You don’t get to blame some unvaccinated people and give others a pass. The virus literally doesn’t care. All parents that refuse to vaccinate children by choice are ignorant and recklessly endangering their children.
Also it’s not like unvaccinated folks are perfectly distributed within the general population. There are pockets with very low vaccination rates where these cases are happening.
Depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice. One year isn’t long, but you could conceivably get just about every car and van off diesel, get just about everyone off heating oil (which is just diesel), go crazy on electric trains, dramatically decrease construction and electrify what you can there, and switch backup generators to gas (which doesn’t really help the climate of course but helps with no diesel). The biggest near term issue is likely heavy transit. You could displace some with trains and petrol/electric vans, but there’s going to be serious rationing going on and supply chains will be hanging on by a thread. Farming equipment also a big issue. Hydrogen might be able to start replacing diesel for these uses but within a year is crazy ambitious. This would be hard to do in a decade.
Regardless, we need to approach this from a “war economy” standpoint, so I like the question.
That’s not what “critical” means though. I could say tuna is critical to my health because 80% of my protein comes from tuna, but a sane person would be like “why is you so obsessed with tuna” and “there are other kinds of food out there”. Most people dont even try anything different. My fucking neighbors drives their kids to school because they are too lazy to wake up 15 minutes earlier to catch the school bus, and waste an extra 20 minutes of their time in the process. Most car trips are less than a few miles in the US or something like that.
I’d argue we’d have a much stronger economy with dramatically fewer personal cars and car trips.
Yet deaths are up, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Per distance driven is the wrong metric anyway since more highway miles makes the system appear safer than it actually is. Plus automakers and regulators prioritize occupant safety, not actual absolute safety. And traffic “engineers” optimize travel time while ignoring things like induced demand. The regulators (US focus) are an absolute joke whem it comes to safety, as the multitude of gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs and the dogshit infrastructure clearly show.
Fuck free gas, the oil needs to stay in the ground.
A TV connected to a computer is a dumb display and nothing more. Methinks you’re both in agreement.
NYT and wild titles are like peas and carrots. “Cycling” of course is much more than the UCI world tour, but NYT continues to frame the simple act of riding a bicycle as something of a niche hobby or professional sport. You’re absolutely right that it will be the one constant through whatever climate hellscape is unfolding.
I wish shrinkflation worked on cars and trucks, they just keep getting bigger and bigger.
I think universal programs tend to have more public support.
How is it better? It all just evaporates and breaks down into the same amount of CO2, while also poisoning some habitat along the way. I guess it’s less NOx, so maybe that’s a benefit?
A lot of the most dangerous roads are in… surprise surprise… lower income areas that tend to have a greater proportion of minorities. And traffic death disproportionally affects non rich/white demographics. Despite what people love to parrot, speed enforcement (yes even cameras) increases safety and reduce deaths. Cameras work, and are much cheaper than actual infrastructure investment. So it’s no surprise this admin wants to do something vaguely muh freedom that proportionally harms poor/brown people more. Bonus points if your average chode would assume cameras are DEI, which seems likely. We already have something worse - flock.
Right. One issue is that the US’s glidepath towards low GWP includes significant HFO usage (which is a PFAS) rather than speedrunning natural refrigerants which are the only sustainable long term solution. So we’ll likely have more warming, but less PFAS as a result of this, along with higher costs and more uncertainty. The focus needs to be on natural refrigerants though long term.
Those are parliamentary systems of government…
If a simple majority is required to rule, then logically two parties will form somewhere near 50% support. The fact that other parties have existed in the past is an exception to the logical conclusion of two party rule inherent in the design itself.
That’s not how it played out though. Rural areas had higher death rates.
You’re a bit less cynical than I am, so I applaud you for that. I’m not sensing mailce per se, but I’ve noticed the same pro-hydrogen content for years from this particular user and it’s getting pretty wild considering the massive, observable growth in the EV sector and the proven viability. There will always be folks tilting at windmills, however. For me, I’m going to continue promoting walkable/bikable/transit focused communities with EVs as a backstop.
Hydrogen cars are dead and EVs won already. This pro hydrogen position has only ever benefited the fossil industry, and is laguhable considering the state of the industry in 2026 (gestures broadly at China). Their arguments are simply disingenuous (e.g. obviously efficiency doesn’t matter because bikes are more efficient than cars, so let’s all agree to use inefficient cars). Hydrogen will be a thing for some industries, but not cars.
Heat pumps easily exceed 2.5 COP. More like 4 in the UK climate. And gas isn’t 100% efficient either. But yeah it’s a wash or can be more expensive to heat with heat pumps where electricity is really expensive. It helps if we all conveniently ignore externalities like pollution and carbon too.
What are you actually advocating for here? Not electrifying and waiting another few decades for hydrogen? You come off as excessively defensive of the practically nonexistent H2 industry and excessively critical of electrification, which is basically the Shell and Exxon position. We don’t have time wait for anything, we need to use the tech we have now to reduce warming. Where do we get the hydrogen in your world? Is it blue or green? Blue is just fossil fuels with extra steps and green doesn’t make sense until we have significant excess renewables and already electrified the easy stuff (buildings) and then it might still make sense only for industry/shipping and niche stuff. H2 itself has a GWP of 11 or so, and we will leak quite a bit. So again, what are you actually arguing for? I can’t buy hydrogen, period. I can’t buy a hydrogen vehicle, or a hydrogen furnace, or a hydrogen anything. What do you actually think we plebs should be doing here? I already want green steel as much as you do.
It’s right to blame everyone that doesn’t vaccinate.