Solar panels. Insulation. Work from home. Local farms. Trains to move it all.
Easy. But they don’t want you to have free time or health, because then you would all become free instead of exhausted wage slaves
But then they couldn’t horde it in their dragon lair.
Yea, good luck with that.
But absent billionaires suddenly deciding to be generous and solving climate change on their own, the math on decarbonizing ones own life isn’t bad.
Here’s the math for my life:
1. Heat pump water heater: $2.5k. This was before incentives existing, but the install was mostly DIY.
2. Cold weather heat pump retrofit: $12k after incentives.
3. EV’s: Our family spent way too much money on fancy EV’s. But I love my Rivian. Do your own math for your own situation. EV’s can be cheaper or more expensive than their gas counterparts depending on what segment you’re looking at.
4. Replace gas fireplace: $1k DIY project. This wasn’t truly necessary, but I didn’t want the unused device in my living room.
4. Solar (pending): $33k after incentives, to be installed later this month.
So all in, I’m spending about $50k on upgrades to my house. Plus whatever premium you’d put on the EV. Here’s what I get in return:
1. I will be saving about $5,500 per year on gasoline and utilities in 2024 dollars for as long as I live in this house.
2. I am forever protected from inflation from volatile gasoline and natural gas prices. Gas goes to $5/gallon? I don’t care. Natural gas prices double because Texas can’t manage their grid? Not my problem. Electricity prices spiking because we need to harden our grid to prevent horrendous wildfires? That’s my utility’s problem (screw them anyways).
3. My solar system comes with a backup battery that will keep my lights on in a power outage. I’ll also be participating in a virtual power plant program, contributing my solar to the grid on days where’ they’re really cranking up the coal fired plants.
4. The general quality, reliability, and efficiency of my EV’s and heat pump is significantly better than anything I owned before.
We can solve it *with their wealth* if we have the will.
If it takes half the wealth of the 1%, we are all going to die.
These takes are really dumb. Wealth is NOT liquid cash, and you can’t liquidate it like this. If you own land, that’s wealth. You can’t simply turn half of that land into solar, it makes no sense.
6 comments
Solar panels. Insulation. Work from home. Local farms. Trains to move it all.
Easy. But they don’t want you to have free time or health, because then you would all become free instead of exhausted wage slaves
But then they couldn’t horde it in their dragon lair.
Yea, good luck with that.
But absent billionaires suddenly deciding to be generous and solving climate change on their own, the math on decarbonizing ones own life isn’t bad.
Here’s the math for my life:
1. Heat pump water heater: $2.5k. This was before incentives existing, but the install was mostly DIY.
2. Cold weather heat pump retrofit: $12k after incentives.
3. EV’s: Our family spent way too much money on fancy EV’s. But I love my Rivian. Do your own math for your own situation. EV’s can be cheaper or more expensive than their gas counterparts depending on what segment you’re looking at.
4. Replace gas fireplace: $1k DIY project. This wasn’t truly necessary, but I didn’t want the unused device in my living room.
4. Solar (pending): $33k after incentives, to be installed later this month.
So all in, I’m spending about $50k on upgrades to my house. Plus whatever premium you’d put on the EV. Here’s what I get in return:
1. I will be saving about $5,500 per year on gasoline and utilities in 2024 dollars for as long as I live in this house.
2. I am forever protected from inflation from volatile gasoline and natural gas prices. Gas goes to $5/gallon? I don’t care. Natural gas prices double because Texas can’t manage their grid? Not my problem. Electricity prices spiking because we need to harden our grid to prevent horrendous wildfires? That’s my utility’s problem (screw them anyways).
3. My solar system comes with a backup battery that will keep my lights on in a power outage. I’ll also be participating in a virtual power plant program, contributing my solar to the grid on days where’ they’re really cranking up the coal fired plants.
4. The general quality, reliability, and efficiency of my EV’s and heat pump is significantly better than anything I owned before.
We can solve it *with their wealth* if we have the will.
If it takes half the wealth of the 1%, we are all going to die.
These takes are really dumb. Wealth is NOT liquid cash, and you can’t liquidate it like this. If you own land, that’s wealth. You can’t simply turn half of that land into solar, it makes no sense.