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. watwut · 1791195884 · focus · HN ↗

         > 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,

         1.) I walk to a shop cause that is the easiest way to get there.

         2.) If the difference bwtween a car and bus trip is 5 vs 40 min, the bus system majorely sux.

         Basically, you described situation where people settled at bad uncomfortable setup and consider it "good enough" for tradition reasons.

         1. walthamstow · 1791200603 · focus · HN ↗

            If it's a sparse area then bus service is either going to suck or cost a lot of money Nothing to do with tradition.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.