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First town in America to ban new gas stations

theguardian.com

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Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#81

Post by whatshisface »

emodendroket wrote: post #80
whatshisface wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the gas stations in Emeryville are very happy that the residents of Berkeley have to burn all that extra gas to drive to the big box stores outside of town.

Now imagine more cities starting passing these laws. Gee, before you know it, it's less trouble to have an electric car.

I think it would be more effective to have cities pass laws that say what follows:

"We will ban gas stations when more than m out of n nearby cities have either banned gas stations or passed this law."

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#82

Post by josephcsible »

globular-toast wrote: post #74
teeray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has become accustomed to unparalleled comfort and luxury, with central air conditioning… Heat pumps are probably the most efficient way we have to both cool AND heat a house. This is especially true when combined with solar panels and smart thermostats.

Yeah, but like most advances in efficiency, it's not used to take less, it's used to take more. Heat pumps could be used in combination with good insulation and good practices to keep houses more comfortable. A few degrees warmer in the winter, a few degrees cooler in the summer. But that's not what happens. Americans use air conditioning to keep their houses cold . People who aren't used to it end up wearing jumpers…

Stuff like telling people that stopping global warming means they need to be uncomfortably hot all summer and uncomfortably cold all winter is why so many people don't care about stopping it. Our goal for this should be to get heat pumps and renewable electricity rolled out everywhere, and then let people keep their houses at whatever temperatures they want without contributing to global warming.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#83

Post by emodendroket »

elif wrote: post #54
emodendroket wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly have become very suspicious of arguments that go "poor people who are not me also happen to like this thing I like, so any attempt to curtail it is discriminatory." Is there something about a gas pump that makes poor people more likely to congregate than a similar facility without? An electric charging station, for instance, would presumably be similar and might even be more likely to have places where you…

A high turnover rate of strangers handling their wallets. Also a ginormous sunshade and legal occupation can be obtained for a $1 soda or lotto ticket. Superchargers have nothing to do with financial transactions. You can't buy a soda or lotto ticket and claim to belong there.

I can't really see why you couldn't have chargers attached to a convenience store or restaurant. It would seem to make a lot of sense.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#84

Post by emodendroket »

whatshisface wrote: post #81
emodendroket wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine more cities starting passing these laws. Gee, before you know it, it's less trouble to have an electric car.

I think it would be more effective to have cities pass laws that say what follows: "We will ban gas stations when more than m out of n nearby cities have either banned gas stations or passed this law."

I could see that being more effective or less, but either way I don't think it's totally pointless.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#85

Post by emodendroket »

josephcsible wrote: post #82
globular-toast wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but like most advances in efficiency, it's not used to take less, it's used to take more. Heat pumps could be used in combination with good insulation and good practices to keep houses more comfortable. A few degrees warmer in the winter, a few degrees cooler in the summer. But that's not what happens. Americans use air conditioning to keep their houses cold . People who aren't used to it end up wearing jumpers…

Stuff like telling people that stopping global warming means they need to be uncomfortably hot all summer and uncomfortably cold all winter is why so many people don't care about stopping it. Our goal for this should be to get heat pumps and renewable electricity rolled out everywhere, and then let people keep their houses at whatever temperatures they want without contributing to global warming.

If you think summer is uncomfortable now give it time.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#86

Post by whatshisface »

emodendroket wrote: post #84
whatshisface wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be more effective to have cities pass laws that say what follows: "We will ban gas stations when more than m out of n nearby cities have either banned gas stations or passed this law."

I could see that being more effective or less, but either way I don't think it's totally pointless.

I can understand your point about marginal inconvenience having a marginal benefit, but I think that car use may be so inflexible (I know that I literally need my car and would be willing to put up with any conceivable inconvenience law because I have to) that inconvenience laws, especially ones with direct gas-burning effects on anyone who keeps their car, can easily be net negative even for small increases in fuel consumption.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#87

Post by josephcsible »

jeffbee wrote: post #76
bluedevil2k wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an ignorant and ironically completely uninformed statement of your own. Keep you biases, stereotypes, and outright bigotry off this site please. Travel to a favela, travel throughout Africa, even look at the building quality of houses in Japan…there’s no comparison.

Yes, that standard American rebuttal. We have better houses than in a favela. We have better health care than Eritrea. Our transportation is better than Kazakhstan … oh shoot, wait, they have more high speed rail than the USA. Scratch that. I’ve lived in Japan and their housing is far superior. It is newer in general, well-built, quiet, warm, efficient, comfortable, functional, and cheap. American housing stock is no…

> I’ve lived in Japan and their housing is far superior. It is newer in general, well-built, quiet, warm, efficient, comfortable, functional, and cheap. American housing stock is none of those things, at twice the price.

Don't houses in Japan only last 20-30 years? Isn't the only reason they're newer in general that they have to be rebuilt so often? Houses in America last way longer than twice that, so only paying twice as much seems like a bargain in comparison.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#88

Post by Glench »

emodendroket wrote: post #24
Glench wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all know that to combat climate change sacrifices will need to be made like fewer cars and smaller houses (for compact, accessible cities). This statement is tinged with the idea of sacrifice and loss that is unfortunately one of the hallmarks of the environmental movement. How about this? We can have an emissions-free future that is much more awesome than now with the same size cars and homes. Rewiring America…

It would be great if you were right. But even assuming it's the case, people will have to adjust to the electrical appliances. People in this very community say that they simply cannot learn to cook on an electric stove, or rent a car for the infrequent occasions when they want to travel hundreds of miles, and therefore fossil fuel usage must be continued unabated. Even this level of very small sacrifice is unimagina…

> Even this level of very small sacrifice is unimaginable.

Unimaginable to who? I can easily imagine this. The negatives you list are real, but they'll get rapidly better in the next 20 years (longer range cars, more charging stations for example). But in focusing on the negatives you (and the people you say you're speaking for) forget the positives:

- Electric cars already have the lowest cost of ownership of any cars and are often more fun to drive. The electric Ford pickup is basically just a better version of the fossil pickup.

- Heat pumps can both heat and cool homes meaning there's no need for separate AC/heaters. They're also often installed with mini splits meaning that families have finer-grained control over the temperature in various rooms.

- Induction stoves boil water in under a minute and are way easier to clean than gas or even electric resistance stoves. Plus gas stoves actually cause respiratory issues in homes.

- Without emissions, our air becomes a lot more pleasant to breathe, kills fewer people, and thus overall health improves. Cities in particular will have noticeably better air quality.

- Installing and maintaining electrified machines will create millions of new jobs in every zip code in the country and help distribute wealth.

- All of this will be cheaper to run than fossil fuels due to the inherent efficiency of electrification. The average US household will actually save hundreds of dollars a year on energy bills.

One of the tricks that will help make this all doable is to make emissions-free technologies up-front cheaper than the alternatives. So the thing that's the best for the climate is also best for the consumer's wallet. Government rebates would work great here and there's a bill being worked on right now for this: https://twitter.com/USRepKCastor/status/1426230666857959428

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#89

Post by bluedevil2k »

jeffbee wrote: post #76
bluedevil2k wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an ignorant and ironically completely uninformed statement of your own. Keep you biases, stereotypes, and outright bigotry off this site please. Travel to a favela, travel throughout Africa, even look at the building quality of houses in Japan…there’s no comparison.

Yes, that standard American rebuttal. We have better houses than in a favela. We have better health care than Eritrea. Our transportation is better than Kazakhstan … oh shoot, wait, they have more high speed rail than the USA. Scratch that. I’ve lived in Japan and their housing is far superior. It is newer in general, well-built, quiet, warm, efficient, comfortable, functional, and cheap. American housing stock is no…

Then you didn’t really understand how Japan’s houses are built. They’re not built to last at all because new homebuyers buy the property and tear down the house and build a new one. Knowing that, home builders only build them to last 10-20 years and house maintenance is an after thought to most people. Contrast that with American homes, where you can homes in Detroit and Chicago and Boston and thousands of other towns that have been continually lived in for over 100 years. But feel free to keep ranting about things you don’t know about.

And to address your other anti-American points…the world’s rich come here for health care, and it’s the best in the world for cutting edge care. Our highway system is one of the best in the world and we don’t care about high speed rail because of that. Your heavy biases can’t really cover up the facts.

Re: First town in America to ban new gas stations

#90

Post by doodlebugging »

vnchr wrote: post #11

“Single data point observed — is this a trend?”

Reminds me of the old Willie Nelson song, One in a Row.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXLfHJ6fIJo

And, since every trend must begin with a single data point, maybe it is a new trend. We just won't know anything about the direction until we accumulate more data points.

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