- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmit.online
- australia@aussie.zone
- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmit.online
- australia@aussie.zone
Cooking on gas is the one environmentally damaging thing I don’t want to give up, I’ll admit…
Cooking on gas is the one environmentally damaging thing I don’t want to give up, I’ll admit…
Could we please instead do something about the global shipping and trucking industries? Hell, even clothing production creates more CO2 emissions than shipping and trucking combined. I would gladly sacrifice more shitty clothes for the ability to cook a decent meal.
You fail to understand just how big a large container ship is. If a shirt comes on a ship from China, the truck taking it from the warehouse to the shop emits more CO2 for that shirt than the ship did bringing it from to the port. In fact, if you walk for ten minutes to the shop and back, you have emitted more CO2 than the ship did to carry that shirt. A container ship emits a large total amount of CO2 because it’s very big, carrying a massive amount of cargo. But overall, shipping is one of the most efficient modes of transport we’ve invented.
It’s not an either/or, we need to do both. Plus a lot of other things that everyone refuses to do or complains about because they think something else should be done by someone else first.
We need both
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Induction cook tops are so great. I can’t imagine going back to gas.
This screams “what are the low hanging fruits that are quick wins” approach that the gov probs got from some consulting firm.
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Electric appliances are generally cheaper to install, and now that gas prices have gone up are also cheaper to operate. There may be some benefit to manufacturers of electric appliances, but that is negated by the impact on the manufacturers of gas appliances. Installation of gas appliances often involved two tradespeople as there is often an electric component, so I would expect overall for there to be slightly less work for installers and trades overall too.
Gas companies have pushed stoves as a way to get gas hookups which tend to also include heat and hot water. The latter use far, far more energy than cooking so they make more money.
I’m not sure how much usage adds to their bottom line these days, but the supply charge definitely keeps going up. I had a look at my figures for gas last year - I paid $392 total, $262 of that was the supply charge. If I expected to be in this house longer (or if the water heater hadn’t been recently upgraded) I would definitely be considering changing over. The ongoing costs being cheap used to make gas the most economical option, but I think electric is the better deal these days.
Victoria is running out of gas. There isn’t as much easily extracted gas left in Bass Strait. We also use more gas now, being more dependent on it for electricity generation than in the past. We’re now resorting to having gas shipped in from Western Australia, having to compete on price with China who also want the gas from WA. Gas is just going to keep becoming more expensive, but Melbourne and the rest of Victoria was built around the assumption that there will always be cheap and effectively unlimited gas flowing in from Bass Strait.
We need to do something about this now, before it gets to the point that there just isn’t enough gas and we have to resort to rationing. The environmental angle is nice and all, and makes people feel better about complying. But it needs to happen anyway, just for economic and practical reasons. And getting rid of gas appliances in homes is an easy win with the added benefit that you’re removing a source of combustion byproducts from homes, yielding health benefits.
The dairy processing industry in particular is very dependent on burning gas to generate heat for all their processes. They have facilities for using diesel in emergencies (which they had to use in the gas crisis near the end of the ’90s), but getting them off gas entirely is going to be a lot harder than switching to induction stoves and electric hot water. Gas-fired power plants are going to be here for a while, especially because they can throttle up and down relatively quickly which is important if you need to respond to drops in output from wind and solar.
Doing the easiest things first just makes sense. And it’s not like the Victorian government has a great influence over the international shipping industry which will need a coordinated international effort to solve.