I think this is bad. Sometimes I want a cheap Chinese piece of crap that breaks in 3 months because I only need to use it one or two times. I shouldn't be forced to shell out for a high-quality BIFL model if that doesn't correspond to my needs.
Buying cheap products that break in 3 months that you then throw away IS the type of behaviour they want to reduce, even if it was exactly what you expected and wanted.
all units are kWh/d
* "defence": 4
* transporting stuff: 12
* stuff: 48+
* food, farming, fertilizer: 15
* gadgets: 5
* light: 4
* heating, cooling: 37
* jet flights: 30
* car: 40
The combined energy cost of stuff and stuff transports is the biggest impact on the list.
although arguably the car is the worst offender if you account for the energy cost of the stuff lifecycle and the energy costs to oeprate it. The estimated energy cost of manufacturing a car with a 15 year lifespan accounts for 14kWh/day of the 48+ kWh/day "stuff" estimate, so if the use of a car was replaced with a magical transport device that required no energy to manufacture or run or dispose of, that would eliminate 14kWh/day from "stuff" and also eliminate the 40 kWh/day car operational energy cost too.
I wonder:
- What's the total ecological impact of container ships vs. alternative forms of transport using better fuel?
- Would container ships be a Good Thing if we could somehow make them use clean energy? (I just imagined a dream future of fully autonomous, nuclear-powered container ships.)
- If so, why are they still using that shit fuel?
You don't need to go all the way to nuke-carriers; plain old combustion can be much, much cleaner than some ships at negligible (but non-zero) cost - witness similar engines/powerplants on land. But in an extremely competitive market, what sane operator would do that?
You might want to read about these then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Hahn_(ship)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(nuclear_ship)
Or just rent it if you only need it one or two times?
The environmental cost of a Chinese gizmo is negligible compared to the loss of utility associated with having to rent a USB stick or some nail clippers. We don't have to live like we're in the Middle Ages.
Personally, I'd be much more in favour of "disposable economy" (because of those utility costs you mention) if I could trust that all of the trash actually gets recycled into further products.
It's remarkable to me sometimes how painfully and obviously ignorant many people on HN are about the lifestyles of the huge portion of the global population that lives in relatively undeveloped rural/agrarian areas. You don't even have to live there, just visit sometimes.
I spend a good fraction of the year in locations that are at least 10 miles to the nearest business of any kind, let alone something like a second hand store that requires a reasonable population to sustain.
A lot of them live in a bubble. Just ignore it. The tall nail gets the hammer. Loud minority opinions get run out of town.
Your claim is also incorrect for more fundamental reasons, although it doesn't really apply here: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Cooperating minorities can have an effect drastically out of proportion with their share of the population.
At some point, this person is going to have to realize they cannot keep doing what they are doing, no matter how much they may "want" to do so.
Places that don't have the services which require a reasonable population to sustain are getting emptier and emptier every decade; there are farms with no people living on them, where people commute from a town that does have a reasonable population to maintain all the modern services, do their work and go home.
The growing urbanization means that almost all of society lives in a somewhat urban environment, and the number of people who don't shrinks rapidly every decade, with no sign of stopping.
I hope for your sake that this was an off-the cuff comment and not something you actually put thought into.
Cities are very small, and unpopulated areas are very big. Amount = density * area.
The US has about 15% of people living in rural counties. China has about 60% of people living in rural areas. 63% of sub-saharans live in rural areas. It's around 45% globally, per the world bank group.
In Western EU, the depopulated rural areas don't have many people, don't have a huge portion of population, and the size of them doesn't matter.
And rapid urbanization is continuing everywhere. Within a few decades, sub-Saharan Africa will have the urbanization rate that China has now and China will be closer to towards the urbanization rate of the western world than the current ratio.
And if nothing changes, USA will very soon be as urbanized as Western EU (it's currently a bit more rural) and Western EU will be even more urbanized as it is today.
The rural areas are getting more empty, quality of life is decreasing due to depopulation, and because of that they're getting even more empty. In the long run, the population rural areas would likely converge to whatever portion of workforce is needed to run the primary agriculture, which used to be ~2% in 20th century for advanced societies and now with increasing automation is likely to drop to 1%. Within two generations, rural USA will not have anywhere close to 15% in rural counties, and that's unavoidable.
Per the WBG, 45% of the global population absolutely has a "noticeable impact".
Well, now it will be :)
Longer-lived more durable products might also be amenable to app-based rental ""sharing economy"", for people who don't want to keep the thing.
What quantity went into the more expensive version I'm forced to buy so some upper-class do-gooder can satisfy their sense of moral superiority?
If you think that "questionable labour" is a problem, fix that directly instead of making vaguely related warranty regulations.
I'd be perfectly happy with efforts to make the price of items more closely match their total cost including externalities, but piecemeal regulation of warranty policy is not the way to do that.
It may well be worse for the cheaper one, as they have to cut costs somewhere - e.g. Apple recently announced they would move to use recycled rare-earth minerals only, and stop buying from war zones. Which is obviously the way it should be, right?
It's just that there are things we still haven't solved when it comes to conflicts, business, government and industry, leading to all of us here walking around with minerals mined by hand, by children, at gunpoint.
Now, if we want to change this, regulation has proved to be a workable way. As you hint, there are surely others and I hope we can pursue them as soon as possible! With the current regime in the US, change likely won't come from that way in a while, so I'm glad to see the EU making progress.
(Also, you're coming across as slightly entitled with the aggressive tone when saying you want the world to keep an unworkable production system just because it's convenient to you.)
Please expound on how disposable goods are "unworkable".
If I'm coming across as entitled, it's because I'm very tired of people directly and noticeably harming my quality of life for the sake of trivial (and often counterproductive) environmental benefits. I shouldn't have to break the law (but I do have to) to have a good shower, a well-functioning toilet, a working gas can on my car, really clean clothes, or effective and safe home sanitation. If you aren't familiar with the ways "progressive" little environmental regulations in the US have fucked up all of those things to negligible environmental benefit, I'd be happy to explain any of them.
I assume that you either 1) have a different vision of how we can maximize wealth and convenience while minimizing waste and environmental damage, or 2) you don't care about waste and environmental damage.
If 1) is true, I'd like to learn what your vision is.
My dream vision is that the government tries to bring about a practical approximation of the preconditions of the Coase theorem. This is very, very different from the piecemeal and economically unsound approach it is using right now.
Can you elaborate on these points. I feel like I have all of them (with the exception that I don't have a car) without doing anything environmentally illegal.
(In fact, I have specifically noticed that well designed modern toilets are far more effective than old ones that use tonnes of water.)
Not sure what is meant by working gas can on the car... I personally just hate the gas hoses at stations which have the pressure contraption so I have to keep it physically pushed in to the hole and can't say let it start and clean my windshield, but it also has a hyper sensitive fume/fluid sensor so it cuts off if I try to have a flow over 50%. I love older stations with older pump hoses, no problems. Don't have to break the law for them, yet.
Clean clothes and home probably refer to some effective cleaning agents being banned because they're known to the state of California to cause cancer or something. I can't say I have that problem but I might not know what I'm missing.
I'd have to read up more, but as I understand it, that style of gas pump (as well as "new gas cans" which also get a lot of complaints) were made to counter gas vapor leaks that reportedly contributed significantly to smog. Was it trivial in nature? I'd have to see a study.
Separately, the last big thing I knew with clothes cleaning was how phosphates were removed from detergents some years back due to environmental concerns; from my understanding, phosphates in consumer detergent caused far more than "trivial" nutrient pollution (example paper: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25038382?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...). I noticed when non-phosphate dishwashing detergents were introduced, with our hard water they left lots of spots. But there are non-phosphate ways around that issue. The actual cleaning part is fine.
Now that you bring up gas cans, I bought a new small one and I really don't like it over an old one I have. Instead of countering gas leaks it seems to encourage them, I can't keep it in the garage like the older one because when it gets warm its cheap plastic expands and eventually the gas leaks out of the nozzle (some 'safety' feature) and then gets into the furnace which happily pumps gas smells with the AC into the rest of the house... The can's not even half full either.
I vaguely remember the phosphates drama now. But I agree, I don't have any issues sanitizing things...
There are (in my opinion) only two good gas cans out there:
1. The standard US/NATO steel gerry cans with the welded seams (not the crimped seams that you see on the new versions today; you have to do some searching for these nice older cans that were built properly); nozzles can be found at army surplus stores and online.
2. RotoPax - seriously, if you want a modern solution made from plastic, and price isn't an object, RotoPax is what you want.
Toilets jam more frequently and are less sanitary than they were without flush volume restrictions. I usually modify the float mechanism in my toilet to help fix this.
Basically, if water wastage is such a problem, we should let the price of water reflect its actual cost including externalities. No one would go thirsty, and people would be able to optimally choose the amount of water they use, rather than the government trying to dictate it.
Thanks to CARB regulations, it is illegal to have a well-functioning gas can. You are required to use these piece of shit overcomplicated "spill proof" mechanisms, which are not spill proof, are absurdly slow, and break constantly because they're so complicated. The one time I really needed a gas can, the piece of shit broke, something shot off into the trees under spring pressure, and the gas was stuck in the can. Since then, I always use a non-compliant "water can" to store gas. These actually work, and they spill less than the "spill proof" models.
It's illegal to use various effective cleaning solutions like TSP because there is some evidence that they contribute to algal growth in rivers. Modern cleaning products in the US are drastically inferior and you have to mix your own with bulk chemicals if you want a good clean. IIRC, the guy at the EPA responsible for this is on record as saying he wants everyone to go back to washing with vinegar, so there's another example of placing environmental interest over net human interest.
Another cleaning product I'm not allowed to use: hot water. To effectively and safely sanitize surfaces, water has to be at least 170 degrees Fahrenheit. It is illegal for domestic water heaters to go that high in the US. I would accept a legal default of e.g. 130F for safety reasons, but it should be up to me if I want to e.g. wire my kitchen with water suitable for sanitization. Instead you have to use chemical products like bleach. I'd prefer the risk of occasional mild water burns while cleaning over having to inhale bleach fumes all the time.
FYI and TLDR: you're spending more money than you should by using this method. (and wasting resources, but that doesn't seem to hold weight against you)
(edit: yes i'm aware this from a fantasy book, but there's also actual evidence behind it as well, even if presented in a humoristic way)
Perhaps this is the level of economic background I should expect from internet commenters.
The quoted theory might be relevant if I were using my e.g. USB drives to exhaustion (and sometimes I do, and I buy the nice SSD drives), but sometimes I only need to use them once or twice, and buying a high-quality drive would be a waste.
Based on your downvotes, it seems that people on HN think that fiction can prove economic theory.
If you use something 20 times, you don't care whether it breaks after 100 uses or 1000 uses.