Hacker News Reader

This is feel-good bullshit. The thing that will actually make people stop burning so much fossil fuels is if gas costed $50 a gallon and everyone who drives a car for any reason is thinking about this number before they use their car. Which is absolutely the sort of state of affairs that large numbers of people - and not just in the rich world - would legitimately riot about.

View on HN

Fortunately we don't need $50 gas because these days we have $1 gas in the form of electric cars. Of course the price of electric varies very much from place to place. For some people electric cars are not competitive with gas but for other people electric is a lot cheaper and has been for a long time and now electric cars are practical.

The other thing you can do is start demanding better transit. Most people live in a city dense enough that transit could replace nearly all their transportation needs. Sure, we would still have to have trucks to get freight around, but that's a small minority of the energy used.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com