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Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

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Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#31

Post by david-gpu »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #25
thfuran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually a win for the environment? Sure, not commuting is, but what about more people deciding to live in less dense areas?

At some point one has to consider costs, scale and political expediency. WFH and H-WFH would be broadly popular among the electorate and could probably take off with just some changes to the tax code. Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone mu…

> Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not)

I wish we stopped subsidizing wealthy folks choosing to live in low density areas. It is intrinsically regressive that poorer people living in sustainable denser areas are subsidizing the infrastructure of the low density suburbs where richer people live. Low density suburbs do not raise enough taxes to support their own infrastructure, from roads, to water management, to electricity, etc.

Want to live in a single family home? Great! But don't expect people poorer than you to bear the cost.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#32

Post by epistasis »

SoftTalker wrote: post #20
epistasis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest environmental impacts is driving, so the real key is to have mixed uses near by. If you have a family and still need to drive your kids to school everyday, because schools are too far away to walk and there's no bus (typical in California), if you need to drive to go to the grocery store, if you need to drive to do everything in your life, then working from home in a less dense area might still inv…

I think it would still involve less driving. You don't get groceries every day if you drive to get them. You buy a few days or a week's worth of supplies at a time. School may be hard to avoid driving if there's no bus or good walking/biking routes, but maybe you can carpool with neighbors who have kids in the same school. But I think fundamentally a lot of people are just not accustomed to sitting at home. They feel…

I totally understand that, and we need to account for people with different desires and needs. I would go crazy in no time in an isolated setting, I really really crave having a lot of density and people around me. But despise driving to do anything unless it's purely recreational driving, which would be fun maybe once or twice a month.

I would love nothing more than to live in a walkable neighborhood, with very few cars, that lets kids roam free without fear of them getting killed by drivers. But that's really hard to come by anywhere in the US.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#33

Post by kiba »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #25
thfuran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually a win for the environment? Sure, not commuting is, but what about more people deciding to live in less dense areas?

At some point one has to consider costs, scale and political expediency. WFH and H-WFH would be broadly popular among the electorate and could probably take off with just some changes to the tax code. Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone mu…

Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone municipalities at the Federal level. So now you are talking about leaving it to the individual states... and I think you can see where that goes.

It's impossible to build if there are restriction on permitting and construction. Also, I would expect land cost to be a significant factor in high density area due to high demand.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#34

Post by AJ007 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
kylebenzle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could replace all the synthetic rubber with home grown natural rubber right now. It would last longer and be of much higher quality but it would double prices or more, so instead we burn oil and dump pulverized plastics into our waterways, because its a little cheaper.

Then the obvious answer is to price those externalities into the cost of the synthetic rubber tires. Of course then you'll have a lot of lower-income folks driving around on dangerously worn-out tires because they can't afford new ones. By the way I thought it was the synthetic rubber tires that lasted longer, but certainly possible that I'm mistaken.

Yes, synthetic should be more durable than natural rubber.

Once the petrochemical supply is exhausted, or what is left is extremely expensive to extract, they won't be able to afford new tires either. (Tires, and personal passenger vehicles, could be some of the least important of the "missing" consumption from the loss of petrochemicals.)

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#35

Post by thfuran »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #25
thfuran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually a win for the environment? Sure, not commuting is, but what about more people deciding to live in less dense areas?

At some point one has to consider costs, scale and political expediency. WFH and H-WFH would be broadly popular among the electorate and could probably take off with just some changes to the tax code. Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone mu…

I don't really see how any of this (aside from the brief mention of commuting again) has any bearing on the question of whether it's better for the environment.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#38

Post by LarryDarrell »

david-gpu wrote: post #31
LarryDarrell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point one has to consider costs, scale and political expediency. WFH and H-WFH would be broadly popular among the electorate and could probably take off with just some changes to the tax code. Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone mu…

> Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not) I wish we stopped subsidizing wealthy folks choosing to live in low density areas. It is intrinsically regressive that poorer people living in sustainable denser areas are subsidizing the infrastructure of the low density suburbs where richer people live. Low density suburbs do not raise enough taxes to support their own infrastructure, from roads, to…

My neighborhood and for miles around me is lower to middle-middle class. All people that wouldn't be able to afford to 1) move and leave their equity behind 2) afford the rents in the denser part of town.

You are painting with too broad of strokes.

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#39

Post by Tiktaalik »

Chris2048 wrote: post #5
mistrial9 wrote: post #4

some links from Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=jenn... " a Ph.D. student, Haoqi Nina Zhao, suggested a new way to separate out chemicals that led to a prime suspect. But they couldn’t test it, because they didn’t know what it was. “It’s almost like you have a fingerprint,” Dr. Tian said. “But you really don’t know who this is, because in your database, this fingerprint doesn’t…

I don't understand how testing toxicity of chemicals, and their oxides, is not a standard part of allowing them in manufacture?..

[flagged]

Re: Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs

#40

Post by Nasrudith »

kylebenzle wrote: post #14
LarryDarrell wrote: post #6

Perhaps tires can be made less toxic, but over all, we need to prioritize driving less. WFH means I put barely 3000 miles per year on my car. It's absurd we are not aggressively promoting WFH or hybrid WFH at the national level. It's the easiest win for the environment and it's right there for the taking.

We could replace all the synthetic rubber with home grown natural rubber right now. It would last longer and be of much higher quality but it would double prices or more, so instead we burn oil and dump pulverized plastics into our waterways, because its a little cheaper.

Unfortunately there are all sorts of other material properties to worry about beyond raw durability/'quality'. Natural rubber tires react quite poorly to hydrocarbons and greases, let alone traction issues. And that is putting aside the logistical issues with getting sufficient natural rubber.

There may be some sort of "compromise" material that could be developed that would lack the toxicity or microplastics issues without compromising safety, but I'm going to defer to experts in that field.

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