• i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    He suggested solutions like drivers keeping the same car for longer periods of time

    That’s what i have been doing… Is that wrong, or just too much anti-consumerism to be presented as a good thing in our society?

    • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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      8 months ago

      He’s right honestly, cars, especially electric cars, produce a large portion of their CO2 emissions when they are manufactured.

      We would all be better off if people kept their “gas guzzlers” but only used them rarely. A car in a garage has zero co2 emissions.

      • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Which is one reason this anti WFH campaign pisses me off so much. We could cut emissions quite a bit just from that but we can’t even do that little because: greedy assholes.

        Was I the only one who, during covid lockdowns, was amazed at how fucking clear the air was? Did everyone just forget? Idk why most humans can’t look at that and go “we all need to make this permanent” and then do it. But we evolved to prefer the worst of us in charge.

        Anyway. Yeah. I WFH and drive about 5000 miles a year. And we tend to keep our cars 10-15 years. It’s way more affordable than a new car every few years, assuming you get a car that has low maintenance costs. More people oughta do that.

        • kozy138@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Seriously… Covid was an eye opener me as well.

          It was so much quieter outside. The air was cleaner. Animals were returning to previously deserted areas at remarkable rates.

          Everyone was itching to get back to “normal,” but normal was what was causing all of the destruction on the first place.

          The government should literally be paying people to stay home and do nothing. I remember reading somewhere that it is more cost effective in the long run. Rather than fixing damage and rebuilding cities after increasingly severe natural disasters.

          • WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I live on a really busy parish road and I noticed the same thing. The first 3 months of the COVID timeline were great. My company sent everyone home and we all worked remotely and the traffic on the road at my house dropped to almost nothing. It was glorious. I’m still working from home because my company sold the office building they owned and hasn’t built a new one. I can’t say the same for other companies because traffic is horrible in front of my house. The noise and the air quality are back to pre COVID levels of suck.

        • olympicyes@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Anti-WFH is because companies know workers have so much mobility and a virtual workforce can leave to work for any company in the world. It’s a form of lock-in. People don’t like disruption or change, so they are less likely to leave for a higher paycheck. To be honest I’m surprised more American companies haven’t leveraged work from home to shift non customer-facing white collar jobs to Eastern Europe.

          • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Anti wfh I think is run by business office real estate owners. I could be wrong, but wfh fucks them the most. Their investments gotta pay off and real estate is never supposed to go down in price, I’ll fucking stab you bitch or something like that, the conversations I have heard at charity galas.

            • olympicyes@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I dont think so because businesses love shedding fixed overhead so it’s more likely they are trying to get a return on their investment or they think it’s worth the trade off. I’m convinced half the company’s moving to southern states are doing so just to reduce overhead but using the current red state/blue state zeitgeist as cover.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, this is the industry blaming a famous person for making sense.

        Replacing the gas guzzlers with EVs would be great, but the cost/benefit ratio isn’t there. If you need a new car and can afford an EV, get one.

        Car manufacturers need to do more to make EVs more affordable. They need to do a better job making their argument that they are good cars with significant environmental benefits.

        They won’t, because they still want to sell gasoline cars.

        • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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          8 months ago

          Conversions are another option that just aren’t being used because of red tape. The paperwork takes nearly as much work as the actual conversion.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Admittedly the last time I looked into a conversion was like 20 years ago, but back then it would have cost as much as a new car. Has the price come down at least?

      • lobut@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        I live in a car city but I only use it to go groceries or maybe an event. I go twice a week tops.

        All my friends told me I should have gotten a Tesla and that because I’m a tech guy that I’d buy a Tesla. I’m like, I don’t drive enough, so I bought a used Civic.

        By the time this Civic needs to be retired, there should be plenty of affordable options for me? Or maybe I can move to a place that doesn’t require one.

      • bassad@jlai.lu
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        8 months ago

        nah even an ICE car in a garage is not neutral : it needs oil & filters changes every 1-2 years if you want to keep it running, and gas does not like to be stored more than 3-6 months.

        This said, so you are so right we should stop using cars as much as possible and walk, bike, take public transports, or rent when needed.

        • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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          8 months ago

          Genuine questions:

          Does the creation of lubricating oil actually cause a notable level of CO2 emissions? (I guess that depends on synthetic vs mineral?)

          Does gasoline “going bad” and having to be disposed of produce CO2 emissions? or, since it’s destroying gas that would otherwise be burnt, is it actually carbon negative?

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It depends on how much you drive, and what you drive. If you have a Prius and drive 2000 miles a year the emissions payoff for getting an EV would probably be longer than you’d even want to keep the car. If you’re in a diesel F350 and do 20,000 miles a year, mostly city, then yeah an EV will be net zero in like 5 years or less.

      As I’m sure someone will mention inevitably, not using a car in the first place is the best option. Public transit, walking, biking, are all much better solutions.

    • sirdorius@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      Anti-consumerism is bad because it would expose the fact that our economy is overproducing shit we don’t need, so we would need a massive reorganization of society. You can tell who that is bad for.

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      8 months ago

      No it’s not wrong. Hell, I drive EV and lots of people ask me about it, And of course I’d love if more people did it, to cut down on fossils, but realistically it’s always a financial decision, so I honestly tell them “If you already have a car, and don’t need a new car, then it’s a bad financial decision to buy a new car.”

      However, when you do need a new car, then it’s likely a good decision to buy an EV, but you need to run the numbers if you want to know for sure. There are a lot of factors in this, some of which are dependent on your own personal milage and finances and others on where you live and what is available.

      If you do run all the numbers for the duration of ownership, it’s likely always a good decision to buy a new EV in comparison to ICE cars, and the thing that made my decision was that in my case, it wouldn’t even make sense to buy the cheapest beater car, because over the years that I expect to drive this car, it’s cheaper to buy a new EV than to exchange and/or repair older ICE cars. But I’m sure it varies. You gotta have some idea of how much you need to drive for the next 5 years, and most people probably don’t.

      Atkinson is sort of right in advising people to hold out a while. The prices are dropping and in just a few years, it won’t even be a question. However I also understand the criticism, because as a public figure he should not be passing out blanket statements like that. There are likely people who will not buy an EV now because of his statement, even if it’s against their own self interest.

      • Bilb!@lem.monster
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        8 months ago

        I drive an EV and I always tell people not to buy one for this or that reason. The truth is that I don’t want too many other EVs on the road because I bought it just to feel superior to others, and I can’t do that if everyone else also drives an EV.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      It’s sky news, a far right media outfit with questionable factual credibility. Notice they didn’t say that this what they attacked him on, only that it was in the piece that they were criticizing. It’s intentionally misleading to make you think their position is ridiculous.

      Don’t fall for this propaganda.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, i’m driving a 20+ year old car and while i feel guilty about the higher emissions older design have, it’s still run and in awesome shape. Got talked by my ex for still using an old car, but meh, if it still run it still run.

      Definitely getting an electric car next though, if i ever have that budget. Even then the local electricity production is still not ready for clean energy.

    • Magister@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Me too, my car is 10 years old, all paid, I only have 83’000 miles on it, yeah I changed brakes/rotor and a couple of stuff mainly in suspension/linkage because of pothole… but that’s it.

    • Nomecks@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      A new Toyota Corolla makes roughly 100g of CO2 per km driven and a car produces on average 5.6T of CO2 when being manufactured. You’ve driven through the CO2 equivalent of manufacture in roughly 60000 kms. I chose the Corolla for this comparison because it’s pretty fuel efficient.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      The lifetime emissions of an EV are lower than an ICE car. Engineering explained has a good video breaking the math down. If you’re planning on keeping your car for more than 3 or 4 years and you’re able to, it makes sense to buy an EV