LOL WUTOil protesters glue themselves to an oil painting of The Last Supper. Oil paintings in that era is made with linseed and not petrol

submitted by GrilledTofuIdentifying as a block of tofu from i.imgur.com

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[–]bopomofodojo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Same with cars. I'm absolutely not against EVs. But untill I can fill them as quickly as I can fill gas one? Fuck that.

The environmental destruction caused by EV manufacture is actually immense too.

Petrol engines are simple to design and build out of materials that are nearly everywhere - steel, rubber, porcelain. But when you use them, you put out CO2, CO, NOx, and various particulates. They are dirty at time of use, which is something people see and hear about constantly.

EVs, on the other hand, are incredibly intensive and dirty to produce. Huge amounts of rare earth minerals are required to produce the various components (2-3x as much as a modern gas vehicle), Lithium for the battery which is mostly mined in poor countries with intensive strip mining, etc. It is clean at time of use though, which makes the people driving them feel warm and fuzzy inside, because they do not have to think about how polluting their production is. And not to mention that, while it is more efficient if you have 1 giant fossil plant making electricity to power 1000 cars, it's still producing emissions regardless - only with clean reliable baseload (nuclear) or well-timed renewables (charging while they are producing) can EVs be a true net zero solution. They just trade one set of problems for another.

On the transportation front, the actual solution for average people is public transit, walkable neighborhoods, and the elimination of single-car dependence for most people. For goods transport, it's electric trucks, bulk hauling (mostly rail), electric or hybrid rail locomotives, and nuclear-powered ships. But, transportation is only a fraction of the total carbon emissions globally; there's several other industries that need to change significantly (agriculture being one, GMOs are a must) to get to net zero.

But all of this interconnected tapestry of causal effects and competing interests is too much for the sort of people who are attracted to Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, and the like. They see it in simple terms, "do X = save the world", and they - as others have said - take this ignorant oversimplification of reality with the confidence of a religious zealot. They hurt the cause more than they help in nearly every way by galvanizing support against anything they say even when it does happen to be true. They want primitivism - and the horrors that would bring - because that's the simple answer to them, and they don't care how many (poor) people suffer or die to bring it about.

[–]slavdude0 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They see it in simple terms, "do X = save the world"

100%

They want primitivism - and the horrors that would bring

They THINK they do, because they believe in sustainability of their solutions. Give em half a year with checkered energy distribution, constant pauses in their pumpkin spice latte distribution, and they will crumble.

[–]bopomofodojo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh, absolutely - most of them are comfortable, middle- to upper-middle-class people who have no idea what living in a primitive society would entail. They're delusional.

[–]On_WheelsWe need to secure the existence of the gay race 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I did have a suspicion EV weren't nearly as clean as commercials made it out to be. Thanks for explaining the environmental costs behind them, I have a suspicion nuclear would be a cleaner source of energy compared to fossil fuels, while it does produce waste this waste can be contained and kept away, compared to the gases produced by fossil fuel which are inevitably released into the atmosphere.

I got curious when you mentioned transportation being a fraction of global carbon emissions, according to Our World in Data, both industry and building account each for more emissions than transport, and Livestock & Manure account for more than non-road transport combined.

[–]bopomofodojo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I got curious when you mentioned transportation being a fraction of global carbon emissions, according to Our World in Data, both industry and building account each for more emissions than transport, and Livestock & Manure account for more than non-road transport combined.

That is indeed precisely what I meant - changing transportation alone would only be a fraction of the total CO2 emissions. It's not negligibly small (IIRC 5-10%?), but it's not the sort of thing that "fixes the environment" alone. The Livestock aspect is why I mention agriculture being one industry that must change, because current farming practices are the single biggest driver of CO2 (and other GHG emissions like methane). I love my beef, but if I have to give it up for the sake of literally saving the planet, small price to pay.

I did have a suspicion EV weren't nearly as clean as commercials made it out to be. Thanks for explaining the environmental costs behind them, I have a suspicion nuclear would be a cleaner source of energy compared to fossil fuels, while it does produce waste this waste can be contained and kept away, compared to the gases produced by fossil fuel which are inevitably released into the atmosphere.

100% yes. Nuclear is, objectively, the cleanest, safest, and most long-term viable energy source we have. The waste being talked about is actually miniscule - on the order of tons per year globally, rather than mega- or giga-tons of CO2. Said waste can be reprocessed to extract more viable fuel leaving mere pounds of actual, dangerous waste. And that waste can be locked in containers and buried in concrete easily. The problem is people have imagined boogeymen in their heads about this entire process, thinking that "nuclear waste" means leaking barrels of green sludge a la the Simpsons and Greenpeace propaganda, rather than what it really is (hard, ceramic materials encased in lead and concrete); or that we should really be worrying about hypothetical "10,000 year in the future" people "digging it up" and being too dumb to know it's radioactive waste, like this is an actual reasonable concern (1, they won't if you put it in a hole, and 2, most of the really dangerous fission products have half-lives on the order of decades, not millennia). The entire push against nuclear that started in the '70's was borne entirely out of irrational fear and ignorance and continues to be promulgated to this day. And that's just one aspect of the nuclear ignorance - there's plenty of other aspects too. Thankfully numerous governments are once again ignoring the loud voices and getting back on track with an actual solution to the climate crisis. And ironically it seems to be conservative governments doing it.