this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
131 points (89.7% liked)

Europe

1322 readers
200 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)

(This list may get expanded when necessary.)

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].

founded 3 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Halff said the lost trees were equivalent to about 13,000 tonnes of CO2, the annual amount emitted by 2,800 [average internal combustion engine cars]in the US. “So that’s a fraction of the number of the electric cars that Tesla produces and sells every quarter,” he said. “You always have trade-offs, so you need to be aware of what the terms of the trade-off are.”

Don’t you just love it when people “forget” to include construction of the facility and production of those EVs in their CO2 calculations?

Aside from that, EVs aren’t going to save the environment. They will only make cities’ air pollution a little less.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What EVs will do is save us from an ever-approaching energy crisis, by making an alternative to motor fuel, and reducing global dependence on places like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for fuel, which limits those nations' ability to suppress their own populations or export fuckery outside their borders.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yeah but it seems like public transport is always the skeleton at the ocean floor meme in these discussions. Good public transport would make cities more livable and reduce pollution dramatically and reduce our dependence on petrostates.

Sure, it’s not feasible everywhere but at least here in Germany it’s pretty good for regional transport in towns and cities but always feels kinda disregarded and forgotten by politicians.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Public infrastructure. Public transportation, but also bike infrastructure. Not just thrown in as an afterthought, but as the primary concern. As long as people living in cities still think it's somewhat reasonable to own a car we're failing.

[–] riodoro1 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We keep saving us from more crises by manufacturing more shit and consuming more resources for „just a stepping stone” solution. Making more shit sacs rich in the process.

Interesting how that works.

Truth is that humanity will have to face degrowth at some point. It could be gradual and planned now or it will be sudden and chaotic in a rather near future. All those EVs we keep pumping out to keep our 1960’s dream of personal transportation afloat consume a lot of materials and resources we could’ve placed elsewhere or just leave fucking untouched.

[–] LesserAbe 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What do you envision when you say degrowth?

Because for good or bad, I don't see a future anytime soon where personal vehicles are gone. People need to get around to live and in most places public transit isn't up to the task. To my mind best case we get governments to start building more public transit and as those systems get better it creates a virtuous cycle where more and more people can practically make the change.

In the meantime if we switch from gas to electric cars that is a net positive, even though switching to public transit would be much more of a net positive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure, we just need to be able to finf an ethically and ecologically responsible source for lithium.

Top 10 largest lithium mines are in Australia, Chile, Argentina and China.
The kicker is CO² emissions for extraction.
Approximately 15 tonnes of CO2 are emitted for every tonne of lithium extracted.
And then the actual production.
Tesla Model 3 holds an 80 kWh lithium-ion battery. CO2 emissions for manufacturing that battery would range between 3120 kg (about 3 tons) and 15,680 kg (about 16 tons). I'm pretty sure this figure includes the extraction emissions.

Is this less than the life cycle emissions for manufacturing fuel and ICE vehicles?
Of course! Does that mean we should just look at that as job done?
No, not in the least. We absolutely have to get clean energy into every step of the process, especially refining.