 a day as it is seen as achievable without huge changes and effort on the part of the general populace.

Likewise, a move to reduce the use of plastic bags for taking groceries home from the supermarket. A small charge was added to each bag. The result? Lots of people now use reusable bags of various types and thus there are many fewer single use bags being thrown in to land fill. But it has an added benefit as it gets people thinking about other plastic waste - the problem of single-use plastics e.g. plastic wrappers on fruit or vegetables. Why are these things wrapped? They come with a wrapper in the form of skin that is there specifically to protect the fruit.

Sure, reducing these single use plastics won't save the planet, but it will help to reduce land fill - that's just a waste of land, after all - and it will reduce the amount of these plastics that find their way in to the environment where they can and do cause issues for wildlife. So simple changes, eased in with little nuisance to the public, will have a big effect in the medium to long term.

And once people get used to reducing waste in their own homes, they will support demands for reduced waste elsewhere. So you get a medium to long term effect on a wide range of pollution / wastage.

It's simple, really.

Now, some people will say that nothing needs to be done because there isn't a problem, but there is mounting evidence that there are lots of problems. And many of those problems can be solved by simple changes that really don't have a negative effect on people or how they go about their daily lives. Sure, some think "I don't care about anyone else's problems" but perhaps they should remember Niemöller. At some point even the individualists will need help and there may not be any forthcoming by then.

'Small steps' toward a goal you say, but the small steps in the example provided could only affect a portion of an already small factor (a fraction of 2%). Since the goal is trivial, the path there is likewise trivial. To paint the trivial as something more meaningful is, as I said, lying obfuscating, deceiving. Gaslighting. Few here would be surprised to find you advocating this approach. Lying to people about there contributions to something in order to steer their behavior is sociopathic, or as you couched it, "simple psychology."

Regarding this approach in general: Is it that people fear their ideas conveyed honestly will not be taken seriously? Or is it that they do not take their own premises seriously themselves since the premises are transitory and simply a vehicle toward power.

I read that almond farms use the vast majority of water in California. Maybe just changing to a different food to grow on those farms would solve most of their issues.

Yes, there are certain water intensive crops. However even this sort of fine tuning of actual majority consumers would still be a drop in the bucket, as it were. The larger context is population and policy. F.e. regarding policy, in the USA most of its population growth in the 20th-21st century was due to immigration. Now the US stands looking upon itself astonished at its resource consumption. Well, the USA should have chosen to institute an immigration moratorium, or have some semblance of an immigration policy across the 20th c. It did not do this. Now it has 350 million instead of 200 million. That's why I said in previous posts, the problem is not the body of post modern Western society, it's the brain. The engineers of the machine of society who led us to this point need to be dealt with; yet many here parrot the newsreaders' dictum of punishing the technicians instead. Europe is in the early stages of repeating the same trend. For decades Europeans have been told by their states, academics, and media that they are too numerous while simultaneously being told they are too few and require immigration. In fifty years, when their populations are 50% larger than they otherwise should have been, they'll again be wringing their hands about resource consumption.

[Just_a_fan]

'Small steps' toward a goal you say, but the small steps in the example provided could only affect a portion of an already small factor (a fraction of 2%). Since the goal is trivial, the path there is likewise trivial. To paint the trivial as something more meaningful is, as I said, lying obfuscating, deceiving. Gaslighting. Few here would be surprised to find you advocating this approach. Lying to people about there contributions to something in order to steer their behavior is sociopathic, or as you couched it, "simple psychology."

Regarding this approach in general: Is it that people fear their ideas conveyed honestly will not be taken seriously? Or is it that they do not take their own premises seriously themselves since the premises are transitory and simply a vehicle toward power.

As said, it's about changing mindsets. Getting people on board with an idea and then being able to take them forward with it.

As for the rest, if you're going to accuse me of lying, I will take your move to the ad hom approach to mean that you've run out of real arguments and your position is thus untenable. Thanks for the confirmation.

[vorticism]

As said, it's about changing mindsets. Getting people on board with an idea and then being able to take them forward with it. As for the rest, if you're going to accuse me of lying, I will take your move to the ad hom approach to mean that you've run out of real arguments and your position is thus untenable.

Not an accusation, a description. You advocate lying to people about the significance of their contributions, by inflating the importance of the contributions, in order to change their behaviour. You could advocate for honesty instead. Stand by your words.

[DChemTech]

Of maybe, just maybe, giving us a fighting chance at a future where we keep at least a decent chunk of our society intact, instead of one where everyone scrambles to latch on to their 'rightful excesses'al and many lose out in the process? Sure, not all measures will be effective and some may be counterproductive. I have strong doubts whether the increased energy usage for paper cup production weighs up to the avoided plastic waste and there are many more such examples. But perhaps such things are more due to a shortage of engineers and quantative skillsets in politics and legislation, that due to some conspiratorial population control scheme.

It's a question that comes up often in this context. Is it ignorance, or malice? Qualitatively it ends up not mattering, because the result is the same either way. The treatment for both the cause and effect remain the same. Hence why introducing left-right political framing only impedes the path to holding responsible the capital flight which caused the current level of carbon emissions. 'Rightful excesses' is a misnomer and insodoing you perpetuate the myth that all the West and White people generally are wealthy and thus hold some privileged burden as it relates to the carbon emissions of the parts of the world they did not vote to have their industrial IP sublet to.

I am honestly confused as by what you are trying to say here. I am advocating that it is fine to ban things that are excessively wasteful (typically reserved to those wealthy westerners), and now you seem to oppose such measures while also lamenting westerners for thinking they have some priviliged burden (which I already alluded to earlier they have not)?

[DChemTech]

As said, it's about changing mindsets. Getting people on board with an idea and then being able to take them forward with it. As for the rest, if you're going to accuse me of lying, I will take your move to the ad hom approach to mean that you've run out of real arguments and your position is thus untenable.

Not an accusation, a description. You advocate lying to people about the significance of their contributions, by inflating the importance of the contributions, in order to change their behaviour. You could advocate for honesty instead. Stand by your words.

But the point here is, there are no silver bullets. There is no single technology to save us all, and few actions that really make a big difference, even in the single-digit percent range. Countering the environmental challenges we face is for a substantial part the cumulative effect of many small measures, plus a few larger ones. For cumulative action to work, small actions do matter - especially if they snowball to people thinking about other things. The converse is a typical 'taxpayer fallacy' (maybe there is an official term, but I don't know it), where every individual can correctly claim their individual tax contribution is negligible, yet if everyone declines to pay taxes on that ground, there is a huge cumulative problem (this fallacy is often used by inhabitants of smaller countries, e.g. the Netherlands, to state we don't need to contribute to CO2 reductions. Our contribution is negligible compared to the US and China anyway, in their fallacious reasoning)

[vorticism]

I am honestly confused as by what you are trying to say here. I am advocating that it is fine to ban things that are excessively wasteful (typically reserved to those wealthy westerners), and now you seem to oppose such measures while also lamenting westerners for thinking they have some priviliged burden (which I already alluded to earlier they have not)?

I read it as the typical 'extravagant West' fallacy. If you are saying targeted limitations upon overlords, this may have some effect. It may be more symbolic more than substantive. As gruntguru pointed out, limits on hypercar and motorsport emissions can only have a small direct effect. Thus, perhaps we not target their extravagant consumption, but rather the ways in which they captain the ships of corporations, finance, governance, academia, and industry. Those captains asymmetrically absorb wealth, yet never asymmetrically absorb responsibility. What is to be the punishment for directing one's wealth toward the production of x billion tons of CO2 across years/decades? Is climate justice a real goal or just talk?

[Zynerji]

I am honestly confused as by what you are trying to say here. I am advocating that it is fine to ban things that are excessively wasteful (typically reserved to those wealthy westerners), and now you seem to oppose such measures while also lamenting westerners for thinking they have some priviliged burden (which I already alluded to earlier they have not)?

I read it as the typical 'extravagant West' fallacy. If you are saying targeted limitations upon overlords, this may have some effect. It may be more symbolic more than substantive. As gruntguru pointed out, limits on hypercar and motorsport emissions can only have a small direct effect. Thus, perhaps we not target their extravagant consumption, but rather the ways in which they captain the ships of corporations, finance, governance, academia, and industry. Those captains asymmetrically absorb wealth, yet never asymmetrically absorb responsibility. What is to be the punishment for directing one's wealth toward the production of x billion tons of CO2 across years/decades? Is climate justice a real goal or just talk?

It's a money grab, and a control mechanism.

No human on the planet has an obligation to another human (other than parent/child, and thats "temporary").

Any attempt to shame/belittle/argue/or convert by force the belief that there IS an obligation only exposes the REAL evil humans in the situation.

[DChemTech]

I am honestly confused as by what you are trying to say here. I am advocating that it is fine to ban things that are excessively wasteful (typically reserved to those wealthy westerners), and now you seem to oppose such measures while also lamenting westerners for thinking they have some priviliged burden (which I already alluded to earlier they have not)?

I read it as the typical 'extravagant West' fallacy. If you are saying targeted limitations upon overlords, this may have some effect. It may be more symbolic more than substantive. As gruntguru pointed out, limits on hypercar and motorsport emissions can only have a small direct effect. Thus, perhaps we not target their extravagant consumption, but rather the ways in which they captain the ships of corporations, finance, governance, academia, and industry. Those captains asymmetrically absorb wealth, yet never asymmetrically absorb responsibility. What is to be the punishment for directing one's wealth toward the production of x billion tons of CO2 across years/decades? Is climate justice a real goal or just talk?

Right. But practically, if we are going to wait for that second part to happen, we're doomed. So then we should just allow the excesses and do nothing against large pollutors? That doesn't seem the way to go to me.

Banning excesses will mostly harm those who indulge in it - rich westerners. So will a pollution tax if done correctly. Sure, it does not punish them for past mistakes, but also here, there are no silver bullets. If we wait acting against future pollution because past pollution went unresolved, nothing will ever happen; now that is a 'luxury' we really cannot afford.

Banning of excesses should of course be paired with transitioning our current regular production and consumption patterns. For the West, this means overturning a highly solidified system that is already there - something which many people see as a large burden, one that as we saw here before many may not be willing to take. The notion that the wealthiest also have to make offers may facilitate this psychologically, be it throug bans, be it through substantial buy-offs in a pollution levy. Equally, the average westerner may be nudged to more sustainable behaviour if avoiding CO2 taxes gives finacial windfall.

For developing countries, hopefully part of the transition means doing things first time right. Yes, this may mean that part of the excesses that have been enjoyed by westerners in the past will never be enjoyed by most people in developing countries. Soit, part of humanity can learn from the mistakes of others. We will need both the 'West' to change course, and the 'rest' from avoiding taking the same course as the west did previously (this is of course a gross simplification, there are non-western countries with huge per capita emissions, but the overall message should be clear).

And don't get me wrong - there should be accountability for past misdeeds. For the companies that lied about the reality of climate change. But as said before, these are not easy things. They are not like individual crimes for which laws are readily available, they don't adhere to the jurisdiction of a single country, and even if prosecuted, lawsuits don't change the past. So as much as they should happen, we should not await their outcome before changing the future.

[DChemTech]

I am honestly confused as by what you are trying to say here. I am advocating that it is fine to ban things that are excessively wasteful (typically reserved to those wealthy westerners), and now you seem to oppose such measures while also lamenting westerners for thinking they have some priviliged burden (which I already alluded to earlier they have not)?

I read it as the typical 'extravagant West' fallacy. If you are saying targeted limitations upon overlords, this may have some effect. It may be more symbolic more than substantive. As gruntguru pointed out, limits on hypercar and motorsport emissions can only have a small direct effect. Thus, perhaps we not target their extravagant consumption, but rather the ways in which they captain the ships of corporations, finance, governance, academia, and industry. Those captains asymmetrically absorb wealth, yet never asymmetrically absorb responsibility. What is to be the punishment for directing one's wealth toward the production of x billion tons of CO2 across years/decades? Is climate justice a real goal or just talk?

It's a money grab, and a control mechanism.

No human on the planet has an obligation to another human (other than parent/child, and thats "temporary").

Any attempt to shame/belittle/argue/or convert by force the belief that there IS an obligation only exposes the REAL evil humans in the situation.

Well, if there is no accountability anyway, then they can try to grab your money and control you all they want, with no issue, right?

[Zynerji]

I read it as the typical 'extravagant West' fallacy. If you are saying targeted limitations upon overlords, this may have some effect. It may be more symbolic more than substantive. As gruntguru pointed out, limits on hypercar and motorsport emissions can only have a small direct effect. Thus, perhaps we not target their extravagant consumption, but rather the ways in which they captain the ships of corporations, finance, governance, academia, and industry. Those captains asymmetrically absorb wealth, yet never asymmetrically absorb responsibility. What is to be the punishment for directing one's wealth toward the production of x billion tons of CO2 across years/decades? Is climate justice a real goal or just talk?

It's a money grab, and a control mechanism.

No human on the planet has an obligation to another human (other than parent/child, and thats "temporary").

Any attempt to shame/belittle/argue/or convert by force the belief that there IS an obligation only exposes the REAL evil humans in the situation.

Well, if there is no accountability anyway, then they can try to grab your money and control you all they want, with no issue, right?

Correct. And I then have available actions to remedy, like boycotts and votes.

[DChemTech]

Correct. And I then have available actions to remedy, like boycotts and votes.

... so, you will hold them accountable and attempt to convert them by force?

[johnny comelately]

Big bucket of cold water please

[gruntguru]

What do you mean?

https://www.worldenergydata.org/world-e ... eneration/
Scroll down to "TRENDS" and show me how an arbitrary ban of hypercars or F1 racing is any kind of solution.

https://i.imgur.com/Vhc29OW.png

Note that fossil fuels only declined in the last year and only because total electricity declined (covid).

Who said that is the solution? What I said is we need to stop emissions, not making a new system wich allows free pollution if you pay for it. Proposing that at this point is completely senseless and reckless, as it invite people to think money can compensate anything, wich is exactly the mentality wich brought us to this point

My question was about your comment about the low hanging fruit remaining untouched. What low hanging fruit remains untouched?

- Arbitrarily cherry-picking things to "ban" - eg hypercars - will achieve nothing. Do you have any idea of the contribution of hypercars to global CO2? The average hypercar owner probably goes for a blast a couple of times a year. Meanwhile he spends several days cruising in his super yacht, many hours jetting around the globe on leisure trips and consuming thousands of kW.hrs lighting and heating his various unoccupied mansions. The only fair and effective way to capture all these emissions is to charge for them and direct the money towards emissions reductions elsewhere.

Yes money can compensate for (almost) anything.

Meanwhile, the low-hanging fruit in energy generation and industry remains untouched.

Have (another?) look at the graphs I posted. The technology exists to eliminate all those emissions - it is only a matter of MONEY.

[Andres125sx]

the first sentence says wte 'there's a lot of wastage' - and so does the second
but there isn't - in absolute terms

(in typical countries) there's far more wastage in absolute terms in domestic and commercial heating
given there could be a threefold reduction in heat consumption via a threefold reduction in heat loss to environment ...
and given that heating (in typical countries) uses more energy than does electricity production

and heating is c.90% fossil-fueled

You bring up this problem repeatedly as if it was not adressed, when I´ve explained, also repeatedly, that is not true, since, at least EU (not sure in other continents) is subsidizing thermal isolation in homes. I´ve even told you about projects to improve isolation to reduce thermal demands around a 60% wich are subsidized around a 70% of the cost to drastically reduce heat demands

But you keep ignoring this real world data to continue claiming heating is not addressed... What´s the reason?