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Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

cnbc.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#51

Post by djaychela »

organsnyder wrote: post #43
derekp7 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would increasing the delivery time reduce the amount of gas it takes to get an item to my doorstep? Considering that the items ship from a warehouse about 15 miles from my house. I suppose that if an occasional item ships from across the country, then it would be less impactful to go by truck for 5 days, so if that is the case then any item that falls under that category could have a selection item on the checkou…

Batching deliveries could result in massive energy savings. Right now, Amazon's vans tend to hop around neighborhoods (at least that's what their delivery tracker shows me). If deliveries were batched, the delivery density would be much higher, reducing the distance a single vehicle would have to travel to empty a full load of packages.

Absolutely - imagine if there was a system where you had one delivery a week which consisted of all the items from all the shopping you'd done, instead of piecemeal deliveries throughout the week. The savings could be immense, but I can't imagine such a system being popular.

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#52

Post by Jommi »

BlackRing wrote: post #46
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large quantities of carbon are taken from the ground and added to the atmosphere in the manufacture, transportation, sale, use, and disposal of consumer products.

Which is going to happen regardless. What would you rather they consume, an internal combustion engine that spits out a deadly exhaust or an electric vehicle that uses power, presumably from a nuclear or less toxic fuel source?

We consume more thing sthsn ever before. Surely if 100 yes ago we could consume less why could we not reduce consumption now? :)

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#53

Post by NathanKP »

mrpopo wrote: post #40
dimitar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic. It is not always apparent what behaviour is the most energy-wasteful. For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also red…

> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist all people would simply travel less, not drive more.

I think you are underestimating how much people travelled before airplanes were a thing. First of all pre airplane there was a lot of sea travel, which was accomplished by burning ludicrous amounts of coal to generate steam power.

And long road trips used to be a cultural pass time. This is why Route 66 is to some extent still such a cultural / historical icon. It used to be that American middle class families loaded into a gas guzzling vehicle to drive cross country for vacation.

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#55

Post by helij »

mrpopo wrote: post #40
dimitar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic. It is not always apparent what behaviour is the most energy-wasteful. For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also red…

> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist all people would simply travel less, not drive more.

I would travel the same. Just with a car. I do three big trips a year of around 1,600km one way.

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#56

Post by [deleted] »

organsnyder wrote: post #43
derekp7 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would increasing the delivery time reduce the amount of gas it takes to get an item to my doorstep? Considering that the items ship from a warehouse about 15 miles from my house. I suppose that if an occasional item ships from across the country, then it would be less impactful to go by truck for 5 days, so if that is the case then any item that falls under that category could have a selection item on the checkou…

Batching deliveries could result in massive energy savings. Right now, Amazon's vans tend to hop around neighborhoods (at least that's what their delivery tracker shows me). If deliveries were batched, the delivery density would be much higher, reducing the distance a single vehicle would have to travel to empty a full load of packages.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#57

Post by wongarsu »

perfunctory wrote: post #35

Yet another plan. Great. When will we finally start seeing media reports on actual emission reductions? In 2020 I want to read "Amazon has reduced its total emissions by 5% compared to 2019".

The most upvoted comment on HN would be how this 5% reduction is just meaningless marketing, probably because Amazon will have increased sales by X%, meaning the products delivered maybe had a higher carbon footprint.

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#58

Post by rrix2 »

djaychela wrote: post #51
organsnyder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batching deliveries could result in massive energy savings. Right now, Amazon's vans tend to hop around neighborhoods (at least that's what their delivery tracker shows me). If deliveries were batched, the delivery density would be much higher, reducing the distance a single vehicle would have to travel to empty a full load of packages.

Absolutely - imagine if there was a system where you had one delivery a week which consisted of all the items from all the shopping you'd done, instead of piecemeal deliveries throughout the week. The savings could be immense, but I can't imagine such a system being popular.

Amazon provides this already: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17928921011

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#59

Post by geoka9 »

dimitar wrote: post #32
Arubis wrote: post #6

I'm glad to see that there's deliberate movement in this direction. However, it's a little dismaying that the headline is implying that we can address climate change by Consuming More Stuff; that's how we got into this mess in the first place.

Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic. It is not always apparent what behaviour is the most energy-wasteful. For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also red…

> Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one

Isn't buying a used (ICE) car better for the environment than a new EV one?

Re: Jeff Bezos climate change plan unveiled – buy 100k electric vans.

#60

Post by m0zg »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
noonespecial wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I largely agree with you, decades on it seems that if the message factors down to "quick, everybody stop doing stuff" , it's hard to get political traction. Every step in the right direction is a good one. Perfect is the enemy of good.

I'd put a stronger argument: if everyone suddenly stopped doing stuff, the global economy would collapse, most people would starve to death, all our technology would rot and disappear in couple decades, and the few survivors would live with medieval-level technology on a thoroughly broken planet with no chance of regaining any advanced tools for thousands, or tens of thousands of years (as all dense energy sources ac…

It's a typical strawman. An average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine. One would argue that this needs to happen for us to really make progress on reducing emissions. People blame "corporations" and "the rich", but it's like blaming a Mexican cartel for making drugs. They wouldn't make them if there weren't any buyers, and unlike with drugs, pointing out that people just buy too much shit is not "victim shaming".
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