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don't forget the emissions from moving all that plastic bullshit around too, Nick! it really adds up. carbon tax would be fine but why not design better. (I recall looking into this but don't have a cite atm)
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Replying to and
Yea sure, I hope people try this approach if they believe the math. I'm just skeptical that a circular economy is realistically better than other means. There are many examples of "built to last" products having average use lifespans below the energy payback period (ie net loss).
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Replying to and
this is my cynicism / experience in industrial design too: you can spend a heck of a lot of design and tooling time on making something good and repairable, a lot more resources to build it, and people throw it out anyway. I'm all for right to repair, but nearly no one does it
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Yeah it’s not a panacea. Plastic straws and cloth totes are other examples. It’s a mix of targeted redesign, proper labeling, modeling and imitation, and incentives. Designing for durability and repairability as a general default in isolation won’t work.
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But the larger point is, there’s no way to decarbonize without shifting consumption patterns to a lower-emissions equilibrium. There’s only so far you can get with taxes, cap-and-trade, and carbon credits. And with matter unlike energy there’s fewer big levers like renewables.
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Direct energy use is about half the carbon pie chart. The other half is materially embodied. Accounting methods are a bit messy, but currently the biggest pattern that needs shifting in the energy half of the pie is probably HVAC.
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But something about moving mass consumption manufacturing to net negative carbon without touching the content seems off to me. Medium is the message. I can’t imagine carbon negative high-tech renewables based factories delivering through EV supply chains...the same crap as today.
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We already have the harmonized code / UNSPEC systems though to start with though, so we'd have a good idea of embodied carbon by code, and there'd be a whole business of trying to green certify that you were doing better than average to reduce your taxes.
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