<story><title>The electric car as a talisman of false hope</title><url>https://www.jussipasanen.com/electric-cars-promise-change-without-changing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>irq11</author><text>Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? &lt;i&gt;Have one fewer child.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nothing else even comes close. 
It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that.&lt;p&gt;It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws.&lt;p&gt;The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consumption problem, but predictably, a group of technology people want desperately to believe that if we just make the stuff we’re consuming better — with technology! — we’re helping.&lt;p&gt;To this end, it’s worth pointing out that the only item on that list that relates to family size is midway down, where it talks about family planning for the third world...something &lt;i&gt;other&lt;/i&gt; people can do, so that you don’t have to change your life.</text></item><item><author>theworld572</author><text>So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you&amp;#x27;re wasting time and energy that you don&amp;#x27;t have.&lt;p&gt;Of course those numbers are just made up but they are also very far from reality. Solutions to climate change have actually been ranked in terms of total cost and total amount of CO2 reductions and electric cars come in at the 26th most cost-effective solution to climate change:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drawdown.org&amp;#x2F;solutions&amp;#x2F;transport&amp;#x2F;electric-vehicles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drawdown.org&amp;#x2F;solutions&amp;#x2F;transport&amp;#x2F;electric-vehicl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t know why climate change seems to inspire so many people&amp;#x27;s inner contrarian where they just want to deride any attempt at preventing it because they haven&amp;#x27;t solved the whole thing in one go. There is no perfect solution, we are not going to fundamentally transform the world to a car-less society, or eliminate meat consumption.&lt;p&gt;Its like if you buy an electric car, somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still fly!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you stop flying, somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still eat meat!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you stop eating meat somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still heat your home with gas!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you switch to electric heating based of clean energy sources somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still buy avacados imported from across the world!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It never ends.</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>No, the alternative is to figure out how to change the very fundamental levers of the system in a way that enables change on a scale that matters. The individual consumption lens is going to accomplish nothing.&lt;p&gt;If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit and you put 20 car drivers onto a train or a bus, then we&amp;#x27;re starting to talk about measures that actually have some effect.&lt;p&gt;Or if we eliminate meat consumption altogether rather than promising people magic lab meat every five years, that would have an effect. Or if we put some significant money into a manhattan project for carbon capture, that at least gives us a statistical shot.&lt;p&gt;But buying a tesla or a linen bag at the supermarket or paying 50 cents for a biodegradable cup at starbucks isn&amp;#x27;t saving the planet, it&amp;#x27;s the modern version of paying the catholic church for absolution.&lt;p&gt;And in the long and infamous history of bad references to fallacies, this isn&amp;#x27;t one either. If you need to go from 100 to 10 and you&amp;#x27;re spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you&amp;#x27;re wasting time and energy that you don&amp;#x27;t have.</text></item><item><author>theworld572</author><text>So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all?&lt;p&gt;If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they&amp;#x27;re offering you a &amp;quot;false hope because you&amp;#x27;d still have $95k left to pay&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This is also known as the &amp;quot;nirvana fallacy&amp;quot;: because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nirvana_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nirvana_fallacy&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>They don&amp;#x27;t make a real difference, and the author is correct about it. If you drive towards a wall and you&amp;#x27;re accelerating and all you&amp;#x27;re doing is slowing the rate of acceleration you&amp;#x27;re still going to run into the wall at terminal velocity.&lt;p&gt;The author correctly points out that the total increase in car usage, mostly conventional engines is going to offset the small dent that electric cars make, and that cars themselves are only a small fraction of the transportation industry to begin with.&lt;p&gt;And not to mention that there&amp;#x27;s global shipping, construction, meat consumption all of which is by itself faster increasing than any environemntal solution in the respective domains which all only marginally change the equation to begin with.&lt;p&gt;Our ecosystem doesn&amp;#x27;t care whether we tried really hard and if we were really good citizens or whether we did nothing, all that matters at the end is if our efforts were significant enough to not degrade our environment. And we&amp;#x27;re off by a magnitude or two and that&amp;#x27;s not going to change until we make radical changes to how we manage our societies.</text></item><item><author>Denzel</author><text>His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all.&lt;p&gt;This is an uninteresting and uninspiring line of thinking that ignores the nature of socially dynamic systems which don’t exist in a world of instantaneous cause-and-effect.&lt;p&gt;His conclusion states that electric cars make a difference, but they don’t make a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; difference: “I do think they can slightly reduce unsustainability” but “by switching from a regular car to electric I might think that I am making a real difference”.&lt;p&gt;I’m sorry that the author doesn’t consider a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; reduction in emissions a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; difference.&lt;p&gt;Look, it’s simple, climate change will require a concerted effort to change in multiple markets across multiple arenas. And the solutions are not mutually exclusive. People that buy electric cars to help the environment or become vegetarian, are probably &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; likely to make additional changes in their life, and persuade others to make changes as well, to reduce emissions.&lt;p&gt;Most people arrive at the decision to purchase an electric vehicle exactly because they are questioning their way of life. Electric vehicles are not a talisman of false hope, they’re a singular step in the right direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZeroGravitas</author><text>Someone should go through the comments and collect together all the &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; solutions.&lt;p&gt;If we let the &amp;quot;ban cars&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;ban children&amp;quot; folk fight it out then that frees up time for the &amp;quot;pragmatically improve things along many different dimensions, many of which would be beneficial even if we totally ignored climate change&amp;quot; folk to get on with things.</text></comment>
<story><title>The electric car as a talisman of false hope</title><url>https://www.jussipasanen.com/electric-cars-promise-change-without-changing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>irq11</author><text>Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? &lt;i&gt;Have one fewer child.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nothing else even comes close. 
It’s a simple fact. It’s easy to do. But nobody wants to do that.&lt;p&gt;It’s far less painful to pretend that we can keep the Titanic from sinking by making sure we sip our boat drinks from metal straws.&lt;p&gt;The point of the post is that we’re trying to consume our way out of a consumption problem, but predictably, a group of technology people want desperately to believe that if we just make the stuff we’re consuming better — with technology! — we’re helping.&lt;p&gt;To this end, it’s worth pointing out that the only item on that list that relates to family size is midway down, where it talks about family planning for the third world...something &lt;i&gt;other&lt;/i&gt; people can do, so that you don’t have to change your life.</text></item><item><author>theworld572</author><text>So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you&amp;#x27;re wasting time and energy that you don&amp;#x27;t have.&lt;p&gt;Of course those numbers are just made up but they are also very far from reality. Solutions to climate change have actually been ranked in terms of total cost and total amount of CO2 reductions and electric cars come in at the 26th most cost-effective solution to climate change:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drawdown.org&amp;#x2F;solutions&amp;#x2F;transport&amp;#x2F;electric-vehicles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drawdown.org&amp;#x2F;solutions&amp;#x2F;transport&amp;#x2F;electric-vehicl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t know why climate change seems to inspire so many people&amp;#x27;s inner contrarian where they just want to deride any attempt at preventing it because they haven&amp;#x27;t solved the whole thing in one go. There is no perfect solution, we are not going to fundamentally transform the world to a car-less society, or eliminate meat consumption.&lt;p&gt;Its like if you buy an electric car, somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still fly!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you stop flying, somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still eat meat!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you stop eating meat somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still heat your home with gas!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;If you switch to electric heating based of clean energy sources somebody tells you &amp;quot;BUT you still buy avacados imported from across the world!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It never ends.</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>No, the alternative is to figure out how to change the very fundamental levers of the system in a way that enables change on a scale that matters. The individual consumption lens is going to accomplish nothing.&lt;p&gt;If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit and you put 20 car drivers onto a train or a bus, then we&amp;#x27;re starting to talk about measures that actually have some effect.&lt;p&gt;Or if we eliminate meat consumption altogether rather than promising people magic lab meat every five years, that would have an effect. Or if we put some significant money into a manhattan project for carbon capture, that at least gives us a statistical shot.&lt;p&gt;But buying a tesla or a linen bag at the supermarket or paying 50 cents for a biodegradable cup at starbucks isn&amp;#x27;t saving the planet, it&amp;#x27;s the modern version of paying the catholic church for absolution.&lt;p&gt;And in the long and infamous history of bad references to fallacies, this isn&amp;#x27;t one either. If you need to go from 100 to 10 and you&amp;#x27;re spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you&amp;#x27;re wasting time and energy that you don&amp;#x27;t have.</text></item><item><author>theworld572</author><text>So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all?&lt;p&gt;If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they&amp;#x27;re offering you a &amp;quot;false hope because you&amp;#x27;d still have $95k left to pay&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This is also known as the &amp;quot;nirvana fallacy&amp;quot;: because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nirvana_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nirvana_fallacy&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>They don&amp;#x27;t make a real difference, and the author is correct about it. If you drive towards a wall and you&amp;#x27;re accelerating and all you&amp;#x27;re doing is slowing the rate of acceleration you&amp;#x27;re still going to run into the wall at terminal velocity.&lt;p&gt;The author correctly points out that the total increase in car usage, mostly conventional engines is going to offset the small dent that electric cars make, and that cars themselves are only a small fraction of the transportation industry to begin with.&lt;p&gt;And not to mention that there&amp;#x27;s global shipping, construction, meat consumption all of which is by itself faster increasing than any environemntal solution in the respective domains which all only marginally change the equation to begin with.&lt;p&gt;Our ecosystem doesn&amp;#x27;t care whether we tried really hard and if we were really good citizens or whether we did nothing, all that matters at the end is if our efforts were significant enough to not degrade our environment. And we&amp;#x27;re off by a magnitude or two and that&amp;#x27;s not going to change until we make radical changes to how we manage our societies.</text></item><item><author>Denzel</author><text>His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all.&lt;p&gt;This is an uninteresting and uninspiring line of thinking that ignores the nature of socially dynamic systems which don’t exist in a world of instantaneous cause-and-effect.&lt;p&gt;His conclusion states that electric cars make a difference, but they don’t make a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; difference: “I do think they can slightly reduce unsustainability” but “by switching from a regular car to electric I might think that I am making a real difference”.&lt;p&gt;I’m sorry that the author doesn’t consider a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; reduction in emissions a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; difference.&lt;p&gt;Look, it’s simple, climate change will require a concerted effort to change in multiple markets across multiple arenas. And the solutions are not mutually exclusive. People that buy electric cars to help the environment or become vegetarian, are probably &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; likely to make additional changes in their life, and persuade others to make changes as well, to reduce emissions.&lt;p&gt;Most people arrive at the decision to purchase an electric vehicle exactly because they are questioning their way of life. Electric vehicles are not a talisman of false hope, they’re a singular step in the right direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>magduf</author><text>&amp;gt;Do you know what the #1, most significant thing any of us can do to reduce climate change? Have one fewer child.
Nothing else even comes close. But nobody wants to do that.&lt;p&gt;What the heck are you talking about?  Every industrialized nation now has negative population growth if you ignore immigration.  People &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; having fewer children, and frequently, none.</text></comment>