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Comment by SeyelentEco | Hacker News Reader

The fact that there are more evil evils doesn't counter act the argument. What a weird argument to make... It's like the"why are we funding research into X when heart disease kills more people". "Why are we focusing on guns when cars kill more people".

Maybe the answer is we don't ship dangerous materials across vast distances using methods that are dangerous to the local communities. Why does the answer have to be whatever the cheapest most convenient solution for the company? It should be the solution is least likely to cause serious harm and meets the needs of the communities it impacts.

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Do you drive? Do you use plastic? Then you're part of the reason these pipelines exist in first place. Without demand, they're unnecessary. When there's demand there, they're gonna get the product to market, whether it's by pipeline or truck or rail. So not really a weird argument.

Did I say that I didn't want oil to exist or for it to not be made available? I said that we shouldn't just take whatever cheapest solution the company proposes. These companies are not hurting for profits. Making them try a little harder to come up with solutions for transportation that doesn't endanger countless people with far reaching effects. This is about minimizing the risk when something happens. Something ALWAYS happens... maybe not in 1 year or 5 years but in 10, 20, 30 years, something will happen... we need to minimize the damage when that happens.

I don't drive and I don't use any plastic outside of annoying packaging that's forced on me. Since I'm living in Vancouver does this mean we can cancel the trans-mountain pipeline?

In truth I find your comment quite disingenuous since it is trying to force the burden of responsibility on end consumers - currently the market is strongly indicating a desire for renewables including the high demand for electric and hybrid cars and the fact that in a lot of areas consumers have actually put up with reusable grocery bag laws. Those are nothing but cost and inconvenience to the end consumers and yet it's become much more normalized, don't forget that charging for plastic bags twenty years ago would have driven a grocery store out of business.

I live in california. Every weekday here we have millions of people that make their commute to work. I would say 95% of this transport is using fossil fuels. Most of these same people are probably against pipelines as well but the reality is if you get rid of pipelines and create fossil fuel shortages or prices to skyrocket then you will see an uprising. Thats the reality.

Given the vestigial state that public transit has allowed to degrade to - sure. The problem is that fossil fuel shortages will happen in the future and no planning is being done for that, if these pipelines were being built while trillions were being poured into infrastructure to support a green transit based world then I'd have less objections, but it's not happening. The US Government is actively subsidizing fossil fuel extraction while municipalities tighten their belts on public transit - this is bad.

Also, just to note, EVs are getting heavy investment right now and will be able to dominate the market without any infrastructure investments.

Sounds like the green New deal lets stop burning coal and burn all the trees down instead. People are so morally corrupted and internally conflicted about it they're not sure what to support.

Electric and Hybrid cars still require a boat ton of non-renewable. Depending on the car, you produce as much C02 making the car as running it for a lifetime (in the case of the Range Rover, it's actually much much more in the making). I live in Victoria, and truthfully, Victoria/Vancouver/Seattle, are basically the reason that the Oil Sands exist at all, it's where the vast majority of the product has gone over the last 50 years. (Also, I think you're talking about the transmountain pipeline, not trans-canada).

Ah thanks for the correction, I had confused them - it's the KinderMorgan project, for clarity. I've corrected the OP.

So... https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=150000+miles+%2F+%2825...

That shows about 57 tons of CO2 over a 150,000 mile lifespan of a conventional (non-hybrid) car - even more if you assume a larger lifespan.

Estimates I can find for the embodied CO2 of an EV car are around 10-30 CO2 tons. A smaller hybrid would be on the lower side, while an EV SUV would be on the higher side. Also, instead of looking at the entire cost of the CO2 from the car, we should really be using the additional CO2 over replacement, by subtracting how much C02 it takes to create the alternative, a conventional car. Let's just look at the battery. This thread shows Tesla batteries require about 5-14 tonnes of CO2 to create: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/6sm6rs/the_rea.... Compared to the 57 tonnes of CO2 from a conventional car's lifetime, we're somewhere around a factor of 5-10x better for EVs.

Alternative w/o fossil fuels isn't another car though, that's the point.

Oh to clarify - I don't think we should (or really even could) force all fossil fuel cars off the road tomorrow, the most extreme action that's even reasonable is placing a cut off for new car sales a year or two in the future[1] - then letting those age out.

We should be working on encouraging conversion to EV when older cars age out, eventually maybe there'd be a cutoff for on-road usage, but I'd be amazed if that were any closer than 15 years out, and that's super close already.

1. Re-configuring production lines is expensive, it'd likely be environmentally wasteful to force early conversions of production lines by manufacturers - giving them a window to convert allows them to cease any R&D investment into gas only vehicles and invest more in EVs.

I was responding to the false claim in your comment, "Depending on the car, you produce as much C02 making the car as running it for a lifetime."

I doubt there's a single ICE car on the market that creates as much CO2 to make as it does to run.

The additional CO2 for making an EV is on the order of 5-10x lower than the CO2 it can save (when running on renewable power). Even making a new EV on the order of operating an existing ICE car for ~50k-ish miles.

"Victoria/Vancouver/Seattle, are basically the reason that the Oil Sands exist at all, it's where the vast majority of the product has gone over the last 50 years."

Er, what? The tar sands products wouldn't be coming to the west coast consumers, myself included, unless it was refined first. The whole point of the pipeline expansion is to add mass export for the diluted bitumen product, which is to be sold for overseas refining and use.

Some of the current pipeline capacity is indeed for end use out here, but I don't think it's got anything to do with the tar sands.

Consumer demand is there because driving and plastics are extremely cheap compared to the alternatives, in large part because externalities are not priced in.

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