strommen

Carbon credits vs. carbon tax isn't an either/or.

Carbon tax discourages emitting carbon into into the atmosphere. Carbon credit encourages sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. Both are needed.

One advantage to carbon credits is that anybody can pay them, whereas only the government can enforce a carbon tax. And when it comes to the Amazon, this means the Brazilian government...whose leader is a climate denier that wants to bulldoze the Amazon for agriculture.

Abolish single family zoning.

It's terrible for the planet, terrible for economic and racial equity, and terrible for our mental health.

You're being super disingenuous here. The main priority of Germany's energy transition program was not to lower electricity carbon emissions; it was to phase out nuclear. They were far more worried about a 2nd Fukushima than global warming.

And as you point out, they are managing to reduce CO2 emissions anyway.

I think you misunderstand the linked doc.

Oak Ridge Electric Company, which is a tiny municipal utility that sources electricity from TVA, has 7.09% participation in its green pricing program (which presumably bypasses TVA). This has nothing to do with TVA itself and how it generates power.

Coal is dying in the US. There hasn't been a new power plant built in years, and facilities are getting retired early because it's cheaper to build new solar/wind than to run on coal.

The bad news is that many of the coal plants are getting converted to natural gas rather than being replaced by renewables. And when it comes to climate change, gas is only marginally better than coal. (Though when it comes to air pollution, gas is much better.)

A tiny coal plant recently opened in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The reason why stuff like this (electrolysis, desalination, etc.) is not widely done is that the capital cost of the facilities is too high. If you spend a bunch of money on an electrolysis plant and only run it 10% of the time, you'll never make your money back, even if your electricity is free.

The battery in a Nissan LEAF is warranteed to retain 75% of its capacity for 8 years, 160,000 km. So there's a good chance you'd be on a 2nd battery, considering a 3rd at your stage.

But on the upside, there's virtually none of the other engine maintenance that is required of combustion-run vehicles.

I don't see this as much of a problem. Drag coefficient on a Dodge Ram is 0.357; on a Prius it's 0.29.

That's less than a 25% penalty on efficiency.

The net effect is not even close to the same; it's far worse.

Methane is ~36x more potent as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year timespan. This includes the eventual decay to CO2.

Yes, paper degrades in a landfill.

Any carbon-based stuff you put in a landfill generally degrades to methane, which is 25-86 times worse than CO2 when it comes to global warming.

So recycle your paper :)

Companies piling downtown helps the environment. It allows more people to live close by or commute via mass transportation. Suburban sprawl is the energy-intensive way of living.

I've got an EV in Minneapolis (colder than Toronto but less crowded) and I love it. So does every EV owner I've ever met.

2x cost for electric is not typical. The average cost premium is more like 10-15k (and the US government will allow you a $7,500 tax credit for the electric).

Of course the top-selling electric vehicles (Tesla and Leaf) don't have a direct ICE equivalent so it's tough to compare...

It's carbon neutral when plants decay to carbon dioxide. But they need oxygen for this to happen - and when they don't (like when they're underwater), they decay to methane.

And methane is a greenhouse gas 20-80x more potent than carbon dioxide.

A company that converts clear-cut land to forest could earn money.

There is an entire sector of the economy dedicated to voluntary carbon offsets, and re-forestation efforts are the primary supply. People and companies use these as a sort of carbon tax to offset the emissions they cause by taking airline flights, hosting events, or just living their daily lives.