Hold onto the things that give you hope
Mar. 8th, 2026 07:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterI had a restless sleeping dream last night that was definitely derived from the awareness of the wanton violence and destruction the United States is inflicting on people in other countries. It was a dream where the violence and destruction had reached the US as people sought revenge. One of the hardest parts about the awareness of this horribleness is feeling powerless to do much about it*.
I thought about that when filling up my dinosaur car's tank yesterday, the first time I've filled it since November. I think about it when I get on my bike to go places; much of the large-scale destruction paid for with taxpayer money is many orders of magnitude beyond what I could ever hope to personally mitigate by biking instead of driving.
But on Friday on social media elsewhere, someone posted an article about the adoption of clean energy by countries in the global south, and that gave me hope.
I haven't revisited the numbers in a while, but my understanding is that more than half of the carbon emissions associated with cars are from their manufacturing and transport, prior to anyone actually driving them. This is a big part of why I bought a used dinosaur juice vehicle instead of a shiny new electric one, even though it leaves me directly dependent on the fossil-fuel industry.
Within the article, it was interesting to read about Nepal, which found itself so dependent on India for fossil fuels that when India cut off the supply, it led to dramatic adoption of electric vehicles in Nepal, far above and beyond what's currently seen in countries like the US. Apparently Uruguay also had the realization that if the country went electric, it would reduce ongoing dependency on foreign oil imports. With the decreasing costs of manufacturing solar panels and batteries, it just makes sense to switch over!
And here is another thing that got me looking at the world a little differently: a video by someone who made a plug for charging his ebike from car charging stations. That's in the UK, but it got me realizing that it is stupidly one-dimensional to think of car charging stations as just for charging cars.
That might sound a little silly, but I'd point out that I often encounter people out clustered at the small handful of unguarded public electrical outlets on the streets and sidewalks of this city. Also think about how many airports have modified their seating to provide "free" device charging stations. Right now, the most predictable electrical sources available to someone while out and about in public are those car charging stations.
One other thing I appreciated from the article was learning that the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing solar panels can typically be offset within the first year of panel use. And many panels have decades-long lifespans - from what I understand, often longer than many people originally anticipated. Compare *that* to the balance sheet for motor vehicle manufacture and lifespan.
My brother has pointed out that large-scale solar operations are often preferable over rooftop (his house in California is adorned with a botched install), but the point still stands.
Anyway, in the midst of it all I got to thinking back to "No Impact Man," a guy in NYC who spent a year trying to live a net-zero-impact lifestyle back in 2009 or so (approximately the same time period as friends of mine spent an Arizona summer with their home a/c turned off). I don't remember all the specifics of No-Impact Man's electrical situation for the year, but I think he had some sort of balcony solar setup going, and it was definitely a challenge for him to juggle household electrical demands. For example, he shifted over to non-electric food storage methods, and indoor lighting also involved a lot of strategy. I don't remember what he did about cooking.
In contrast, 17 years later, my workplace has just now finalized contracts to get all of its electricity from solar sources (offsite for now, but with options to change if on-campus solar installations become desirable). Even with this country's current regime furiously back-pedaling on any and every unfinished alternative-energy project, we just won't be going back. I mean, why would we?
And still - the needless human suffering must stop.
*We are not powerless but the actions we need to take are not fast or easy.
I thought about that when filling up my dinosaur car's tank yesterday, the first time I've filled it since November. I think about it when I get on my bike to go places; much of the large-scale destruction paid for with taxpayer money is many orders of magnitude beyond what I could ever hope to personally mitigate by biking instead of driving.
But on Friday on social media elsewhere, someone posted an article about the adoption of clean energy by countries in the global south, and that gave me hope.
I haven't revisited the numbers in a while, but my understanding is that more than half of the carbon emissions associated with cars are from their manufacturing and transport, prior to anyone actually driving them. This is a big part of why I bought a used dinosaur juice vehicle instead of a shiny new electric one, even though it leaves me directly dependent on the fossil-fuel industry.
Within the article, it was interesting to read about Nepal, which found itself so dependent on India for fossil fuels that when India cut off the supply, it led to dramatic adoption of electric vehicles in Nepal, far above and beyond what's currently seen in countries like the US. Apparently Uruguay also had the realization that if the country went electric, it would reduce ongoing dependency on foreign oil imports. With the decreasing costs of manufacturing solar panels and batteries, it just makes sense to switch over!
And here is another thing that got me looking at the world a little differently: a video by someone who made a plug for charging his ebike from car charging stations. That's in the UK, but it got me realizing that it is stupidly one-dimensional to think of car charging stations as just for charging cars.
That might sound a little silly, but I'd point out that I often encounter people out clustered at the small handful of unguarded public electrical outlets on the streets and sidewalks of this city. Also think about how many airports have modified their seating to provide "free" device charging stations. Right now, the most predictable electrical sources available to someone while out and about in public are those car charging stations.
One other thing I appreciated from the article was learning that the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing solar panels can typically be offset within the first year of panel use. And many panels have decades-long lifespans - from what I understand, often longer than many people originally anticipated. Compare *that* to the balance sheet for motor vehicle manufacture and lifespan.
My brother has pointed out that large-scale solar operations are often preferable over rooftop (his house in California is adorned with a botched install), but the point still stands.
Anyway, in the midst of it all I got to thinking back to "No Impact Man," a guy in NYC who spent a year trying to live a net-zero-impact lifestyle back in 2009 or so (approximately the same time period as friends of mine spent an Arizona summer with their home a/c turned off). I don't remember all the specifics of No-Impact Man's electrical situation for the year, but I think he had some sort of balcony solar setup going, and it was definitely a challenge for him to juggle household electrical demands. For example, he shifted over to non-electric food storage methods, and indoor lighting also involved a lot of strategy. I don't remember what he did about cooking.
In contrast, 17 years later, my workplace has just now finalized contracts to get all of its electricity from solar sources (offsite for now, but with options to change if on-campus solar installations become desirable). Even with this country's current regime furiously back-pedaling on any and every unfinished alternative-energy project, we just won't be going back. I mean, why would we?
And still - the needless human suffering must stop.
*We are not powerless but the actions we need to take are not fast or easy.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 02:53 pm (UTC)And there should be more ground source heat pumps around.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 07:31 pm (UTC)Kind of. So you know that charging your phone needs a transformer to step down the voltage and current from mains power, and also change AC to DC, to something that your phone can take.
Other than the AC/DC problem, there's at least the same problem with using car chargers for anything smaller: car chargers run at high voltage with huge currents. Most things can't accept that, so the electricity needs to be reduced in both voltage and current.
Depending on how the things at both ends work, the thing between the car charger and the thing being charged may speak different languages (well, electronic protocols) to avoid over-charging the batteries. This sometimes comes up when people try to use old(er) electric car batteries to work with rooftop solar arrays: the chargers meant for solar power use a different protocol than car batteries do, so they need another gadget to get them to talk to each other. Otherwise, there are inconvenient fires and explosions. :)
Neither of these are insurmountable problems, but it's also not trivial.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-08 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-09 03:20 am (UTC)I haven't revisited the numbers in a while, but my understanding is that more than half of the carbon emissions associated with cars are from their manufacturing and transport, prior to anyone actually driving them.
It's been a while since I looked at those figures too, so take this with a grain of salt. The transportation part is almost certainly wrong. Raw materials are typically shipped by water, which is very efficient, and in the worst case, shipping finished cars on car-carrying trucks is more efficient than driving them the same distance, since the cars on the rack are drafting each other. And then a modern car sure last for 100k miles or more. The figures don't add up.
The manufacturing part assumes stupidly worst cases: everything is made from raw materials, none of which are ever recycled or reused afterwards. That's essentially wrong. Car frames are typically made of aluminum alloys or steel alloys, and aluminum and steel are usually made from a mix of recycled stuff and new stuff, not all new stuff (with the exception of some carbon steels).
The specific steel alloys and aluminum alloys used are among the most expensive to make, because of the trace alloying metals they contain. So, they're recycled whenever possible. They're also available from pretty pure recycling streams, since those alloys are used for cars, trucks, and aircraft, and pretty much nothing else. So long as wrecked vehicle scrap isn't mixed with other steel/aluminum, it's easy to melt down, remake, and recycle. (The same is true for aluminum cans, since they're all the same alloy.)
Everything else in a car is pretty low-energy to make: it's plastic, with tiny amounts of semiconductors. The latter takes fantastic amounts of energy to purify on a per-mass basis, but we're using it by the milligram.
On the other end of a car's lifecycle, modern scrap yards look like the Serengeti: some sort of scavanger will strip the car to its components to reuse -- headlights, doors, airbags, and other expensive assemblies -- or recycle -- metals, some plastics -- and the "fluff" that's left -- uphostery, typically -- is downcycled as filler for various things. Not that I've read anything about the process, or scrounged for parts for an old car myself. ;)
I am amused that Nepal, which is further north than Florida, is part of the "global south". :) Is the left allergic to saying "poor countries" or even "developing countries"?
Nepal, which found itself so dependent on India for fossil fuels that when India cut off the supply, it led to dramatic adoption of electric vehicles in Nepal, far above and beyond what's currently seen in countries like the US. Apparently Uruguay also had the realization that if the country went electric, it would reduce ongoing dependency on foreign oil imports.
Yeah, geopolitical risk is one of the factors about renewable energy that the Evil Party refuses to admit. I assume it's a symptom of corruption, and they're invested in oil/coal companies.
I appreciated from the article was learning that the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing solar panels can typically be offset within the first year of panel use. And many panels have decades-long lifespans - from what I understand, often longer than many people originally anticipated.
Oh, yes! Modern panels pay off all costs (financial, carbon, etc) in a few months in typical climates. And the panels will generally last forever, they just slowly lose efficiency. I believe the current federal requirement is that they still produce 90% of their rated output after 20 years. Assuming first-order decay dynamics, that means 81% output after 40 years.
Amateurs occasionally contact "lost" satellites that date to the 1960s, and their solar arrays have been exposed to both the solar wind and cosmic rays as well.
My brother has pointed out that large-scale solar operations are often preferable over rooftop
For cost and output, always. But rooftop arrays have available power even during blackouts, which may not be the case for distant power plants.