This statement is tinged with the idea of sacrifice and loss that is unfortunately one of the hallmarks of the environmental movement. How about this? We can have an emissions-free future that is much more awesome than now with the same size cars and homes. Rewiring America explains how (hint: electrify everything):
https://www.rewiringamerica.org/
Of course, it's also a good idea to reduce our overall consumption, but if you tell people they're going to have to live "worse" lives for the sake of the climate — well I don't think that's true or helpful.
Unimaginable to who? I can easily imagine this. The negatives you list are real, but they'll get rapidly better in the next 20 years (longer range cars, more charging stations for example). But in focusing on the negatives you (and the people you say you're speaking for) forget the positives:
- Electric cars already have the lowest cost of ownership of any cars and are often more fun to drive. The electric Ford pickup is basically just a better version of the fossil pickup.
- Heat pumps can both heat and cool homes meaning there's no need for separate AC/heaters. They're also often installed with mini splits meaning that families have finer-grained control over the temperature in various rooms.
- Induction stoves boil water in under a minute and are way easier to clean than gas or even electric resistance stoves. Plus gas stoves actually cause respiratory issues in homes.
- Without emissions, our air becomes a lot more pleasant to breathe, kills fewer people, and thus overall health improves. Cities in particular will have noticeably better air quality.
- Installing and maintaining electrified machines will create millions of new jobs in every zip code in the country and help distribute wealth.
- All of this will be cheaper to run than fossil fuels due to the inherent efficiency of electrification. The average US household will actually save hundreds of dollars a year on energy bills.
One of the tricks that will help make this all doable is to make emissions-free technologies up-front cheaper than the alternatives. So the thing that's the best for the climate is also best for the consumer's wallet. Government rebates would work great here and there's a bill being worked on right now for this: https://twitter.com/USRepKCastor/status/1426230666857959428
(Note: I personally like induction stoves the best. I'm not arguing that gas stoves are a good thing, just that we can get 90% of the benefit for only like 10% of the whining by leaving them alone for now.)
Is this really a sacrifice?
I can't see the US ever being willing to make these sacrifices though. If you compare the $/sqft for housing in the US vs. Europe the difference is shocking (even in big cities like Seattle vs. London), same for gasoline prices, etc.
I would be more concerned with urban design and zoning than square footage. Bigger house means more maintenance, and bigger lot means more mowing. I for one, hate mowing.
The US has become accustomed to unparalleled comfort and luxury, with central air conditioning and multiple cars practically the norm. If anything, I imagine they'll try to enforce strict emissions controls on developing nations to have the pretence of doing something.
A car is not a luxury. It is an unfortunate and out of control necessity that helps increases the cost of living and make societies less egalitarian, because it is a requirement to use car to do anything of note.
My generation Z neighbors (I have two) are very happy to live without a car. They live within three miles of their jobs and use electric scooters for commuting. They have their food and consumer goods shipped to their house. They say that they don’t need to drive anywhere, and the occasion that they want to go somewhere Uber is available. Meanwhile they are saving hundreds to thousands of dollars a month by not having two cars.
I personally (a millennial) have put less than five thousand miles on my car in the last 5 years. People say cars are a requirement for American life, but I find that’s becoming less true for more and more Americans.
Maybe more media-visible Americans are living in such areas now, but supply is extremely tight. A lot of these neighborhoods tend to be older, being poor in previous decades, and now those poor people are getting pushed out to the suburbs where cars are a great required expense.
If you go out a few times a week, not having a car in most American cities is quite difficult/burdensome/expensive. Uber alone would be $100 round trip if I wanted to go into the city from where I live. Public transit? Isn’t available past 11pm.
For many people, yes.
> Bigger house means more maintenance, and bigger lot means more mowing. I for one, hate mowing.
No one is forcing you to buy a big home with a maintenance burden. Out of respect, don't force other people into buying smaller ones.
You can easily give everyone a McMansion and live in some sub 1.5C utopia as long as we focus on where we get our energy and resources from. Stop focusing on consumption quantity because it just sounds like envy.
Heat pumps just move heat around... They do not create heat. If they did - we'd have some violations of laws. All they're doing is going to transfer geothermal, solar, wind, etc. power into heat transfer - which is transferring heat from outdoors into your home... Which then goes back outdoors at some point. There isn't any "heat" creation here.
What model are you speaking of where they claim electric cars are not viable for the future? (Assuming renewable energy sources and sustainable use of natural resources, etc.)
I'm not going to dispute the point about heat pumps more because I don't know enough about them to argue credibly about it. Maybe you're right and it's a perfect solution to the problem.
> What model are you speaking of where they claim electric cars are not viable for the future? (Assuming renewable energy sources and sustainable use of natural resources, etc.)
That assumes away the problem I think. Is it really inconceivable that we're going to start hitting limits to resources, especially if we're doubling down on cars which all have their own large batteries, sprawling asphalt, and all the rest of it? It seems really hard to imagine to me that we're going to chance on technology that makes it just as sustainable for everyone to live in a McMansion and drive an F-150 an hour to work as for people to ride trains or bicycles and live in denser housing. Certainly we could do much better than now before we started to nip at that stuff but I feel like there have to be limits. If it's so easy and we have all the answers I have to wonder why all the kicking and screaming to get there.
You have been sucked into believing by corporations that you are the issue but it's the corporations who are the issue. They want you to take personal responsibility for their issues. Everything is pushed onto the end user and the individual as responsibility rather than a corporation to do things in a manner that is best for us all. You know why? Cause that's good for the corporations! They can do horrible things and not have to deal with any of the externalities that they're creating and rake in the profit! These strategies have been mainstream for well over 50 years now.
Keep believing that personal responsibility is really the key to solving climate change but it will continue to do nothing and mean nothing. The responsibility is within your governmental body to take over how corporations are producing their products, harvesting resources, generating power, and the externalities that their products create.
Do you really think it's a coincidence that the products sold to you are not environmentally-friendly/sustainable/whatever? It's not because consumers demand them... Consumers just want something cheap... But consumers aren't paying for externalities upfront... neither are corps... No one pays. Thus, cheaper. You offer two comparable products but one is cheaper - people choose the cheaper one! On top of that, our world and economy is built on these natural resources. Imagine if oil became $0 or $1000/barrel. It'd wreck certain parts of the economy either way - there is a heavy investment and lobbying infrastructure built upon maintaining the status quo.
You really are using the personal responsibility framework to a high extent. Corps are the biggest issue. Most issues of CO2 generators and other such things - people are very happy to use their replacements because there is very little difference in quality of life (sometimes it's even improved). The things people most want that create CO2 and there's no way around it ever are very low contributors to CO2 overall. You could easily wipe out over half of CO2 emissions in USA by just converting everything to renewable energy resources. (electric cars + electricity production + using heat pumps)
By comparison the US is brand new and has abundant land. Add to that the fact that many houses in the US are timber-framed things that are easy to change and extend, and you have a recipe for big homes.
Where they are legal (very small percentage of land area), America's tight housing markets see smaller townhomes and apartments sprout like weeds.
British cities like London would have plenty more space if they built up, even slightly. Comparable European cities have 4-8 story apartment buildings in the inner city; London quickly becomes single houses.
> There wasn't much land to start with, and changing the use of land that's had buildings on it for 1000 years is incredibly hard.
Most of London is much, much younger than that. London expanded in the late 19th century, as railways and metro lines were built.
Heat pumps are probably the most efficient way we have to both cool AND heat a house. This is especially true when combined with solar panels and smart thermostats.
The general level of craftsmanship is lackluster, agreed.
> Americans are the least-informed people history has ever known
Both this and your prior statement are reflections regarding the diversity of the United States: we have a lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff. You can find either in abundance and pretend it's the only option, or you can look at it and see a nuanced perspective.
I’ve lived in Japan and their housing is far superior. It is newer in general, well-built, quiet, warm, efficient, comfortable, functional, and cheap. American housing stock is none of those things, at twice the price.
Don't houses in Japan only last 20-30 years? Isn't the only reason they're newer in general that they have to be rebuilt so often? Houses in America last way longer than twice that, so only paying twice as much seems like a bargain in comparison.
And to address your other anti-American points…the world’s rich come here for health care, and it’s the best in the world for cutting edge care. Our highway system is one of the best in the world and we don’t care about high speed rail because of that. Your heavy biases can’t really cover up the facts.
That is coming very close to personal attack, which is against the site guidelines.
I can't see the US ever being willing to make these sacrifices though. If you compare the $/sqft for housing in the US vs. Europe the difference is shocking (even in big cities like Seattle vs. London), same for gasoline prices, etc.
The US has become accustomed to unparalleled comfort and luxury, with central air conditioning and multiple cars practically the norm. If anything, I imagine they'll try to enforce strict emissions controls on developing nations to have the pretence of doing something.