Thread

1. zkmon · 1791182118 · focus · HN ↗

   Some great soul said something like "God has given everything to meet your need, not your greed". As long as the greed continues to increase exponentially, no amount of innovation is going to support it.

   The amount of energy and material wastage in developed countries is enormous and abominable. Large screens being on 24x7 without anyone watching, cities explicitly designed for forcing the use of vehicle, consumer life-style requiring huge supply chains, powerful cars carrying just one person, ... and so on.

   Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people and nations and act against any measures to fix the problem. A business knows nothing about climate or human good.

   1. zdragnar · 1791183952 · focus · HN ↗

      A fairly basic economic principle is that demand is infinite. It's a derived concept from the fact that demand is driven by desire- both need and want. The less personal sacrifice required to get something, the more people will want it.

      It's far from an axiomatic truth, but it's a good enough approximation to point out that "Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people" is an absurd bogeyman here. If it wasn't, everyone would be living in shoebox apartments, would never travel outside their neighborhood in their mega city, and our diets would consist of the least possible energy intensive foods possible- probably a soylent style powder that is shelf stable and doesn't require a great deal of refrigeration or preserving.

      We don't live like that because people don't really see how taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment, and we keep living in our individual houses because we don't like apartments, and so on and so forth. Properly insulating those buildings requires polymers for things like weather sheathing, plus insulation for electrical cabling, and so forth. All of these little inefficiencies and uses for polymers add up to the simple truth: we're not going to hit CO2 reduction goals on the basis of individual action, and we're not going to stop using plastics.

      1. surgical_fire · 1791192286 · focus · HN ↗

         I lived in the Netherlands for a bit, where I used to do a bike ride to the grocery shop.

         Now I live in a more car-centric place where the only practical way to do grocery shopping is by car (unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule). I am not brave enough to ride a bike on the road.

         If I were to choose, I vastly prefer the bike (not even for environmental concerns, it was just more pleasant). But things just aren't built that way.

         1. david-gpu · 1791197453 · focus · HN ↗

            > unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule

            Granny carts of various sizes and shapes are available. Super useful when one does not want to use a car.

            You mentioned that you don't ride a bike, but for those who do, trailers are also available, as are cargo bikes.

            A lot was lost when we started to design our neighborhoods around the assumption that everybody gets around by car.

            1. Gravityloss · 1791198418 · focus · HN ↗

               It's generally easier to envision a small amount of changes at once. But for something like walkable or bike or public centric transportation, multiple things need to change before it makes sense.

               Ie with a car, you go to grocery store once a week. You buy lots of things.

               If you live close to a store in the city, you can just pick up something while coming home, or even when you're cooking you can just run to the store in 2 minutes to get something on-demand.

               But you can't gradually go from one to the other so easily. You can't go with car to the local small store. There's nowhere to park etc. You can't go to the big box store in the middle of cooking because it takes an hour for the round trip.

               So if you have person doing A, they see B as impractical "where would I park?". Or person B would say A is impractical because "I'd have to know cooking a week in advance". Both arguments are correct, you can't go from A to B or B to A by just changing one thing. You need a whole new big picture.

               You can still do a mix sometimes, ie a person can do both, but not in the same situations.

               1. david-gpu · 1791199946 · focus · HN ↗

                  They said they are within walking distance, so I suggested wheels to avoid "walking like a mule".

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.