From the study itself:

What’s not included in the living wage calculation:

• Credit card or loan payments
• Savings for retirement
• Life insurance
• Property taxes
• Home maintenance and repair
• Costs associated with a child or adult family member with disabilities or severe illness requiring care or adaptive supports

How much higher would the living wage go if these things were included, $40/h? I don’t even know if that’s enough to get a mortgage anymore. The argument could be made to not include some or most of those things, but retirement? Guess we’re expected to work until we die.

Also, nitpick about the study format, I can’t search most of the PDF nor copy text from it. I don’t remember having had this issue before. It makes for a difficult document to find specific information in.

They aren’t rethinking EV strategy. They’re rethinking their bottom line. Somewhere around two thirds of EVs manufactured are SUVs. Pushing into electric vans is a smart move when considering the bottom line. There’s far more room in the van space to grow than the already saturated SUV market.

If they were really rethinking their EV strategy, they’d reintroduce the electric Focus to the European market, introduce it to the American market, and pump the brakes on the F150 Lightning in favour of these vans which are both more utilitarian and pedestrian friendly.

I agree. In the long term, it would make sense to leave as much as you can so you have it for more useful purposes in the future. Medical applications perhaps, or rocket fuel to get materials to the moon would be cool. Who wouldn’t want to see us get a moon base?

What is a genuine emmisions plan? Of course fossil fuel companies are opposed to the Paris Agreement. Even the ones that claim to be aligned with it. They’re structure is fundamentally against anything other than the exponential increase in oil and gas consumption.

The industry could have gotten behind clean energy decades ago. Instead they chose to continue extracting a material that - without a shadow of a doubt - we will run out of. What an insane business model.

Remember a decade ago when the US was decreed ‘the Saudi Arabia of natural gas’? They cooked up this wonderful term for the methane. Every pundit and politician from coast to coast called it a bridge fuel over and over again. Then instead of a bridge, they went and built a ramp that isn’t levelling off, never mind declining.

Imagine if a couple generations ago, Exxon decided to pivot to solar and wind. With the financial resources available to that one company, we might have had panels at 40% efficiency by now. Maybe turbines at 50-60%. Who knows, if the industry as a whole put in the leg work, we may have been off oil and gas entirely today.

The fossil fuel industry has an expiry date. If we aren’t sufficiently prepared, the impact of running out of an energy supply will be devastating.

The saxophone battle that unfurled on the New York City subway ten years ago comes to mind.

Maybe if we didn’t make city streets as wide as highways, people wouldn’t drive so fast. I feel like it’s obvious that people will drive faster between painted lines than if those lines were walls. Even lining a street with trees lowers speeds. An indirect side effect would be a drop in ticket revenue, but surely the police department would prefer safety over money.

The fact the Coast Guard spent four million dollars per recruit on a NASCAR campaign is unreal. Yet after they’ve served they’ll be lucky to get a free massage.

The PAC that got this AG elected must have a loose definition of ‘crooked’.

From their site:

Join our dedicated community of Christ-followers who have committed to championing our God-given liberties, taking a stand for biblical justice, and paving the way for a brighter future. Together, we strive for reformation in our government and seek to make the crooked paths straight for our generation.

To add a touch of perspective, China has spent 70% more than the EU and the US combined on their renewable infrastructure.

It’s odd how politicians only seem to point out China’s current position of largest annual carbon emitter, and use that as an excuse not to lift a finger in the way of reducing domestic emissions. It goes entirely ignored that those numbers are a result of China being the world’s factory.

Despite this, they still have close to half the carbon emissions per capita compared to the runner up in annual carbon emissions - the United States of America - despite all that manufacturing.

Meanwhile, politicians galore will recite the findings of the same few scientists that it’s not the heat that’s the problem - cold is the true killer.

Exactly where I was going with my question. There would need to be steep penalties for being caught trying to undermine the process. Even if they had made an honest mistake, I feel the individuals holding the power of a prosecutor should be expected to held to a higher standard, and therefore higher consequence.

Not that I agree with you, but what’s your idea of the prosecutor’s consequence? A fine? Firing? Disbarment?

Based on your other comments, I’m going to wish you well and hope tomorrow you have a better day. Cheers.

I don’t see that norimee’s initial comment was edited. I do see that your reply to them has been.

I’ve read the root comment a few times and cannot see what you’re huffing about. They didn’t say anything about the creation of the weapons.

The entire comment revolved around the country’s capability of keeping one in functional condition without an accident occurring, as seems to so often happen.

So long as executives have a fiduciary responsibility to generate returns for the shareholders, they can dust their hands of making decisions that kill customers so long as a profit is made.

I wrote elsewhere about the infrastructure problem, but I’ll sum up a couple things. There’s around 200,000 gas stations in the United States. If there were an equivalent number of chargers around, having a small battery would be fine. Eventually this will be the case, but you highlight an important factor: closed ecosystems. All these chargers should work for any make of EV car.

As it stands with now, the need for a subscription or specific car or unique payment method is ludicrous. All these chargers should be required to have card readers the same way you can pay at the pump in a gas station. Beyond this, they’d all need to adopt the same charging method so people don’t need a bunch of adapters in their trunk.

That said, there could be regulations established to require newly built housing, apartment buildings included, to have electric vehicle charging infrastructure - and more than just a few plugs. Grants could be made available for retrofitting existing buildings. If these things came to fruition, we wouldn’t need two hundred thousand charging stations all over the place. It’s not out of the question to install an overnight charging spot for every person that has an electric car - it just costs money.

Basically every argument I’ve seen against low range electric cars is founded in a charging infrastructure problem. Going to a bigger battery in a larger vehicle has significant and more costly ramifications on other infrastructure. It’s better to aim for smaller, lighter vehicles with infrastructure in mind.

That obviously isn’t their position. They don’t own the building they live in nor the business they work for.

The used market is different for EVs than a combustion vehicle. I looked for a BMW i3 a while back and was only finding them halfway across the continent. Maybe that’s because people keep them for longer? Not sure that market has developed enough to know one way or another.

I understand what you mean about the average person getting it, and while that is important, I think the primary issue is the limited selection of small EVs on the market. As you point out, if foreign vehicles could be acquired without the steep cost, more people would drive them. As it stands, domestic automakers don’t want to make anything but twenty foot long SUVs because of the huge profit margins on them.

As far as ebikes go, I am definitely on that boat. Don’t have one myself - call me a traditionalist - but I wish more people would consider them. I agree that in higher temperatures, or humidity which I find worse, it’s uncomfortable. Though the benefit of (maybe idealistically) not having a car payment and associated insurance go a long way to making that discomfort palatable.

Personally, I’ve got a trailer for my bike that I’ve been using to ride 10-15 minutes to the grocery stores and do errands. A time or two I have even gotten some lumber with it from the hardware store. I thought about a specific cargo bike a while back but decided not to have an entire bicycle for that sort of thing. The trailer is smaller anyway.

The safety factor of riding opposed to driving is the most important factor in my mind. It’s dangerous to ride along the side of a multi lane road. Paint doesn’t stop drivers from crossing into a ‘bike lane’. Even a curb or those plastic bollards are insufficient in my mind. I ride nearly primarily on trails or the type of streets that are small enough not to have any painted lines. For busier routes I use the sidewalk or even the boulevard if there is one.

The more people getting on the ebike wagon could cause better riding options to be developed in the area. That’s political though. Even if it doesn’t, it’s one more person taking a trip not in a car, making it a tiny bit safer.

Don’t get me wrong, obviously people like yourself make these long ish trips regularly and you’d benefit either from more range or better infrastructure. If, like gas stations, there were two hundred thousand charging stations sprinkled through the country, less range in the car would be less of a concern.

I know someone from my college days that hung a 100’ cord out her third story window to plug in her little EV. Nissan Leaf or something of that class. Worked like a charm for puttering around town.

I’m sure the data isn’t perfect, but as far as the averages go, it’s accurate for my driving patterns. Those trips you’re taking nearly double your yearly mileage, so that would certainly change your average. Without them though, you wouldn’t be too far off based on what you’ve described. I’m fortunate that I live near a train line for my regular trips out of town. Not an option for the vast majority unfortunately.

Another option a couple I know took was a hybrid. Most of the time they don’t use the engine, but when they go see family or what have you, they’ve got the range they need without having to find a charger. Pretty convenient if you ask me.

Eventually we’ll have charging stations all over, or maybe light rail, and going hundreds of miles in a day without a thought to battery depletion, but I doubt I’ll be around to see it.