The old tech thing is maddening. In no small part that is consumerism pure and simple, but there's also ridiculous planned obsolescence at play.

My cellphone is inching towards 5 years, and it is perfectly serviceable. I could likely keep using it for years more. I am having to look at a replacement in the near future because there will be mo more updates for it.

And for computers, most people could probably make do with machines that are many years old and not feel a difference in their capabilities.

A lot of consumption is social signalling, sending the message "look! I can afford this!"

Maybe we should recast frugality as "financial edging". Think about buying something but refrain so that when you do finally give in the rush is enhanced.

Once you have got yours this is fine - like people who own big houses and are somewhat apathetic about house prices going up by multiples over a few years.

People who dont have computers should simply cancel their expensive netflix subscription and not eat avocados on toast. Within 5-7 years they too will have saved up enough for a deposit on an entry level GPU and some RAM.

I lived in the Netherlands for a bit, where I used to do a bike ride to the grocery shop.

Now I live in a more car-centric place where the only practical way to do grocery shopping is by car (unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule). I am not brave enough to ride a bike on the road.

If I were to choose, I vastly prefer the bike (not even for environmental concerns, it was just more pleasant). But things just aren't built that way.

> taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment,

1.) I walk to a shop cause that is the easiest way to get there.

2.) If the difference bwtween a car and bus trip is 5 vs 40 min, the bus system majorely sux.

Basically, you described situation where people settled at bad uncomfortable setup and consider it "good enough" for tradition reasons.

The only issue is that measurements of ability and needs are easy to falsify and very subjective.

Then it's a way to subsidize agriculture?

If your heart too loves the sight of vast fields, (my clanker computed) converting all of it to solar meets 4–5× total U.S. electricity generation, agrivoltaics look nicer and can generate 3× U.S. electricity.

https://agrivoltaics.rutgers.edu/image-gallery-of-agrivoltai...

> converting petrol into sugar-based biofuel to burn instead of burning the petrol directly

The obvious question here seems to me to be, what if they just burned their own biofuel? How much would that increase the cost/price?

At least some of these operations have to be running at some kind of net gain. It's really about price in the end. I've heard breaking down switchgrass in giant vats with microbes is going pretty well.

Eventually at some future point, we will need large scale biofuels at least for jet fuel. Because however long we might draw it out, we will run out of oil (better yet, we choose to stop using it, but, you know). The market will pay whatever it takes. The problem right now is that this seems so far off in the future and so impossible to 'time' that markets don't care yet.

You are right about it being strictly nonsense from a pure economics point of view. But in Brazil at least the economics of biofuel are not so far apart that they don't offset the advantages in more local industry and self-reliance against an increasingly unstable global oil market and geopolitical pressures (both of which are much harder to quantify).

However ethanol simply can't be used for heavy duty trucks and ships (which, you know, is 95% or more of goods transports in Brazil since there is almost no rail) which defeats much of the point.

At least the general population can shift to ethanol when supply market gets crazy which helps amortize the whole supply chain, but it still ends up affecting everyone just to a slightly lesser degree.

Buy yeah, corn or soy based ethanol is just insane to do at all. Sugar-based only makes sense in an increasingly unstable global order.

> Micro and nanoplastics are also a problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

Bio-plastics won't do this automatically. You can make today's polymers from biomass feedstock. Those will have the exact same micro/nano plastic problems.

You can also make polymeres, that are much more bio-degradable, with the associated particulate matter decaying instead of accumulating forever - but you could make those from crude oil just as well, and those degradable polymeres bring an entirely different zoo of problems with them.

This article tosses together bio fuels and plastics. By conflating the two, they seem to try to create some urgency for subsidizing the creation of both. And of course bio fuels are heavily subsidized already.

This article deliberately confuses things by conflating it with the discussion around bio fuels. Which, as you point out is largely redundant given that we now have decent EVs for literally anything with wheels commercially available. Anything from the tiniest scooters to the largest vehicles operated in the mining industry. And everything in between.

The fallacy with this debate is the focus on disproportionately small parts of the challenge of de-carbonization. If we manage to electrify most road and rail transport, heating (industrial and domestic), some shipping and aviation, etc. that would make an enormous dent in fossil fuel usage. After that we might focus on harder things like plastics. I'm not against people focusing on that now. More power to these people. But put it in perspective: it's relatively small part of the problem. And we have alternatives.

This fallacy is a recurring theme in fossil fuel lobbying materials. By spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt, they hope to slow down the accelerating implosion of their primary revenue maker: fuel sales. So, they talk up hydrogen and bio fuels. Sponsor studies on the impact of windmills on wild life. Etc. I can't help but look at this article and wonder who payed for it.

Decades ago I predicted that we'd replace plastics by genetically controlled growth of chitin and plant fiber into the shapes that we need.

It's much stronger, and in the long term biodegradable.

I guess we're just no there yet...

> If you only look at biofuels for the fuel value they still produce more energy than growing consumes. Though the amount of added energy is not great, it is more efficient than burning oil directly.

Is the marginal energy production worth the intense financial subsidy, though? That's really the important question. Would our dollars be better spent on direct electrification instead?

guys have you heard of this ai thing?

If it gets too tech-heavy even more people will question it :\

You got me, although arguably still vegan at least!

On the other hand, I doubt the article is talking about replacing petroleum based products with coal based ones :)