Paywalled, but I'm gonna go with fossil fuel trap. We need to be completely off fossil fuels by about 2050. Any new major natural gas infrastructure being built now is expected to last longer than 2050. Even new residential gas furnaces are probably expected to last around 20 years or so.
While I agree there are issues with capitalism. I disagree this was capitalism working as intended. If it were, the better/more innovative technology (green/cheap energy) would have surpassed the worse technology (dirty energy reliant on continued investment and extraction) because as we are finally seeing, there is more money to be made with green energy than fossil fuels. Suppression of green energy took active anti-capitalist anti-competitive efforts to preserve the edge of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel companies knew about global warming since at least the 1970s. Those companies have used their enormous wealth to reverse trends towards public transit (e.g. Los Angeles used to have street cars...), halt the green energy transition until very recently, and spread misinformation and buy politicians.
Edit: also think about how all of those oil spills, mountain top removal, air and water pollution, cancers, asthma, heart disease that were "necessary for the economy" over the past couple of decades. When instead we could have already had fully sustainable energy systems with similar economic growth. Vote for politicians willing to do something about it.
As others have said, the tech is evolving rapidly. Batteries are the biggest cost of a new EV and they are getting cheaper and better every year. There's reasonable estimates we'll see EVs with 500mi of range on a charge by 2026 for example.
Another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet was how absolutely bonkers the car market was coming out of the pandemic with the "chip shortage". There were months to years long wait lists for any type of new car, so if you wanted a car immediately it had to be used. Those wait lists are becoming resolved and the market is stabilizing.
When we went to buy our Ioniq 5 about a year ago, the comparable used EVs were scares and $35-40k compared to $45k for a brand new Ioniq. And our rusty 11 year old ICE car traded in for $6k, way more than it was worth.
EV batteries don't typically catastrophically fail, they gradually degrade in max capacity. And many combustion cars also have expensive repairs needed near the 10-15 year mark. My Ioniq 5 has 300 miles of range now, and we really only need about 120 miles for a week of commuting for my wife. So we could afford a 50% hit before needing to do something about it, which should be quite a long while from now. We just couldn't take it on long road trips. So at least for me, the battery replacement cost in 10-15 years is not a big concern. We'd probably lean towards replacing the the whole car before just the battery.
For comparison, our combustion car is 11 years old at this point. It's in rough shape and could be replaced, but my commute is short. Hoping to hold off on replacing it for another ~4 years unless there's an expensive repair needed. The EV battery tech is evolving so rapidly these days that I expect cars with 500+ miles of range will be on the market by the time we buy a second EV.
You have conservatively at least 10 years before needing to replace a battery. Even with a greater upfront cost compared to combustion cars, EVs are considerably less expensive over a 10 year period because of the lower energy and maintenance costs. The only regular maintenance most EVs should need are tire rotations and replacements of consumables like the cabin air filter, windshield wipers, brakes, and tires.
That's only pre-2015 models without a push to start button
Agree this is animal industry propaganda. Providing some data on the environmental impacts of various protein sources: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
That only affects Kia models before 2015
It's hard, but there are more adults in the U.S. alive today who have successfully quit smoking than currently smoke.
Check out SmokeFree.gov for free science-based resources!
Yoga with Adrienne has a really great 10 min upper back stretch video that does wonders for me
My Hyundai Ioniq 5 has ample physical buttons on the center console, steering wheel, and door, and a physical door handle that Teslas lack. Sure there is a touch screen (smaller than industry average), but I don't frequently use it, the buttons outside the screen are enough.
The copious amounts of sugar in our diets, antibiotics for livestock (or just factory farming in general), single-use plastics, and new pesticides/herbicides are today's things that are "perfectly safe"...but not really.
With the exception of medicine, a big issue in the U.S. at least is that companies don't have to proactively prove a new chemical/product is safe for the environment or public health before selling it. The EPA really only has the authority and staffing capabilities to step in once issues arise years or decades later. Just look at PFAS which are finally getting regulated decades too late.
It's mostly about the dose of carcinogens. THC is far less addictive than nicotine, so on average people who exclusively use cannabis inhale less smoke than people who smoke tobacco. A pack a day of cigarettes is a very common amount for people who smoke tobacco. That's 20 cigarettes, or 14-16 grams of tobacco a day. Few people who exclusively use cannabis are smoking 14grams/half oz a day.
There are two other major factors limiting our knowledge of the health impacts of cannabis smoking: 1) it remains federally illegal and therefore hard to get research funding. 2) a large proportion of the studies over the past several decades with people who smoked cannabis were confounded by many of the participants also smoking tobacco
TLDR: it's not great to inhale smoke of any kind, as it does contain an abundance of carcinogens.
The majority of carcinogens from smoking tobacco are created by burning the plant fibers. Quitting smoking is the number thing someone who smokes can do to improve their health. Vaping exposes individuals to fewer carcinogens than smoking, but still has the negative health impacts of nicotine alone on heart and mental health and still some carcinogen exposure.
SmokeFree.gov has free evidence-based resources to help quit!
The majority of carcinogens from smoking tobacco are created by burning the plant fibers. Quitting smoking is the number thing someone who smokes can do to improve their health.
SmokeFree.gov has free evidence-based resources to help quit!
Adding all of that coal and limestone trapped a lot of carbon underground. If that carbon was CO2 instead, the Earth would be much hotter. Perhaps hotter than the boiling point of water and thus there would be no ocean between the continents, like Venus.
Something about the regulations of these giant container ships has to change moving forward
I say outdoors. Indoors has a vibe of being human made to me, and a low likelihood of encountering wildlife. So I guess walking around a mine is indoor cave exploration
The Environmental Protection Agency has set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses and other large vehicles.
Cancer patients and doctors have ignited a movement to radically change how new cancer drugs are tested to make them more tolerable.
For cancer patients, the harsh side effects of powerful drugs have long been the trade-off for living longer. Now, patients and doctors are questioning whether all that suffering is necessary.
They’ve ignited a movement to radically change how new cancer drugs are tested, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urging drugmakers to do a better job at finding the lowest effective dose, even if it takes more time.