For now.

In a 2022 analysis, the publication said that, by 2052, half the people at risk of wildfire will live in the South.

https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/fire-danger-map-season-states-b2695693.html#%3A~%3Atext=With+the+impacts+of+human%2Cwill+live+in+the+South.

Maybe I’m too stupid, but how was the baseline actually set? The article implies the 2024 consumption sets the baseline, but we probably don’t know that value yet and they just talk about how the baseline is higher than 2023 (and “current”) usage. Obviously Kigali timelines are slower than we all want, but at the same time having global agreement (mostly, US will probably reneg) and achievable targets may be better than everyone failing (cough Paris). Remember the Montreal protocol is an incredible success story in international cooperation, even if in hindsight it seems like the most basic bare minimum to us today. The problem is the chemical industry is pushing HFOs as HFC replacements, but these are also dogshit because they break down into PFAS.

We need to go straight to natural refrigeratonts. There are many passionate individuals, companies, and policies driving us towarda this and we’ll get there. For anyone buying refrigerant containing things, look for R290, R744, R600a if you have a choice when you buy refrigerators, heat pump dryers, heat pumps, cars, etc. This is a big deal!

Your experience is fine and I’m not denying it, but none of what you said is unique to Tesla at this point (except possibly some of the software). An Ioniq 5 charges faster, can use the superchargers and EA and everyone else’s chargers, rides better, has a heat pump, has better lease deals, etc. You can easily find anecdotes just like yours from former Tesla owners that bought other EVs. Of course you can buy cars that charge slower, or don’t have heat pumps, or other features of the Y, but you seem to be just ignoring competing vehicles that do things as well or better than Tesla.

If you’re in the EU or have access to Chinese EVs, the competition is even more compelling vs the Tesla offerings.

These are some really great points. This to me is a reflection of our (in particular US) view that energy is something unlimited and cheap. The idea that we might simply do less or optimize to anything other than profit is laughable to most folks, so efficiency barely enters the conversation except as a means to profit further in some niche cases after the fact. The organizational changes required to correct the issues you identified seem truly insurmountable, unfortunately, but you’re absolutely right.

There are tons of Y competitors, just not yet from Lucid. It’s the most popular segment with the most competition. Regarding dealers, it’s not a universal benefit. Service and location matter. Rivian for example is really struggling with this. And ask the folks that spent $70k on a model Y a few years ago during the peak squeeze how great they feel about totally not paying a dealer markup. Software is interesting, Tesla does a good job at OTA but in general everyone I talk to seems to want less tech, fewer subscriptions, less invasive tracking, and manual buttons. Half the people I know want to just drive old Toyotas because of privacy. The tech stack and the software mean nothing to me personally. I do care about ride quality and road noise, and last time I was in a Tesla both were awful. Most folks charge at home and the supercharger network is less of an advantage every day. The people that need to cannonball run in subzero temps will drive ICE for another 5+ years anyway. Heat pumps are helpful but not that much. When it’s actually really cold the COP isn’t much better than 1-1.5, and when it’s mild and COP improves you don’t need much capacity anyway. I remember years ago before Tesla put in heat pumps everyone saying it didn’t matter. Sorry for the meandering rant here, the point here is that the Y is by no means a superior vehicle anymore. I personally value nothing that a Y has over an Ioniq 5, and that’s even ignoring that Musk is a Nazi that deserves universal boycotting.

It’s both. Electrified transport and electrified heat are displacing fossil use directly. Global ICE sales peaked in 2017 and appear to be in permanent decline.

What matters is total carbon, and unfortunately 2024 appears to have been another record year. Hopefully 2024 was peak and 2025 is the start of declining carbon. Every other metric is just an interesting part of the overall story.

I totally agree with your take other than that their cars are anything special at this point - what features are unmatched by competitors? Yes they were innovative at the time but they currently don’t lead in efficiency, range, charging, ride quality, interior quality, and FSD was/is an absolute grift.

That’s fair, I was more referring to the casual internet use so many folks enjoy (YouTube, maps, search for literally everything, all the apps and updates, etc). Denying them revenue through ad blockers and avoiding their direct services gets you pretty close though.

How many times did you ping Google servers today? AI bullshit aside, this is still on us for using all of their services. Yes they need to find a way to deliver their services sustainably but it’s our job to regulate them and force the issue and not just hope corpos do the right thing (they won’t).

Plus there’s always the backup plan, which is using a sharpie to draw a new hurricane trajectory on a poster.

Gas is not a simple global market like oil is and there isn’t a single methane price everyone pays. That would require significantly more LNG terminals around the world and policy changes. This is precisely why gas companies want to build more LNG terminals - this would increase volume while raising domestic prices (and likely lowering foreign prices). It’s not a simple econ 101 global free market though.

Let’s pack it up then, if there’s a cooling tower in a picture we can’t use it, even if it’s actually a picture of a sprawling petrochemical plant with a massive smokestack emitting CO2 that also happens to include the cooling towers that are part of the facility.

Its just not that binary and people change their minds (intentionally and unintentionally). Let’s say you meet some people and you’re not sure if you’d like to date any of them, but you at least know you’d like to get to know them and hang out more. Then after getting to know them (likely in group settings) you then realize that you’d like to date one of them. Then you get the courage to ask and they’re not interested and just wanted to be friends. Sprinkle in some apprehension here and there and then you have the meme. It’s not as black and white as immediately categorizing people you meet as “friend” or “carnal” and then sticking with that label forever. None of this is static and we’re all just making it up as we go.

Didn’t he die just today trying to suck on his own penis? Hard to keep up with the news these days.

That’s not how this works and a golf club isn’t a court. This means the lawsuit can proceed. If they had already decided to rule in O&G’s favor on this, they would have done so by hearing the case and making a ruling in their favor.

It seems like the forces trying to ensure car dependency won that one. I’d have much preferred a history of expensive roads because we’d have more walkable/bikable/transit oriented development this whole time.

The planet is warming though, so the term is not without merit. We have headlines every day about 1.5C of warming. The problem has always been that the earth’s systems are too complicated for regular folks and they don’t understand that a more energetic system can produce all sorts of anomalies in any given location. There’s no magical term that will resonate with denialists anyway so why bother trying?

Practically everywhere is a wildfire zone though. Yes we need much more forest management, infrastructure hardening, fire resources, etc, but giving folks a one time payout and then they move to another area that gets destroyed and now they don’t get support doesn’t seem helpful since we can’t really predict what will burn. It’s simply harder than e.g. flood mapping.

Marginal cost is never zero though. That would imply truly free unlimited energy. There is a cost to build solar, wind, storage, etc. that needs to be amortized. We also want to incentivize folks to not waste energy, so a reasonably strong link between usage and price is helpful.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this all plays out for gas infrastructure as folks electrify and cut their gas service. Once the spiral starts, fixed costs will grow for the remaining customers and push more people to cancel their service.

But the size of the array, and therefore the cost of the array, are intimately tied to the production of said array. So there can’t be flat rate unless consumption never surpasses production, which is of course will when you have zero marginal cost.